Storyboarding

Yes, I DID draw that pic just for this subject ;)  Storyboards are a series of pictures used to visualize a movie or animation.  They are usually based off a script and are an essential step before filming or animating.  Comic books are storyboards in themselves (which is part of why there have been so many comic book movies out recently - the storyboards already exist!).  I'm using my own kind of storyboarding process for the AER HEAD comic.

AER HEAD is a very long story.  Before this, I had done short stories of 6 to 17 pages, so tackling this was pretty overwhelming at first.  I've sketched these characters for years, and attempted to make the first part of the comic before (I'll post that after this version catches up ;) ) but I realized the big picture had lots of plot holes, I didn't know how characters would get from place X to place Z, the villains were unclear, and it didn't have much character development, so I put the story on hold.  For awhile I still had all these half baked ideas floating around in my head, but this summer I realized if I don't do the comic now... when will I do it?  Next year?  5 years from now?  No, carpe diem!

So first, I looked through all my sketchbooks (about 12) to remember what I had sketched about the story over the years.  I had totally forgot about some things!  Which is why sketching them down is so important.  Then, I wrote pieces of the story on index cards and put them on my wall.  That's how I was taught to do it in animation classes in college.  I drew images for the college storyboards, but I wrote for AER HEAD because I was still in the general concept stage and didn't want to worry about committing to drawings yet.  The index cards allow me to easily switch parts of the story around, take parts out, and add parts in.  I hung them in a time line like fashion to help me figure out what needed to happen between place X and place Z and other places.  This was really helpful and I kept thinking of more and more things to happen!

One time I was talking with a cartoonist friend and he said he drew small thumbnail sketches of his whole story before doing the real drawings.  Thumbnails are really small, like a couple inches high.  They help to get the basic layout and pacing of a comic.  So I was like, "All right!  I'm going to draw the WHOLE THING out!"  Which didn't last long... I kept getting stuck, was thinking way too hard about it, and underestimated the amount of time it would take.  Sometimes the creative process is organic and you can't force it, and what method may work for one artist doesn't necessarily work for another.  So take my crazy process with a grain of salt ;)

I started sketching some whole pages.  I don't like drawing small, and I invent the dialogue as I'm drawing, so I used regular typing paper to fit everything in.  Here's a close up of the storyboards for the first 2 pages:

Sometimes the storyboards are more detailed like page 1, but mostly they're very sketchy and basic like page 2.

I mentioned that storyboards usually come from scripts, and while I didn't write one for AER HEAD, I read many screen writing books to help me "write" visually.  Some of them were:

Robert McKee:  Story

Madeline Di Maggio:  "Screen-Writing" Insider Tips and Techniques to Write for the Silver Screen

Peter Dunne:  Emotional Structure

I didn't read them all through, but definitely the first couple chapters and skimmed the rest.  There were some other "writing for TV" books that I had to return before I read them, but I forgot their names... but just look in the library and they'll all be in one place.  I also looked at Scott McCloud's "Making Comics."  All these resources combined helped me to move my story forward, cut things out, create conflict, and develop characters pasts and inner desires.  I also learned about things like character arcs vs story arcs, the difference between plot and story, and technical terms like archplot.

I went to the New York Comic Con this year and they had a panel called "Writing Character Driven Stories," where I learned about the impact character, holistic vs linear thinkers, and mental sex - like if a male character thinks like a female (which my male characters might turn out to be like, since I'm female and can just guess how guys think.  Gotta work on that mind-melding technique... mindyindymindmeld!!)

Ok, so that's a lot of info to digest!  I'm still storyboarding as I go along.  All the pages you see here...

...are probably like 1/20th, or maybe 1/40th, of the whole story.  One of the fun things about writing as I go is adding stuff that strikes me at odd moments like "Eureka!"  A potential drawback to writing as I go is if I want to add more info to past pages, I run into problems.  But at this point, I don't want that to hold me back.  It's important to JUST DO IT.

PS:  Yeah I know I said I'd post page 3 this week, but lots of crazy things happened and I didn't get to watercoloring yet.  I'll have it for next week!

This is where the magic happens!

This week I give you a peek into the world of the mindy indy studio!

This is actually the other half of my bedroom.  I live 45 minutes away from the city in Brooklyn, so it's a fairly large room!  I salvaged that big table from my roomies (who were going to throw it out!) and it's perfect for spreading out all my supplies and having lots of room to work.  Tip to other artists:  SALVAGE!  Salvage EVERYTHING!  This past weekend I even salvaged a mini grill from someone in my apt complex = the ultimate delicious victory!  But I'm on a tangent...

I also got that tall standing lamp from my roomies - it's important for me to have lots of light to work under.  Um, almost everything in my room came from my roomies because they are awesome :)  Oh except the laptop - that's mine.  It's more than 4 years old and crashes regularly :\

All those little cards on the wall are my storyboards for the AER HEAD comic.  I'm going to do a whole post just about the storyboarding process, because there's TONS to say about it!  In the first picture, they were just words on index cards, but watch as they grow on my wall:

The storyboards have grown and have taken over my other wall!  Luckily I have lots of wall space, but I'm running out.  The full pages are drawn with pencil so that's why they don't show up as well, but that's ok - I wouldn't want to give away the story!

