Thumbnailing for Chapter Six

I just finished a complete pass on the thumbnails for Chapter Six! This has been the most difficult chapter yet, and has tested the limits of what I thought was a pretty good process.

This post is relatively spoiler-free unless you can somehow decipher my appalling handwriting. And if so, let me know and I'll send a trophy.

As a reminder of the flawless system I've devised for transferring my incalculable genius onto paper, here are some thumbnails from chapter two (below).

Hmm. I forgot that I did value studies like this. I don't do that anymore. Now I just try to indicate the value with pencil, and usually only when I think it'll be important.

Otherwise, this is still how I'm doing it. One big sheet of 11x17" paper, four 2-page spreads on each side, so sixteen pages per sheet. I write the text in the margins. The goals here are to turn my loosely-written "script" into a more tightly-written script (this is the document to which I will refer when it's time to letter these pages) and to turn the whole thing into comics, basically. I figure out the pacing, the panel divisions and balloon placement, and, of course, what imagery I want to look at. I also try to identify panels that I have unwittingly drawn too similarly on each page or in subsequent pages. I get really bothered when I've unthinkingly used the same basic panel drawing on each side of a page. This happens sometimes when I am working too fast.

Was I working too fast on Chapter Six? I definitely did more revising than I usually do on a first thumbnail pass. But, in fairness, this was a difficult chapter. There's a lot going on and there were a lot of ways to treat the text. The last two days were spent almost exclusively making the text simpler, easier to parse, and giving it a more natural flow.

Here's a close-up look at some of the fun details that came out of this week's work.

 I've got notes telling me to "pull in the narration from the next page," and arrows saying to put this there and that elsewhere. When you see a star, that's a note to myself meaning, "do not ignore this note the next time you look here!"

 Even my revisions (above) have been crossed out in favour of more total revision.

The red note in the bottom-right is asking me if I want to inject an additional two pages, because that one page was far, far too rushed. Sometimes things work in the script but do not flow well in the thumbnails. Here, a character's obscured thinking became clear too quickly and the sequence didn't do what I wanted — it wasn't scaled suitably for the meaning within it — so I gave it two more pages to unfold more naturally and, hopefully, with more impact.

Two chunks of text that need to have their order completely reversed (above).

This disaster (above), where I've added in alt lines, then crossed them all out and written (in red), "just say nothing?" This is a good solution more often than you would think.

Redrawing complete pages on a post-it note (above). I'm proud of this page because I identified a too-compressed segment right next to a wholly-unnecessary segment, so I just took the space from the latter and used it to expand the former.

Here (above) is an arrow leading from one spread, across my sheet to another spread, where I've drawn a single-panel revision, then crossed that out and re-drawn it a third time, because the revised drawing was too similar to a panel from a neighbouring page. Circled and starred to tell myself, "don't forget!"

 Rewrote the text for two pages entirely on post-it notes (above) (and still moved lines around afterwards).

And then this (above). I use the red pencil to draw things to my attention, ostensibly, but I also overwrote a bunch of the red notes with regular pencil, so joke's on me, I guess. Again, this is the document I am supposed to reference in several months' time when I am lettering the comic. So far, it's worked out fine. Looking at this jumble, though — the Chapter Six thumbnails as a whole — I'm a bit worried.

I mentioned that I thought this was the first time I felt like this working method was showing signs of weakness. It was definitely the first time I thought, "it sure would be handy to have a tight script for this." There is a lot of dialogue, there are a lot of scenes that intercut with each other, and the larger sequence cuts are not as clearly defined as they've been in previous chapters. It's a complex chapter, and trying to sort it all out in this format was difficult. I probably could have made life easier for myself by tackling it with a keyboard. But I only realized that once I started doing my revised pages, so I'll chalk this up as a learning experience.

It is a delight for me to share this stuff with you. I'm not sure why, because I can't hope to properly convey the good feeling I get when a page comes together easily, or even when it's not easy. It's a bit like getting Tetris several times in a row, or what it must feel like to finish the crossword really quickly. Simply showing you images of the pages cannot get that across.

Maybe I like sharing these because I work really hard to put a lot of polish on the comic, so it's fun to say "look how little polish there is here!"

Maybe I like it because this really is the truest part of the process. I've probably said this before, but this is the stage where what I'm working on is The Most Comics, and I love that. The previous step, the plotting and sketchy writing, that's all just writing. The pencilling and inking stages are all just drawing. This stage feels like I am making comics. Not writing, not illustrating, but cartooning, pure and uncut.

It's certainly the highest-stakes part of the process. Every page I add here makes two more days of work for myself. I pressure myself to keep things lean. And yet, as I've mentioned above (and in a post from a few weeks ago) some times you need those additional pages. I don't want to let the project as a whole fall short because I wasn't willing to inject the extra pages it needed.

Over the past few weeks I've asked myself whether I'm going to ink Chapter Five (the usual next step) or whether I'll pencil this chapter instead and ink Five an Six together. As of right now, I don't know. I should probably stick to my usual process for consistency's sake, though switching gears is never pleasant. Regardless, I need to do some visual development for Chapter Six first, and I want to do some writing for Chapter Seven (!!!) in case there's anything I end up wanting to foreshadow or set up in Five or Six.

It is all very exciting and scary!

- - - - - -

Speaking of scary, Happy Hallowe'en, spooks and spectres! The only seasonal viewing I've observed so far has been to re-watch DEATH BECOMES HER for the first time in decades. What a strange, delightful movie. Dated, perhaps, but still lots of fun. I had forgotten entirely about Isabella Rossellini. She is perfect. (No, I know this is not an especially spooky movie, but it's spooky-adjacent-enough to qualify. I'm a big coward when it comes to horror films, so I usually stick to the shallow end of the pool. For example, I really want to re-watch my favourite, THE OTHERS, but I just can't commit.)

Side note: if you're like me and you enjoy horror movies in theory, but don't like watching them, try the podcast Too Scary; Didn't Watch.

Side-side note: anyone have any good recommendations? Besides THE OTHERS, the ones that stand out off the top of my head are IT FOLLOWS (duh), JENNIFER'S BODY, and DRAG ME TO HELL, as well as Jordan Peele's whole thing. I also liked DALE AND TUCKER VERSUS EVIL and ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, but those aren't especially spooky. On my to-watch list are THE MENU, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, and THE VOURDALAK. I will never watch THE RING ever again. And I never need another movie that ends like Neil Marshall's DESCENT. I'm here for spooks, not misery.

👻

Until next week,
I remain,
simpler and easier to parse,

TC