STR8 OUTTA COMIC COMPOSITION_006

Logo with apologies to rappers from NWA. Shout out to all my peeps from South Central Working that J.O.B. trying to stack up the Benji-mans at that Staple factory. Julio, you da man. Yo, Dolores and crew.

The Spider and The Mountain copyright Rick Arthur. All rights reserved. Nyra becomes sick and a demon grows. Thumbnail sketch for layout with notations on 8.5x11 inch bond paper.

A former student asked a variation of the following question in an email. I have copied my response (lightly edited) for others interested in the process of comic making and storytelling.

"At what point do you consider composition in making your comics?"

That is a very good question, and I will do my best to answer it here.


First, the way I work and the way that I think about story and composition has changed dramatically over time as I have tried new things to see what is working best for me. This will also be the case for you. As you move forward and do more pages, your style of working will change. So, keep that in the back of your mind as I discuss story and composition.


I am a very firm believer in creating and modifying working processes. There is always room for improvement and experimentation. An artist needs to be open to change while at the same time trying to streamline their approach.


Story always comes first.

Story is the thing that makes comics, TV, or film important. There are many occasions where I see artwork that is of lesser execution but has a compelling story and I prefer that, and most people react to that before anything else. The flip side is that really nicely rendered work that does not tell a good story will not connect with viewers/readers. There are even occasions where an excess of gloss and polish hurts a story.


For composition,
I usually go scene to scene thematically and page by page in practicality. What does this mean?

When I started producing comics and stories, because I struggled with the actual act of drawing, inking, writing, and one hundred other elements I thought I had to master, I usually constructed stories by building one panel at a time and asking myself "what goes next?" Often, I did not know what was happening in my story as I built it. This works or can work for smaller pieces. What I came to realize was that this has a very strong limitation in longer stories.


We have talked about the use of thumbnails a lot. The primary purpose of the thumbnail is to get the ideas out of your head, one drawing at a time and one page at a time. However, a great benefit of using a thumbnail system is that if you are thinking about it properly as a transitional step in creating the artwork, the thumbnail now becomes a place where you can test out different layouts, camera angles, and story techniques without wasting time producing finished work that does not satisfy what you are looking for.


I am actually in this process now, right now, as I build my story for The Spider and The Mountain. Thumbnails allow me to play around with the composition and placement of panels without committing. There is nothing more frustrating than being halfway into inks or colors and deciding that the story is not clear, and that the composition should have been changed.


I will work based on a script, notes, sketches, diagrams, photo reference, or other aids in the following manner:

IDEA
SKETCH/WRITE
THUMBNAIL/WRITE/REVISE
PENCIL ART
INK ART
LETTERS/WRITING REVISIONS
COLOR
PRODUCTION

Once I get through my scene or story in a first go through, I lay out the thumbnails of the pages to look over and compare to one another. After I see everything, I go back and make adjustments by moving panels, combining panels, changing the shape or size of panels. Since each page can be anywhere from one to ten sketches each (or more), I have a lot of drawings to consider.


NOTE: I know that a lot of people are producing thumbnails on the computer and then using layers to build up the artwork. This is valid and if it works for you, then I say fine. However, one limitation with the computer is that the very ability to make change after change effortlessly means that you are never looking at comparison sketches side by side and considering them against one another. It is a flaw I feel.


Still further into the idea of page layouts and composition. Your panels should always support your story. ALWAYS.


When I look at composition as a whole, the entire story - I usually have an idea of where I want my impact panels to be. I am thinking about my full, half, and two-page spreads.


When I look at my scenes (which I usually make from one to five pages in length), I am again considering the story and also looking at what kinds of variety I have. Do I have enough closeups in the scene to connect with readers? Does the scene feel anchored by enough establishing shots? Are there silhouettes needed? Does the story move? Etc. Having the thumbnails allows me to make adjustments before pencil art and inking start. I am thinking about composition here at this level too.


