Thumbnails, All Growed Up (Chapter Three Pencils)

A few weeks back I posted a video showing—in great detail—the process of thumbnailing a four-page sequence. Here are the "pencils" that I've drawn based on those thumbnails, plus a great compositional trick I learned from a perhaps-unlikely source.

• I've posted the same images above (in the image viewer) and below (in line with this post). If you want to take a closer look at the pics, it's easier to use the image viewer.
• I draw my pages using blue Col-Erase pencil. The blue pencil is very easy to remove digitally after the art is scanned, but by the same token it's very hard to photograph for posts like these.
• I use Strathmore Vellum Bristol these days. They're 11x17" sheets, but I cordon off a drawing area of roughly 24x34cm, a size that is big enough to be comfortable (I am not a noodler) but not so big that it's overly indulgent.

A REFRESHER

Before looking at the pencils, here are the thumbs for pages 21-24 of Chapter Three of PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY…

^ Alexandra commits herself to apologizing to her mom. Meanwhile, Mom is agog at the glittering excess that the Venetians are enjoying, compared to the subdued life of the Archipoli townspeople. Her brother, Nikos, sits across the table from her. He is a figure of some authority among the townspeople. Mom confronts Nikos about the appalling disparity she's seeing. With shame, Nikos accepts the truth of this situation. They're interrupted by a call from up the table.

^ Captain Lear has told Vignelli about Nikos' good wine—wine that Nikos had been keeping secret from the Venetians. It was his one Nice Thing that he kept just for himself and the people he loved. Nikos tries to play the wine off as nothing noteworthy, but Vignelli demands that he send up a whole cart-load immediately. After all, they're "celebrating a birthday tonight." Nikos is now doubly-sad. Mom reaches a consoling hand to him. Alexandra grumbles, too, because her birthday is not tonight, it's tomorrow. Everyone is miserable in Vignelli's company. Then Vignelli snatches a chicken wing off Nikos' plate.

It's a tricky sequence because there's lots of conversation and it's a challenge to keep all these talking heads interesting. Above all, I do not enjoy drawing tables full of food and cut glassware.

THE PENCILS

^ Page 21. This is essentially as laid-out in the thumbnails. I don't love the top-right drawing of Sophia (Mom), and… hmm… I might flop (horizontally mirror) all the bottom panels, because Sophia is facing-left at the top of this page AND at the bottom of page 24.

But! The real pain on this page was that I wasn't happy with the bottom panel. That shot of Nikos just wasn't doing anything for me. I kept thinking about it all week.

^ Still page 21. I sketched out a revision for the bottom panel, seeing solo Nikos along the line of dining chairs. I liked the change of perspective and the graphic potential of this approach, but it also looked like Nikos was pushing himself away from the table, which wasn't what I wanted.

^ Page 21 again. I settled on a revision for the final panel that shows Nikos and Sophia (mid-ground) seeing Vignelli & Captain Lear chuckling it up at the end of the table in the foreground. This option also has good graphic potential (all the foreground figures will be dark), we foreshadow the Lear-Vignelli-Wine situation for page 23, and we see more of the dining room, and and we break out of the panel borders to add some overall interest to the page.

I rarely obsess over a single panel like that, but something about this sequence wasn't sitting right with me. It needed a "peak"… a strong visual panel to contrast all the back-and-forth dialogue. And we needed to see more of the dining room. Now I'm feeling a lot better about it.

^ Page 22. Essentially the same as the thumbnails. I like the panel of Sophia in the middle, I like the Nikos emotions (I don't mind seeing so much of his face, having fixed that last panel on 21), I enjoyed drawing all the little town vignettes in the middle, and in panel 8 I added a big framed painting above and behind Nikos, presumably a Vignelli-family portrait, and it looks like it's crushing him like a Thwomp from Super Mario Bros.

Another point of pride from this page is Panel 5, where we see Nikos as Mermaid, a callback to the Sea Festival, which is a new 2-page spread I will inject into Chapter Two. In the video, my "callback" was simply a shot of the quiet streets of Archipoli, but that's because I hadn't yet put any thought into what the festival would actually look like. Now, having completed the additional pages, I can reference some really specific imagery for the reader and, as a bonus, it features Nikos himself, tying it more closely to this sequence that is about Nikos.

^ Page 23. Basically as-thumbnailed. Panel 5 (bottom-left) feels a little superfluous, but I want to see that Sophia understands the situation and sympathizes with her brother (she challenged him a page ago, but she is on his side; she cares), and I can't show her alone, because her expression reads more clearly with Nikos in the panel. I like the way Captain Lear looks top-right, but even though I drew it looking at the same model sheet I referenced while drawing him in Chapter One, it looks off-model somehow. Why???

^ And page 24. Originally, panel 2 was supposed to be two more close-ups on Nikos but I really was finished looking at his face, so I put Lear in there, guzzling the mediocre wine, which is funny.

One of the things I try to do in sequences like these is to preserve the feeling of a crowd without letting the reader be distracted by the crowd. You'll notice that (with one or two exceptions) we only see the faces of our important characters. Other characters are either cropped-out, turned away from us, or obscured by an object.

This is an idea I took from James Bond movie THUNDERBALL. Say what you will about the film as a whole, I will never forget this boring scene.

^ We open with a shot establishing that Bond sits among an array of several other agents, but during this sequence we will never actually see any of these other agents. They're there, but they're not there-there.

We only ever see the bigwigs at the head table, or…

…Bond on his own, with the other agents cropped out (I bet the woman taking notes in the back is meant to reinforce… ahem… some sort of hierarchy)…

… the backs of the chairs…

… or this angle, where Bond is framed centrally. It's my favourite. We "see" two agents in the foreground, but the hands of one obscure the other. There's an agent next to Bond, behind him, who we kind-of see, but we're clearly not supposed to (could he be leaning any further back?). And in the background, one guy is obscuring his own face with his hand and obscuring the furthest guy with his whole figure.

I don't know if this is Cinematography 101 or if this is Clever As Hell. Maybe it's both. Regardless, it's stuck with me ever since.

And so, as much as I hate drawing ornate candlesticks, I'm glad I can use them to obscure characters I don't want you to notice.

- - - - - - - -

Dear Patron Readers, I know you don't explicitly encourage me to obsess over things like the last panel on page 21, but I do feel a desire to Get It Just Right for you. I've always put care into my work, but now I imagine a voice over my shoulder saying, "if you think it should be better, take the time to make it better," and that little bit of added… permission? makes a difference. So: thank you.

Don't you dare let anyone obscure you,
TC