Sketchy Business.

Going from the thumbnail to the sketch is, for me, the hardest part of the process. In this step I have to resolve my issues with perspective, finalize all of the designs for everything that appears in the panel, and settle on the final composition for the scene. Also, this is the part where I need to be able to draw. Since this is such a big step in the process I may take several posts to cover it all. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

There are a few ways to go about doing this. One of them, which works only seldom, is to just go ahead and use your thumbnail sketch. Every other blue moon I spend enough time on a particular thumbnail study with my trusty Bic that I grow attached to it. This can be bad.

Oscar Wilde once said, "Sometimes you have to kill your little darlings." I think that often holds true with sketches, at any stage of the process. You can easily become attached to a sketch that has a good characteristic about it but is not compositionally sound or is not right for the scene. At these times, as much as you love your pretty little thumbnail, you have to take it out behind the shed with a shotgun. It's a tough choice, but that's what artists do. Artists make choices.

Every now and then you don't have to do this thing, and when one of those times comes around it is a kind day. I take this stellar pen study and I scan it onto my computer at home. Then I import it into Photoshop and I blow it up to the size that the panel will be. After this step I print it out and just use it in place of a sketch. All of my sketches wind up on computer paper one way or another. I then get to use my three-hole-punch (for future reference abbreviated 3HP) to collect them in a binder, the nefarious purpose of which we have already spoken.

Before I use my trusty 3HP though, I usually tape my sketches to the back of a sheet of bristol board, on which I have already drawn out my panel borders, and I place them on a light-box to be inked. After all that is what they are there for. But I digress.

In most cases I don't have that perfect thumbnail to work from. In truth you can only use thumbnails in panels where the subject matter may allow. You could not, for instance, use a thumbnail for an establishing shot. The reason for this is elementary. An establishing shot has far too much detail to be captured properly by a thumbnail. Thumbnails work well for figures or actions that are drawn in close, emphasizing character and motion over texture and detail. I also find myself using them for scenes of chaos, aka explosions, crashes, etc... because what you want for those images, more than anything, is dynamism. In order to get this effect you have to surrender some control, which is exactly what thumbnails take away.

In most cases, however, these specialized circumstances do not occur and it's time to bust out the pencils. I really didn't mean to run on this long about using thumbnails in stead of pencil sketches but there you have it. Welcome to the land where the tangent is king. Next time. I promise we'll get there next time.

The tools of the brainstorming trade.

I ended the last post by promising to get into the nuts and bolts of story telling. So as not to make myself a liar, we'll dive right in today.

I often start piecing together a story with a lot of brainstorming on an idea that I already have, a kernel of some kind that I am sure will grow into a marvelous tree if it is nurtured with the proper quantities of imagination and hard work. If you don't have an idea to start working from then I don't know what to tell you. Go read a book.

Spend more time thinking.

But if you have that glorious kernel then you have a starting point from which you can create a brainstorm of hurricane force, rivaling even Katrina. I personally enjoy fueling this electrode typhoon with scraps of cheap paper and Bic pens. Cheap disposables serve a function for the cautious, focused, personality. Someone who might define him or her self as "neat." There is less pressure, psychologically, when you work with low grade instruments. With quality instruments the pressure to perform is on, and that can easily crush the tender creative sprouts that are so necessary to telling a good story.

I have developed a taste for Bic pens over the years to the extent that they have become a bizarre fetish property that I am very particular about. I find using a Bic frees me from the constraints of perfectionism when I need to brainstorm or sketch ideas. Bics also embody other characteristics that I like, however, and all disposable pens are not the same. You can still go wrong with the wrong Bic. I prefer the opaque white plastic pens over their harder clear plastic counterparts. The plastic is flexible enough to bend as you make marks, thus leveraging the character that those marks have on the page. I find black ink is better for increasing the contrast you can get with the page as well, although other colors certainly can have their uses. The retractable tip pens are more convenient also, and they don't have caps that can be lost. Another unexpected benefit is that the ink is cheap, almost sticky, enough so that you can use them to sketch with lighter lines almost like you might use a pencil. Varying pressure gives a darker line as desired.

Before I get swept away in my raptures about Bic pens, let's got back on subject and talk about paper.

Your choice of paper affects your brainstorming ethos as well. I bought some three-ring binders, a three-hole punch, and a ream of computer paper a while ago for just this reason. The computer paper is cheap and I feel no guilt about marring it's surface with bad lines. The three ring binder also takes away the pressure of wasting space in one of my precious sketchbooks. I trust you can figure out the subsequent benefits of the three-hole punch yourselves.

Over time the binder becomes a creative journal that chronicles the progress of a story in the making in its entirety. Anything can be three-hole-punched and my binders quickly accrue all sorts of things in them from penciled panels, to tracing paper, to ink blot sheets with interesting patterns. Anything that had anything to do with the creation of a story finds its way into the binder until it bulges like some scrapbook gone obscenely wrong. As it ages it takes on the look of some arcane tome of knowledge. Before I die I will bury it in a cave to be found thousands of years later as some sort of future dead sea scroll.

Peoples will war over the meaning of its contents and I shall be revered as a god.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how to use cryogenics to freeze yourself so that you will live to see a future where the howling masses worship your graven image. We'll also talk about how to start turning your brainstorm into a story.