When I do individual pages, everything is composition! Usually I will think of my page with one main idea in mind and build around it. This allows me to concentrate on making sure I communicate that idea with everything else I put on the page. It is hard and takes practice but worth the effort and all the comics that have inspired me over time are those that take page design seriously.


When I do single panels, I just want my framing to be clear so that information can be easily absorbed. If the importance of the shot is the guy reacting to his phone, I usually don't show that with a wide establishing shot. In comics, individual panels and single drawings have less importance than the whole story. People will read through and fill in details using their imagination to create movement, sound, and emotional impact. Composition is still important at this level but I usually think of it in terms of clarity. Am I being clear when I show this panel? Or page? Or scene?


If I am breaking down a written script, I usually look at what the main plot points are going to be and how I can translate them visually into comic storytelling. This also takes practice and usually an author will overload a reader with information in prose that needs to be made much more dramatic and simplified in the art phase. For myself, I like to work with piecing the visuals and the concepts together while including key dialogue. The text and dialogue take up physical space in the final version, so I usually block that in on my thumbnail also. I change my dialogue while I am working. Lettering can be done on a separate layer so it can be edited easily.


Composition and comics go hand in hand. Still, it is probably best to not worry too much about the composition. It will come with time and practice. Place your emphasis on making sure that you are getting your ideas out on paper where you can edit them. Once the story is built, you can go back and revise and move things around knowing that you have the story you want, and revisions will just make it stronger. Clarity in storytelling is a top concern.


By the time you get to pencils and inks, there should be very little problems with composition to mess around with. At those stages, you are more interested in the actual drawing and making your black plate.


This is all I have time for this morning. This topic is a big one and I can only show you some of my struggles and what works for me. I will only try to show you processes that make sense but you are more than welcome to disagree or try different combinations until you get your own working methods. My recommendation is to do original short stories of five to ten pages. This will teach you how to set up scenes. A longer-form story will simply be composed of a string of scenes. Making comics and narrative art is challenging and fun, like a puzzle that you create for yourself to solve.



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Rick Arthur, founder
Billion Hero Studios

The power of storytelling

SUBCONSCIOUS HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER_005

The Spider and The Mountain copyright Rick Arthur. All rights reserved. Page layout. Pen on 8.5x11 inch bond paper. WIP. Artist: Rick Arthur. Nyra runs in freshly fallen snow while facing an unstoppable demon. From the upcoming graphic novel originally inspired by a failed 24-hour Comic Challenge.

"The Brain Is A Funny, Funny Thing..."

We sail into history. Many creative artists have encounters with all different types of "creative blocks." White paper or canvas, a blank screen with the subtle, blinking cursor, and job specs pile up mocking your existence. Anyone who has faced artistic tasks has all been there. Honest artists that pushes themselves to understand and achieve more with their work than just making a buck or two will know this gut-wrenching feeling.

Just how damaging can "blocks" be for creative types?

Ideas tumble, fall, drift, sharpen, and are coaxed from hiding in a large number of ways. There are indeed numerous tricks for starting and finishing creative works. Creativity is not just a function of memory directly but of insight. When a jumble of disconnected ideas presents itself, you need to be able to both decipher and place them into context.

As I continue on my art making and storytelling journey, I feel as though it is really the flood of possibilities that becomes the real problem. When I discover a block, usually it is because there are actually too many possibilities and I become stunned by the complexity of my choices. It can be numbing and paralyzing. I will complain about not being able "to see" the idea. I should be grateful. Thousands of hours of problem solving in art has not given me the ability to solve all problems but it has given me confidence that there is usually more than one solution.

"Here, I'll make it easier for you."

In the film Searching for Bobby Fischer, a perfect illustration of visualization is conducted in a single scene. Young chess prodigy Josh must picture the chess pieces and their moves in his head and not rely on his physical senses. In order to preform this mental feat, distractions must be swept aside and his stern chess teacher sweeps the pieces from the chessboard and onto the floor.

