Just Create: splash

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Come and Get it Travel Time

Traveling action

Visual Vocabulary for Comic Books, Graphic Novels and Comic Strips

When you have big travel, keep it consistent with the compass or geography.

If your story requires an airplane to travel from San Francisco to New York, then draw your plane traveling from west to east (left to right).

Keep travel in your story consistent. If your chase scene starts off left to right, then maintain the action in that direction until you show a definite change of direction.

If a character is going into a building, we don't need to see the whole process as in film. At a minimum we show character leaving current location, exterior shot of destination and character has arrived - this may be inside an office or on the roof for example.

to be continued…

read next - Visual Vocabulary of Graphic Novels and Comic Books Part 1
previous - Visual Vocabulary of Graphic Novels and Comic Books

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Copyright 2016 H. Simpson

Friday, February 10, 2012

Paging Dr. Howard, Dr Fine, Dr. Howard

How to Make a Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel

Terminology Continued

17. PANEL - A single image with a border, usually.

18. PANEL BORDER - The line which surrounds the single image.

19. OPEN PANEL - A panel without a border.

20. GUTTER - The space between panels. This is where time happens. The reader fills in the amount of time. A good storyteller uses gutters as a tool to manipulate time.

21. PAGE MARGINS - The blank space around the edges of the page.

22. GUTTER MARGIN - The space between the printed area and binding.

23. BLEED - Art that extends beyond the end of the page. A full bleed extends beyond all four edges of the page. This costs extra money to print and eats into your profits if you self-publish. Think about how much money you lose by bleeding for no reason that serves the story.

24. TRIM SIZE - Final size of printed page after excess paper has been cut away.

25. CUT SIZE - A standard size that matches the printed size and thereby requires no trimming.

26. CROP MARKS - Crossed lines placed at the corners to indicate where to trim the paper

27. BLEED LINES - Indicates the area beyond the crop marks. The penciler must draw to the bleed lines in order for the art to bleed off the page. Never just draw to the trim lines if you want to bleed art. The bleed size is set to 3 millimeters or 1/8 of an inch. You're wasting time and space if you draw beyond that.

28. SAFE AREA - The space to keep text and other important parts of your art so it's not trimmed. May also be called the Art Area.

29. FLASHBACK - Panels which refer to a past event. Their borders are drawn with a cloudy, wispy or other creative effect to suggest a memory or revelation.

30. SPLASH PAGE - The first or second page page of a story with full bleed page art. It acts a a second cover packed with action or emotion in order to entice the reader to buy the comic.

31. DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD - Two pages featuring one image so big one page cannot contain it. Sometimes used for panel to panel continuity. In this case, it is usually poorly executed if the penciler doesn't take into consideration that unless it's the exact middle page of the comic, then some information will be lost in the gutter margin.

Bonus! Check out these links about layout and making comics.
Making Comics

Little Rivkah's Journal

Webcomic Alliance

Creative Comic Art

Analyzing Comics 101 (Layout)

Making Comics with Salgood Sam

to be continued…

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