This weekend I did something I had not done before:

I sketched out my comic strips before I drew them.

Yes, until this past weekend, I would just draw strips straight off. As I draw them with a tablet, editing is easy enough. I can move things around if I’m not happy with them or I need to make space. The comic designs are simple enough that I never felt the need to sketch the strips out before.

What was so special about my first strip of the weekend so as to make me decide it would be a good idea to sketch it first? A number of things:

1. I had six panels to draw
2. I had a lot of text.
3. I had new characters to draw
4. Four out of the six panels NEEDED to show at least three characters.

The first thing I do when I’m drawing a strip is choose a panel layout. When I choose a layout for a strip, I need to look at which panel will have the most text and/or a lot of stuff going on visually. I have to choose a layout where that panel is the largest. With five panels, this usually works out well.  The hardest ones to layout are when the second of fifth panel need to be big (because then the first or sixth panel is usually too small). For the six panel strips I’ve done so far, I’ve found that my only choice was to have every panel be the same size, either 3X2 or 2X3. If a strip has simple visuals but a lot of dialogue, I’ll use 2X3 (there’s more vertical space for the word balloons), otherwise I use 3X2. In this case, the 2X3 panels were too narrow so I opted for 3X2.

I am not economical with my words. I find wordy dialogue more interesting (and funnier) than short dialogue. This means my text balloons have to be big to fit this wordy dialogue. To make sure the text balloons don’t cover up anything important, I’ll lay them down before I draw a panel. This way I know how much space I really have and draw my panel to fit. Sometimes at this point I’ll realize that there’s no way to fit the word balloons in the panels as I had intended. If I can, I’ll shift a word balloon one panel over (before or after depending on the case). If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to rewrite shorter lines. If THAT doesn’t work, I just do the best I can. Fortunately, I haven’t as of yet had to ditch a strip idea because I couldn’t get it to fit. For this strip I had to shift one line from panel 3 to panel 2, rewrite one line in panel 3 to be shorter, cut out one line from panel 4 completely, rewrite the remaining line in that panel and switch the order of the two lines in panel 3 to make up for the loss of the line from panel 4 to give me the most space possible to draw.

So now I was ready to draw. But I had new characters to draw. All three appear for the first time in panel 2 WITH Nektara. I didn’t want to commit to designing a character, drawing him fully detailed a certain size and then finding out I couldn’t fit the other three in and have to redraw the whole panel over. So I sketched each character on a separate layer and then shifted them around so that everything fit well. It worked so well that I sketched the other panels first too. And then the second strip of the weekend as well.

One thing I’ve learned in doing this, is that when I sketch I don’t have to worry about overlap. Nektara’s ears are not flush with the top of her head. Before, I would draw her head and then the ears on a separate layer so that when coloured, the line behind the ears would disappear. Now I just sketch the character out and when I draw the finished line over the sketch I don’t draw the line of the head that’s behind the ears.

To experienced cartoonists I’m sure this is all basic stuff, but I’m figuring this all out on my own. I suppose I could have read a book on cartooning before starting to draw the Funnies, but then I’d have had nothing to talk about this week.