Searching for Bobby Fischer (3/10) Movie CLIP - Learning From the Master (1993) HD - YouTube

Jack Ryan is shaving and talking aloud in a scene for the action thriller, Hunt For Red October. He is desperately trying to figure out how the Russian sub commander, Ramius, will get his crew off a rogue nuclear submarine in the middle of the ocean. We get to follow his thought process from the point of being stumped to his "aha" moment of finding a solution. Script by Larry Ferguson.

"The average Russky, son, don't take a dump without a plan. Wait a minute. We don't have to get the crew off the sub. He would have had to do that. We just have to figure out what he's going to do. How is he going to get them off the sub? They'd have to want to get off. How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get them to want to get off a nuclear sub... I know how he's going to evacuate the sub."

Red October Soliloquy - YouTube

In art, the blank page can be an intimidating force that crushes you down. It can be nerve wracking. Hidden somewhere in future of that blank expanse, there are lines, shapes, and tones waiting to communicate your idea. What is it that stops you from starting? That freezes you in place at the half-way point? I simply submit that the brain becomes transfixed by too many possibilities. The problem may be ill-defined or the solutions may seem impenetrable. Yet, the solution is there.

I look at creative blocks as distractions where too many possibilities freeze an artist's decision making. The first trick to getting out of the block is acknowledging that you are in it and realizing that it can be overcome. Put something on the page, even if it is just a panel border or a squiggle that can be erased later. You need a prompt to not only clear your mind but to give yourself permission to start. If the idea won't come, you can't force it. Quit banging your head. Take a deliberate break and if you have to, set a timer for 15 minutes. Pick up the nearest book and flip to a random page. Look at a random word or picture. Train yourself to see associations between things that don't go together. Dig into some artwork you really enjoy and just try to think about why it inspires you. Is it the shape, the color, the style? Thinking too hard directly to solve a problem can actually create an art block.

Take a nap, a walk, or a shower. Listen to music. What you want to do is allow the subconscious mind to do what it does best which is ideation. Relax. The subconscious brain, at the edges of our conscious decision-making, tugs and pulls at the conflict you have created and often steps in with solutions. That block really doesn't stand a chance. The only variable is time. How long will a block take to overcome?

A creative block can't last forever, can it?

I am a firm believer that where you put your effort and energy is important. If you seek, and put in the effort, you will find.

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DICK TRACY PICKS A WINNER_004

Dick Tracy captured our imagination with fantastic gadgets. Could Nokia flip phones be far behind? Image copyright by respective owner. 

My "old" flip phone reminds me exactly of a Star Trek communicator...

Is it safe? Would you be surprised if I told you that no matter how many locks on your door, encrypted passwords on your accounts, or how careful you think you are being with your digital life, if someone wants in, they are getting in. This is unsettling and yet consider American money. Examine the eye on the top of that pyramid and you will see it is winking at you and following you around the room like the eyes in a painting in an Abbott and Costello movie.

Data mining cleverness by digital companies and bad actors has been scooping up massive amounts of your raw, private data from all sources and then using algorithms and artificial intelligence to rebuild virtual avatars of you. Every photo you have taken and posted on digital media has been tagged with meta-data and cross filed in giant data pools. There is no hiding. No running away. No safety. And no security. And being "off the grid" is fairly impossible.  They track every key stroke and control all the gates.

I recall a time not that long ago when there was nothing on the internet but geeky chat rooms, places where actual computer nerds traded inside math jokes and deep thoughts about Dr. Who or Monty Python. Companies were not sure what to do with the new environment. Businesses began throwing money at the internet hoping for success in what came to be known as a tech bubble but there was no real business model for how to monetize clicks yet. Every day users had little in the way of actual content to surf. No one trusted electronic transactions yet, so shopping wasn't big like it is now. Encrypted payment transactions were not universal. The internet was a fancy new way to look up addresses and movie times and mess around in chat forums. Many people did not see what was coming around the corner: acceptance; massive migration; followed by ubiquity; and an incredible thirst for content.

