A Little Insight

I figured I'd pull back the curtain a bit.

Most of my comics have followed this workflow:

• Figure out where the story goes visually for that page.
• Render the whole page.
• Add dialogue after.
• Decide if I need more storyline as I go.

This is how you get comics like "Into the Grid".  I didn't really know where the story was going until about page three.

That being said, sometimes I'll go so far as to plot out where the story is going to go ahead of time, but I generally consider dialogue as I'm making it or try to remember what the dialogue was supposed to be after the page is rendered.  This is mostly pertinent for commissions as I need to figure out how many pages to charge the client for.

Well, I'm trying a new workflow with "Dance With Me".  When I first wrote that story, I didn't realize how important it would be to me, to the point where I traded what was supposed to be my compensation package to regain the rights to it.  I thought it was that good.  I still do.  Now, as I think about what I want to do with this comic, I know the story will be a full hero's tale.  Something will come between Eddie and Elise and Eddie will be forced to do whatever it takes to get her back.  It's going to take me a while, even at two to three pages a week.  So, I realized that I needed a better way to work this out.

It helps that I can take an unrendered shot with Daz3D and then put it into my template for six-panel comics.  It's my template and the reason some of the renders are a precise size and ratio.  I digress.  By putting in an unrendered shot and writing the dialogue ahead of time, I can make sure the image fits the dialogue without too much overflow and that the comic is more consistent with story and dialogue.

So, that's my new plan:

• Outline the story.
• Add dialogue for that page.
• Do all six panels for that page as pre-renders.
• Set up the dialogue on the comic page and adjust as needed.
• Render all the panels.
• Polish the comic.

We'll see how this goes forward.

Oh, and as a reward for reading all this, here's a sneak peek.