Marooned

With this particular comic page I really wanted to do something special. When you have a case where a character is simply spitting out some exposition, the best thing you can do is have some great visuals to really carry the comic, so people aren’t just reading some talking head spewing out text. So a fair amount of extra work went into the creation of this comic.

In general, I always thumbnail out my strips in order to get the best poses and layout. But in this case, I knew I was essentially going to have one big panel with text, and I was going to do something a little different. The composition had to help hold the reader’s hand throughout the process so they wouldn’t get lost. I’m not sure I was 100% successful, but I got no complaints, and people seemed to really like it.

Since I’ve been recently training in Blender for work, I wanted to see if I could whip up a quick rough composition to help me with the perspective. This first image was an attempt at that. Truth is, this actually happened after my rough pencils. As I looked at the 3D render, I actually liked how my pencils were working. I could probably base a a more accurate drawing regarding perspective based on the render, but I didn’t think it was necessary. But here’s that render I did. This type of thing can be awfully helpful for complex scenes.

3d Render of Scene

Because I knew this was going to be tricky, I knew I had to layout the text first so I would know how to plan out the scene. I knew the corner panels (upper left and lower right) would be the start and end. I made a document in Photoshop, placed the *rough* text in and planned out the scene. As you can see, the dialog radically changed (it always does) and I removed the poor attempt at a joke at the end. Dialog always gets much more concise and snappy at the end, which is how it should be.

I wouldn’t normally do this detailed a plan, but in this case I had to do it to pull this page off. Nearly every element in the scene is set up to direct the reader through the proper flow of the page. I’ll point out each item in just a bit.

Rough Pencils and Text Plan

Once I was happy with the rough, I got out my Bristol board and did the actual pencils in Col-Erase blueline pencil, just like I always do. You’ll notice that I indicated where the “ghost” Baro would be, but I didn’t really draw them in. I knew I’d need to add them later to make the coloring easier. You can see some slight changes from the rough. The platform became square and I added the lightpost.

Blueline Pencils

Next is the inks. I use Staedtler .03 and .05 primarily, with .07 for the borders. Sometimes I will use a .01 for very small things. It’s now ready to scan.

Inks

After the usual slight corrections on the inks with my tablet, I flatted in all the colors.

Color Flats

Next, I digitally drew in the ghosts. Doing it this way allowed me to color the lines much easier (in fact I drew them in color) and do the ghostly effects without worrying about the other inked lines. Plus it made it easier to adjust where they were in the scene.

Adding in the Ghosts

As I said, each element in the scene is planned to help the reader through the panel. The arrow shows the path I hoped the reader would follow. Things that help you along:

• Zed has his hand reaching out to the first text bubble.
• The second bubble is in close proximity to the first and follows left to right, so it’s easy.
• The way the ghosts are turning into the Mother Brain leads you to the bubble in the middle. (I know maybe not everyone got that, but actually you could read bubble 3 or 4 in any order, and it didn’t alter the meaning of the strip.)
• The tilt of the platform holding the Motherbrain is a diagonal line leading you down and to the left to bubble 4.
• Tilt of the lightpost and certain lines in it also lead you down the proper path.
• The road the Baro are on exiting the platform leads you to the final panel and bubbles.

The Reading Path

Hopefully that led you to read it properly. Here it is again.

The Final Comic