Phones - or rather - the reinvention of phones as mobile computers that combined calling, text, surfing, music, and sharing photos on a device that fit in the palm of your hand is a relatively new event. You could connect to any piece of information or person from anywhere without a phone cord tethered to the wall. In a drawer, tucked away, I am keeping one of my old, clam-shell style flip phones for the sole reason that it reminds me of a Star Trek communicator. Two to beam aboard Scotty, now! 

When it comes to technological change, I think about my own father, growing up in a tiny town of two thousand people during the post-Depression era. They had radio, newspapers, and Saturday double features (with newsreels and cartoons) at the local theatre. Owning one phone - black, was something that not everyone could afford. People wrote letters and postcards and sat on porches to watch the world go by.

Travel was limited. The national highway system hadn't come into play yet. Eventually, we walked on the moon. My dad witnessed an incredible amount of advancement in his eight decades of life and at the end, although not fluent, he owned a desktop computer, a cordless phone, poked his head into video chats, and was learning how to access movies on his iPad. What he liked to watch were black and white classics that had been in theatres when he was a kid but now oozed out of every device at the click of a button. He liked technology but understood it less and less.

A Star Trek communicator represented advanced civilization - the ability to talk held in your hand. When this prop was introduced in the late sixties, could Apple iPhones be 40-50 years behind? Image copyright by respective owner.

I mention this because in his youth, Dick Tracy had a two-way radio/video wristwatch and my father lived long enough to see it turn from comic strip fantasy into fashion accessory fact. It is humbling. What is in store for us in the next eighty years?

Staggering advancements in communications in the last twenty years have exceeded everything up to this point in human history. It is hubris to think that we even begin to comprehend what a titanic impact this is having on the culture and the planet. Entering colleges now are kids who have no memory of phone cords or leaving messages on tape recorded answering machines. We have flattened everything out. There is only "instant" communication and everything else is unacceptable.

Computers and phones were meant to usher in new freedoms. Currently, we have the opposite - a massive, black-box, digital yolk. Apple's iPhone got popular in 2007. That is just enough time to train a generation of users to depend on it. Phones were once private monopolies, like utilities but you always knew you could ring someone at AT&T with a problem. Now, people have zero control over how their personal data is collected, stored, combined, packaged, sold, stolen, and who owns it. What will this do to the human chain of confidence people have in one another in real life? What has it already done? When you have a dispute - what power do you have against an algorithm tucked inside a proprietary computer system?

After the horror of 9/11 - America launched itself on a path toward large scale data mining in the guise of national security. Phone records got scooped up by the billions. We actually found ourselves to be less safe in digital terrain than in the physical world and it didn't take long for bad actors to figure out that digital tools could affect real-time, real-world havoc. Systems regularly get hacked, damaged, and held for ransom. Our trust, our optimism, our faith in each other as human beings had found itself outsourced to the digital realm and then quickly trampled upon. Who do you trust? 

When people talk about the end of the world (as we know it), the world ended (and now begins again) with the computer, the internet, and the phone. What is it that we are dreaming of doing now that will become accepted reality in the coming decades?

My father might have laughed, chewed on a piece of toast, sipped his coffee, and solved the New York Times crossword in pen. The future he dreamed about as a small-town kid with Dick Tracy wrist radios actually came to pass but it had a subscription plan, 50-pages of disclaimers in 5-point typography, and an unstoppable, data-mad algorithm behind it that was beholden to no one. At the end of his life, he did not recognize the world he lived in. Eight decades of progress had obliterated pretty much everything he knew right before his eyes. Are we in an unprecedented period of demanding people absorb too much change all at once, like compressing a thousand years of information into one lifetime? Information is not the same as wisdom as any eighty-year-old would tell you.

We long to belong. We long to be connected to one another. Covid has taught us, at least those who would listen carefully, that we depend upon each other in ways that we did not recognize. The world is smaller than we think. We are already chained together. Do we really have nostalgia for a time and place that does not exist anymore? Do we dream about recreating a sleepy digital town of two thousand villagers where everyone knows each other's names and personal business? 

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