How I create a comic book page - Part 1

When I was 10 years old, drawing a comic page was easy, I took a piece of paper and just drew and it was done. I never went past a few pages though! Nowadays, now that I am a published comic book artist working with publishers, editors, and writers, things are not as simple anymore.

Along the years, I have developed my own way to work, my own workflow, that is efficient and enjoyable. This workflow was inspired by other comic book artists but also influenced by my own tests and failures.

For the Miles and Jones comic book series I have been collaborating with a writer. Collaborating on a comic book is quite a challenge as you are going to spend months or even years on a story that isn’t completely yours. So to me, the critical factor of a successful collaboration, as the artist, is to be genuinely inspired by the story. Going back to Miles and Jones, I was very fortunate to be inspired, entertained but also amused by the humour and the goofy nature of the parents in this story.

Script

So the first thing I receive from the writer is the script of the story. A script can have various forms, can have visual indications or none, some writers are even describing the number of panels, the content of the panels and/or individual pages, etc, etc. Some writer have a clear visual narrative that they would like the artist to follow.

In the case of Miles and Jones, I felt really lucky because the writer provided zero direction in terms of visual narrative. I had total control of page layout, rhythm of the story, number and content of panels, etc. To me, all of the above is the creative aspect of comic making and I would have hated to be micro-managed.

So what I received from the writer is a continuous text with dialogues, as pictured below.

Miles and Jones Book 1 - The Anaconda Attack - Script excerpt

Mapping of the action

The first thing I am doing when I read the script is to map the action to make sure that the story makes sense and that all locations mentioned in the story are nicely interwoven. Kids would notice it straight away if there was a gap in the succession of events, never try to fool them!

To build this map, I am marking the movement of the characters throughout each chapter. I am doing this digitally so I can easily adjust and tweak the map as required. If I notice a problem, I can get back to the publishing team (and the writer) so they can make the necessary text adjustments.

Miles and Jones Books 1 & 2 Movement Map

I always loved maps, there are a few in my house…Maps are such a powerful tool, for centuries they have saved lives (including mine) and they continue to do so. I have been working as an engineer for 15 years and there wasn’t a day without using a map.

And when I looked at the movement map, I HAD to turn it into one to be included in the books (pictured below and hand painted with watercolors).

Pagination

The next step of my comic book making workflow is actually not visual and doesn’t involved any drawing. But it is about identifying scenes that could be contained on a page or on a double page (or spread).This step is really important for the smoothness of the reading and the immersion of the audience in the story. You also want the use the “page turn” mechanism to be used as best as you can for important reveals, cliffhangers, end/start of scenes and/or chapters.

Although not artistic as such, this step is highly visual and cerebral. I am already “seeing” the story in my head and deciding which part of the script will be contained on which comic page. I am reading the script multiple times and running the “movie” of the story in my head. With a pencil, I am marking, on the script, the start and end of each comic page (as illustrated below).

Pagination of Miles and Jones Book 1 - chapter 12

Pagination is also really important to obtain a page count estimate without having to complete the storyboard of the entire story as it is a much more time consuming step. An initial page count allows you and the publisher to know how long it’ll take to finish the book, estimate the printing costs, etc.

Pagination remains a first iteration of the layout, rhythm and flow of the story and I remain flexible to change page count and page layout until I finish the storyboard.

Storyboarding

A storyboard is a rough sketch of a story from beginning to end. It is used in film making, animation, advertisement, etc. in anything that is being written and will end up being a video, a movie, a short clip or a comic book. It allows the director, or artist, to put their vision on paper as a rough draft.

There is no rule on how sophisticated, or clear a storyboard needs to be, sometimes only the artist can decipher it, sometimes it is readable to all. In my case, I need to get the storyboard approved by my publisher so it needs to be visually clear. To be able to do that while remaining spontaneous, creative and fresh I am doing my storyboards twice.

The first round being rough and on paper. This allows me to be quite quick, spontaneous and turn the movie that I already made in my head into something tangible.

I am not sure if you can decipher the above but it really sets the foundation of the finished comic pages. What I am already doing in this rough storyboard is gauge the amount of space required for the text. You can already see that I am placing speech bubbles and indicating how large those will be in each panels.

This is a critical step as you don’t want to finish painting the final pages to realize that you don’t have enough space for the dialogues.

Once I am done with rough storyboard, I am refining it to a readable and communicable once. Still artistically rough but clear enough for everybody to understand and “read”. All dialogues are in place confirming the need for more space or not.

Managing the footprint of the dialogues VS the art depends on the format of the printed book but also on the audience. The Miles and Jones comic book series being for a young audience (5-9 years old), it is very important not to overwhelm the reader with too much text or too many panels. So I have taken the decision very early on to have a maximum of three rows of panels, with the majority of pages having only two rows of panels.

Workflow Part 1 Summary

Looking at the script, rough and refined storyboard side by side (pictured below), it is interesting to see that one A4 page of dialogue requires 4 comic book pages (or two spreads). Some of these pages are quite text heavy (purple) while others are focusing on pure action (orange).

You can also see that the panel layout of the green page changed from the rough to the refined storyboard; I expanded the top panel to a full page while I moved the bottom panel to the top of the next page. That was purely based on my feeling at the time and isn’t driven by an exact science, there would have been other ways to design this sequence of events. What I am keeping in mind, at all time, is the clarity of the action, the flow of sequences and getting the characters from point A to point B rationally while matching the initial movement map.

I hope you found this first part interesting. Reflecting on this as a 45 years old me, I realize that my process now is much more complicated than 35 years ago. Sometimes I wish I could go back to a much simpler approach, something to keep in mind I guess…Anyway, please feel free to ask me any question or comment. And in the meantime, take care of yourself!

Talk soon,

Cesar