Of special note is the hanging teal colored thing on my closet - it's actually a travel make-up bag that I use to put all my art supplies in!  It organizes things SO effectively and I can SEE everything that's there instead of supplies being hidden in desk drawers.  Come to think of it, I can't imagine anyone needing THAT much make-up for TRAVEL... I don't even OWN enough make-up to fill one pocket!  Getting off that tangent, besides needing a new computer, I also need a new T-square because that one isn't square anymore!  I think it must have gotten warped somehow.

This is pretty much what my studio looks like now.  I was working on page 2 when I took this pic.  Here I have my watercolor supplies out.  It's important for me to clear my desk of most things before I begin working on a comic page because I don't work well with lots of clutter on my desk.  In particular, I clean between the inking and watercoloring stages of my comic, because both processes have tons of supplies and to have ALL of them on my desk at once is a disaster!

In retrospect, I'll take some pics with ME working in them in the future.

I've been creating page 3 this past week and will post that next week, and beyond that I'll explain more about those crazy storyboards all over my walls!  Lots to look forward to!

Page 2!

I surprised myself with how well this page turned out :)  Masking fluid and white out are awesome.  Sparkly rainbow outer spaaaace!

Special thanks to my friends at Drawbridge - I inked this page at their studio.  I put their blog in my blogroll to the right.  I also learned something very interesting when I was there about "dot gain."  Take a look at the black and white line art of page 2:

Look at the black strips coming from the character's right arm - they are separated by very thin white lines.  I learned that the lines may disappear in the printing process due to dot gain!  Dot gain is when ink spreads out a little when it's laid down on paper.  The fact that the art is shrunken down for printing would also diminish the lines' visibility.  So, in Photoshop, I widened the lines, as you can see in the final piece.  The more you know!

PS:  For some reason the email notifications for my mailing list seem to come a day late - I'll look into that!

The Process (Don't try this at home)

Here's a little about the process of how I did the first page, and I'll answer last week's question at the same time!

1.  The left page is colored by computer, whereas the right one is water color.

Now, backing up a bit, why did I color this twice?  Backing up even further, I usually draw directly on the comic board, but I was inspired by some people in my class who used transfer paper to save their drawings (instead of inking over them).  I've been told by various people that my drawings are better than my inking skills, so I wanted to save it.  First, I drew the page on newsprint, as shown here:

Then, I traced it on transfer paper to transfer it to the comic board:

It kind of looked like a blue print!  Then I inked it on the board:

But then I realized if I wanted to use water colors, I had done the page on the wrong paper.  EPIC FAIL.  I didn't think ahead to the coloring process.  I really wanted to use water color because it was a strong aspect of my previous comics, but it would buckle the current paper and pieces may start to rub off.  So I tried coloring on the computer:

And this looked fine.... but it just didn't feel RIGHT.  And it looked like coloring I'd seen in other comics before.  So I took the original drawing and REtraced it onto better paper (vellum bristol), RE-inked it, and finally water colored it, ending up with this:

All in all, I do NOT recommend the transferring process.  True, it's cool to keep the drawing instead of inking over it, but it's totally not worth the time and AGGRAVATION.  Although, if I hadn't drawn it on another paper, I wouldn't have been able to transfer it a second time to another board...  Anyway, the rest of my pages won't involve this ridiculously insane process - I was just trying out something new.  I hope I can save some poor soul from making the same mistake.

Another thing that I changed when transferring was:

2.  Different buildings in the foreground and mid-ground.

The story begins in the futuristic city of New San Diego.  But in my first draft, the buildings didn't look... San Diego-y enough, even for it's future.  My sister lives in San Diego so I've been there many times.  I tried to incorporate the Mexican influenced architecture more in version 2.  Some have also said that the city looks more like San Francisco, but there's a reason for that on page 9.

3.  Replaced "Part 1 Aeryan the Dreamer" with "A Mindy Indy Production" and my signature.

At first I tried dividing my story up into little parts of 4 or 5 pages, but the end format will be a graphic novel, so the "parts" seemed unnecessary. That, and having a title page so often seemed kind of ridiculous.

4.  I made a black outline on the title (version 2).

Not sure how noticeable these next two are to others when scaled down on the computer:

5.  I made a broken outline on the shiny parts of buildings and other things (version 2).

6.  I gave Aeryan's hair more texture lines (version 2).

7.  I added another bridge and more city on the smallest island in the background.

So those are the major changes!  There are countless smaller details too - one of my friends also noticed I had added a new sign in place of some buildings.

Stay tuned for page 2!

welcome to mindy indy!

Hi!  I'm Mindy, and this is my new comic blog!  SUPER EXCITED!!!!  I'm starting a comic series called AER HEAD, which I plan to update every week on Thursdays.  Well, the posts may technically say Fridays, but it's still Thursday according to this night owl :)  I'll post my new pages, my process of completing those pages, and other fun stuff!  For now, enjoy page one!

STARE HEAD:  Stare at the pictures below.  Can you find at least 7 main differences between two versions of this page?

I'll have the answer for you next week!