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Entry tags:
- art,
- cartooning,
- comics,
- creativity,
- wank,
- writing
so I got thinkin...
A well-designed comic book page functions in several ways simultaneously. (Here I'm talking about old school comic books, which were intended to be printed in a bound publication of some sort.) Every panel on the page is [ideally] composed so that you read your way clearly through it and you understand what just happened.... and your eye is then led to the next panel in the sequence, so that you never lose your place. It's also written so that the last panel serves as a natural breather to allow your eye to move to the beginning of the next page. But the last panel also contains something that makes you want to continue on to the next page, to resist the urge to stop and rest at that natural breathing point. And, if you're really slick, and you want to reveal a visual surprise, you save it for the beginning of a left-hand page, so that you don't see the surprise until after you turn a physical page.
It takes a bit of planning. And this is sutff I picked up over decades of experience and study, and I try to keep these things in mind when I do my own pages.
But, today, I got thinkin that, back in the 80s when I was drawing Dishman, I wasn't aware of any of these things. Every panel on a page was just "a thing to draw" and I drew it. I never thought about designing that drawing so that composition would flow visually along the page. I never thought about the breathers or timing of where my pages ended. The end of the page came when I ran out of room. My Dishman pages were not consciously designed, and not well designed.
But, today, I also got thinkin that I've never heard one complaint about that. And a lot of my readers were professional cartoonists, who are supposed to be hip to this jive. I dunno if they just waved it off as something trivial and forgivable and not to be worried about, or if they never even noticed. My studies have tried to tell me that readers feel the difference between good and bad page design, that they notice on some level. Right now, I'm thinkin that, sure, editors notice this, but I dunno how much readers really do.
Actually, this might explain the comic books of the 90s, which were some of the biggest-selling and most wildly popular comics ever made, and also some of the most horribly designed and drawn [IMHO].
It takes a bit of planning. And this is sutff I picked up over decades of experience and study, and I try to keep these things in mind when I do my own pages.
But, today, I got thinkin that, back in the 80s when I was drawing Dishman, I wasn't aware of any of these things. Every panel on a page was just "a thing to draw" and I drew it. I never thought about designing that drawing so that composition would flow visually along the page. I never thought about the breathers or timing of where my pages ended. The end of the page came when I ran out of room. My Dishman pages were not consciously designed, and not well designed.
But, today, I also got thinkin that I've never heard one complaint about that. And a lot of my readers were professional cartoonists, who are supposed to be hip to this jive. I dunno if they just waved it off as something trivial and forgivable and not to be worried about, or if they never even noticed. My studies have tried to tell me that readers feel the difference between good and bad page design, that they notice on some level. Right now, I'm thinkin that, sure, editors notice this, but I dunno how much readers really do.
Actually, this might explain the comic books of the 90s, which were some of the biggest-selling and most wildly popular comics ever made, and also some of the most horribly designed and drawn [IMHO].