My 5-Step Process to Making Comic Books

& why I've re-shuffled it...

Imperfections lurk beneath the surface of every page of Quiet: Level One. Like sirens, they call “fix Me, fix Me,” and when I go to them, I find I am mired by great wastes of time.

Galahorn tracks down the first of three Walking Flowers

This is to be expected, of course. I’ve never made a comic book before, so I’m sort of learning everything, all at once. Most of this learning happens because I screw up, and I’ve been screwing up a lot (which, in the interests of my ongoing artistic education, is sort of great?).

I’m familiar with the “fix Me” demons and their unrelenting nature - I give in only so much. But I must tell you, their cries are extra-cacophonous right now because I’m totally new to this medium, to comics, and so I’m making mistakes all the time. There is so much to learn and so many gulfs of ability that I need to bridge (and never mind that whispering in the abyss just below us).

But I am learning, about the use of Values (black and white), Visual Storytelling and Composition. And, in the interests of keeping the “fix Me” population within tolerable limits, I’ve restructured my process! So today: a brief look at my process, and why I’m changing it.

I did a comparable time-lapse on Instagram, by the way:

iamjonahlobe

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My Comic-Book Making Process, in 5 Steps

Step 1 - Script

I don’t write these page-by-page, of course, but here’s the piece of script written for the corresponding panels:

GALAHORN - now wearing his new helmet - regards the body at his feet. 

G: What strength you had is mine.

He turns and walk through the archway.

EXT. FOREST CHAMBER

Galahorn walks through an underground forest, until he reaches a moonlit clearing, at the far end of which is a cliff-edge.  Strewn across the clearing is a gigantic body made of stone and root.  Its head - which lies near the edge of the cliff - is a flower, petals dead and curled.

Galahorn emerges from the shadows to stand at its feet.

G:  So it’s true.

True, that’s not a lot of writing for two pages of art, but I want to give this section room to breathe, to convey solemnity and largeness. As you may have gathered from that dialogue, Galahorn (or “Horns” as I think of him) is not a loquatious dude.

Step 2 - Sketch

I did my best to lay out these shots in a nice way, but honestly I drew them all at the beginning of the project and now they feel like they need changing. And so, as I make the transition over to Step 3, I’m tending to make alterations.

Step 3 - Linework

I wasn’t happy with elements in the bottom left, so I altered the content a bit.

Linework is a most painstaking process, usually because it requires you to do a lot more of Step 1 before you can properly begin. And these lines will represent the full wealth of visual information available to me, the artist. They will dictate the placement of black, white and grey, or what we call:

Step 4 - Blocking

A time-consuming (and yet relaxing) step called “Jonah gets to color in the lines.” Honestly, if I ever possess anything resembling a budget, the first thing I’ll do is outsource this step (as relaxing as it is) in the interests of time. But, it’s just me right now, trying to do it all. And with no one interested to hear about it but you!

Unless you’re having fun and would like to share this article with a friend?

Thanks for that. Any awareness I can bring to this project is just great.

Okay, now it’s now time for our final step, as well as the reason why that’s going to change:

Step 5 - Shading & Dialogue

I’ve added lighting, shadows, and dialogue

The balance and symphony of black and white on a page will forever delight me. Did you know that you can manipulate the way people look at your work, with linework and contrast? Caravaggio was a master of this. So cool.

But there’s been something wrong with this process, a problem which has totally restructured the way I conceive of the page. See, I’ve been an artist of some kind all my life, but as I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve never worked in comics, which is, put quite simply, “words and images combined to tell a story.”

Words take up space on the page, and must be accounted for in the composition.

Now, this isn’t much of an issue when your brooding villain stands around looking at dead things, but if your subject is an evil, fast-talking knife whose only desire is to bend other beings to his will, well, space can become an issue:

Its name is Thread-Cutter, and subtlety is not its specialty.

And so, my takeaway:

Place dialogue on the page much sooner in the process.

It’s not simply a question of space; those white dialogue bubbles affect the composition itself, and must be accounted for as early as possible in the layout of the page. This was covered in Understanding Comics, of course, but sometimes you just have to learn things the really hard and annoying way.

Happy Saturday, and may your learning today come easy.

Jonah