How to make a comic page.

When developing the story, I like to put characters into situations that help me better understand who they are. You can do character design all day, but until you start making characters live in their world they don't come to life. The great part about the Love and the Blade project is that I have already draw a majority of the first book. Now I can use that rough draft as my script/guide. Allowing me to focus on putting the characters in the world and "on model". If you are not familiar with animation and comic books, "on model," means drawing the character the same each time, preserving the original intent of the character design. This is one of the most challenging parts of creating sequential media. There are many parts to the process and each has its own set of challenges. Creating comic books and animation is not straight forward, it is cyclical. You will write to create drawing and draw to refine your writing. Story is most important and is enhanced and emphasised by the character design, background design and shot composition, these items are not listed in order of importance.

I did the original concept sketch for this page back in 2005, this was done before anything had been written, I conceived a scene in my head and sketched it very quickly. Story trumps visuals and you should work to get the story down as fast as possible. Not the details, but the broad idea or concept of your story. Remember everything in the comic book is supposed to reflect the theme, so make sure you understand what you are trying to say before you begin working heavily on imagery.

Thumbnailing is an essential technique for figuring out composition. The thumbnail lets you get your ideas on the page in miniature, this will allow you to see the graphic statement of a panel or character. The goal is to make each panel of the comic read like a sign. This means the each panel should tell you what is going on without words. As you develop the full comic page, you start to bring out more of the character details that enhance the story points. In comics contrast is your friend. Use black and white, ( Light and Dark ) to help establish the scene. This assists in helping to control the eye of the viewer. Your goal in comics is to move the viewers eye over the image like it would over text, soaking up the story.