Behind-the-scenes: "How I Met Your Coyena Dad" thumbnails pages 1-8!

Hello, again, friends! Now that I have the story synopsis and page breakdown worked out, it's time to move on to … thumbnailing!

This is probably the most intense decision-making part of the process, as I'm working on the overall visual design and story flow. My main concerns at this point are the number, size, and layout of panels on each page, the composition of characters and backgrounds in each panel, and how both those contribute to the progression and readability of the story. I'll also be making more fine decisions like when to use large background-intensive panels, where to use a short sequence of panels to show dialog or activity, and when to use borderless panels.

As for the characters, I'll be working out their most basic poses and proportions but I won't be too concerned with their anatomy, details, or expressions at this point, since I might still want to go back and make changes as I go.  I'll scribble in little visual notes for myself but nothing that takes more than a few moments per panel before moving along.

I also still have not written dialog at this point! I don't want any pre-written words dictating my panel flow when I might come up with more interesting layouts if my mind is free to wander. I jot notes in the margin for what the characters are talking ABOUT; if there is some key bit of phrasing they MUST say I'll jot that down as well, but generally I'll take care of dialog after thumbnails are done.

Below I'm presenting the first eight pages of the twenty-four page story, along with a few notes on my thinking as I go along … Let me know what you think of this format! And enjoy!

Page One

I certainly hope to put these comics in print one day, but even if I'm doing something digitally, I still tend to think in terms of print; so I still work in two-page spreads to see how the pages look side-by-side (not too repetitive and not too symmetrical, unless I specifically plan it that way); and I still start with a right-hand first page with no facing page.

Here I'm opening the framing intro with a 2/3rds page splash panel of all six characters seated around the dinner table. I haven't decided yet if dinner or dessert will be on the table; and I may slip a few servers into the corner to clarify that they're at a restaurant, but I'll see how the panel develops as I work on it.

I've also, both for consistency's sake and for character development, jotted a note to myself on what they're all drinking. Boreas, who never liked the taste of alcohol, is having a cola. Aura, Austeria, and Zephyrus are all drinking the bottle of wine Aura ordered. Eurus has instead decided to go for a bourbon. And Notus, being barely drinking age himself, has a fruity tropical drink.

Below that I have three panels of three of the younger characters offering toasts; I have Austeria toast their father and Zephyrus toast their mother. Then I have Notus mention they're his aunt and uncle, to clarify his position in the family for readers who don't yet know. This is Notus' first appearance in a comic, so he's very excited!

Pages Two and Three

And here is our first full two-page spread! I start with a tall vertical panel of our fourth younger one, Eurus, standing to clink his glass and insist that their parents tell how they met.  One panel of Boreas and Aura trying to demur, and a matching panel of the other four all leaning in together to help try to convince them. FInally an open panel of a reverse closeup of Aura and Boreas looking at each other and holding hands, with the four kids behind them -- I'll probably apply an effect to make them either lighter in color or a bit blurred to add some visual depth to the scene.

Page three is the first quick segment of the flashback, a pretty straightforward bit of young Aura getting ready to leave her dorm for the evening. You can see a bit of my philosophy regarding backgrounds here: I like to draw a detailed background panel at the start of a scene to set the stage for where the characters are and how they're positioned in relation to each other; once that's out of the way I'll primarily switch to either closeups or more abstracted scenes without much background, to shift the focus onto the character's actions and emotions. I did include one extra panel of Aura walking outdoors just to give some vague sense of setting and scale to the campus they're on.

Pages Four and Five

Now the flashback shifts to Boreas' point of view. On page four, the top third of the page is a tightly-packed panel with Boreas hard at work and his labmate pulling on a jacket getting ready to head out; but also the reader gets a sense of the lab itself: A tall closet next to the exit door, workbenches surrounding the perimeter, with a large work table in the center of the room, with electronic equipment stacked everywhere. (You can see at the bottom of the page I sketched a quick layout of the lab for my own reference.) Note that this flashback is set in the 1980s, so the equipment will be a lot of physical switches and sliders, dials and waveform monitors, and RCA cables connecting hefty modular components.

For the bottom 2/3rds of the page I've gone with a more abstracted scene as Boreas gives a bit of background about where he got the crystal. He's standing, holding the gem up in one hand, giving the reader a good view of his younger college-aged self. He mentions the gem has been in his family for seven generations, so I have a circle of all the previous owners from the 1840's onward, leading directly to him. And in the lower corner I have a small clouded inset of his terminally ill mother giving him the crystal at age 10 -- an important part of another story, which might be told some other time.

On page five, Boreas has a bit more exposition to get through about his work with and the nature of the crystal -- which gets the first mention if its name here, amasethyst. As he sets the crystal into its seating on his equipment, I went with a tall vertical panel, partly to get his height in there, and partly to have room to pack a bunch of dialog at the top of the panel. The rest of the page is divided into three straightforward panels as his labmate leaves, including a little dialog where he suggests Boreas should spend some time 'researching the fairer sex,' establishing that he is in fact single and unattached, and probably hasn't given much thought to dating, as he's always absorbed in his work.

Also, side note: While in the modern-day sequences Boreas usually wears thick retro plastic eyeglass frames, in this flashback he's instead wearing the huge saucer-like rimless style to fit the different time period.

Pages Six and Seven

Alright, now the fun begins. I start page six with a sort of homage to the "getting to work" montage scenes you might see in a movie: As Boreas talks to himself about the experiment, we see a couple extreme closeups of his hands plugging in a cable and flipping a few hard switches on his equipment, and then a wide shot of him flipping on the master power switch to start the experiment.

Remember back in the breakdown stage, when I said I wanted to do something simpler and more character-focused than the Rube Goldberg-type accident? This is where I found a way to instead highlight Boreas' occasional absent-mindedness: In panel four he mentions to himself that there's a lot of power running through the equipment, and it's a good thing he remembered to order that specialty shielding for protection. Then panel five cuts to an inset shot of the unopened box from "ShieldTech" addressed to him at the university, with an off-panel word balloon of him realizing, "--wait."

Page seven starts with a wide panel of Boreas reaching for the switch to shut down the experiment, but he's distracted when that action causes him to rip the shoulder of his jacket. The bottom of the page is three parallel panels of him slowly recognizing what's happening, as he grows a bit larger and his clothes more strained in each successive panel.

Page Eight

Finally (for now), page eight. At the top of the page we have one panel of him momentarily excited to realize the "legends" in his family of the crystal causing strange events may have actually been true. Then one panel of him interrupted in his thoughts as his head slams into the ceiling.

At the bottom of the page we have another open, borderless panel; he turns to shut off the experiment before he gets any bigger, but inadvertently knocks the entire table over,  potentially pushing the power switch out of his immediate reach …!

Next Steps

I've temporarily stopped here at the one-third mark to share this progress with you, but of course as I continue to thumbnail page nine I'll be referencing its facing page eight, and if I need to make any adjustments at that time I will.

Aside from thumbnailing the rest of the story, my next step will be to finally start working out some preliminary dialog for the characters, and then getting my files processed and ready to start penciling and inking! I'll be sharing more of that with y'all in the coming weeks, as well as finished pencil-sketch pages, and the final inked pages as those come out.

I'm so excited to be working on a book-style comic again. Thanks to all of you for your support! Again, any questions or observations, please feel free to share them below or hop into the Telegram channel. And everyone have a great week! ❤️