Stage 1: Thumbnails

So naturally the first thing you want to do when making a comic is to sketch out your ideas and such, and then block the first few panels with some good ol' fashioned thumbnails!

I went through a few designs and scripts before I settled on Carol, and one of the main reasons is because her story was so fun to arrange!


Page 1 and 2...


Page 3

So, that first page of thumbs, as you can see, also includes some notes to myself, and a half-finished drawing of our main character, Carol, with a terrifying grin befitting a ventriloquist dummy!

But more important are the thumbnailed drawings.

SEE the story is that her fire-watchtower collapsed from old age and a termite invasion, so now Carol is left without a home or anything really to do, so she collects her stuff and starts walking. She's probably heading for civilization, but with her, who knows?

The three pages I'm going to draw for this assignment take place after she collects her stuff. So... Probably page three, actually, assuming the first and second page is a two-page establishing shot of the collapsed tower, and the third is her looking at this disappointedly and starting to collect her stuff. Maybe a dramatic pose.

In any case, this is the start of her journey. So, I start with a tame panel layout, four panels evenly down the page, with different scenery, but Carol positioned so that it looks like she's walking down the same path across the page. Neat, huh?

The next page has probably the weakest layout in terms of interesting stuff, but I tried to do a parallel thing there. See, the first panel, she's sliding down, while in the panel below that, she's climbing up; the second panel has her walking away and to the left, looking at the ground, fascinated, while the last one has her walking towards the reader, looking up and pouting.

Now, thumbnail page 2 is a little confusing - I sketched out one version of page three, then had a crisis about this assignment and quickly doodled a backup three page thing with a more interesting storyline with more dialogue and such, but... Honestly, despite playing with the panels, I liked Carol's layout more. That, and I don't plan on continuing the comic in that backup soon (I'm waiting on skill improvement and plot development), whereas Carol is something I've been meaning to do and casually work on for awhile.

So, yeah, I went back to Carol, and in the little doodle at the bottom right is a more interesting panel layout I came up with at the last second. That time, I play with sequence in the top three panels, while the bottom three are kind of like a zoom.

Yup, that's it for this post! Tune in next... Post for the rough pages! And boy do I have a story to tell with that one.

First Post! (Introduction)

This is a project blog by your friendly neighbourhood Ariel Meitz.

Usually, you'd find me at my artblog/sketchblog, T.Rexila Draws Some Stuff, but since this is a special project, and since I plan on continuing it later, and since my teacher told me to, it's getting its own site, to keep it better organized, and so you don't have to fish through tags and posts to find it.

Now... The project in question? It is three pages of a comic I've been wanting to do for awhile.

The premise:

Carol is an ongoing story of a girl of questionable sanity wandering the deepest woods of Canada, seeing sights majestic, whimsical, and weird on the way.

That's the short version. I'll edit the long version when I get it back from my editors, but rest assured I'll have more goodies for this blog shortly.