Take The Time To Design

Last night I decided to give my girlfriend an opportunity to come up with a story, just to mix things up. This was possibly the most challenging thing I have ever done. Her idea pushed me so far out of my box that I got frustrated and almost gave up for the night.

I had intended to draw an entire page. We started brainstorming, one of my favorite parts of the process. She would put an idea on the table, and I would build on it. For about an hour we played off each other ideas. Never saying "no" to an idea, but "yes, and...." Ideas need to keep moving. In a creative discussion you have to nurture an idea and let it grow. After a few acting sessions and dialog run-throughs, we whittled it down to a four panel page of suspense.

REVENGE

Scene 1: Little girl sitting on bed, stream of light cuts through the darkness.
Scene 2: Mom and Dad taking stance in the court yard.

MOM
YOU ALL MUST DIE!

DAD
Quite, Shi's sleeping. This is crazy, why are you doing this?

Scene 3: Daughter sneaking down the hall.
Scene 4: Mom horizontally strikes at Dad. Dad jumps above sword coming down with a death blow. Shi is watching in the background.

DAD
Revenge is for the weak.

SHI
Daddy nooooo!

Stoked the writing went so quickly I jump into drawing the page. I thumbnailed a sketch while we were brainstorming and another full page thumbnail to work out some detail. Two thumbnails later I was ready to draw, well not really. I became extremely frustrated that I couldn't get the look and feel I wanted. I focused my attention on the last scene. I wrestled with this scene for 2 hours and couldn't get it. I needed to see their faces, but when I began to draw the faces the picture would go south. How could I draw these characters fighting if I had no idea what they looked like. I stopped, sat back on my bed and drew out what the Dad looked like. Asking myself what are his shapes? The designs flowed out pretty easily, and now that I knew them a little better I could put them in a scene.

I reread the script and began drawing the scene again. This time I understood the father's build and the mom's elegance. I worked this into the action. Mom's dress really helps to emphasis her movement and Dad's short stature makes it easy to compress his body enough to stay in the frame. I also realize that this is not my final image but a sketch for the actual page. I wasted a lot of time trying to save time, and it bit me. Do yourself the favor, and take time to plan things out.

SCRIPT>THUMBNAIL>DESIGN>TELL STORY