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Attempts at the sample scripts

Started by Emperor, 19 January, 2010, 08:08:19 PM

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James

He's smart and funny. Fair play

Cheers for the feedback

Emperor

PJ's centring of the body in the second panel is important. From reading through the script the idea I get is of cinematic approach to the first couple of panels - you open with close-up of a dead body then zoom out to reveal the Mexican stand-off, so the body should stay as the centre of your panel.

The other tricky bit is the last panel, as has been noted it can cause problems with the flow of the page. The description asks for a view from the boy's eyes looking up at Dredd as he shoots the Dad. Given the position of the two individuals this would tend to give an up and left direction which can cause problems and results in a bit of odd flow to the page (when the eye wants to really go down and right to the end of the page). It seems like one of those times when getting some friends and family to pose for this (presumably with the artist as the boy and taking snaps) could really pay off as there might be a better way of posing this to make it flow better. In the Comicspace example the artist has gone for a more dead-on view which might be more workable but might not give the desired effect (or it might - its friends and family time). One thing that might be worth thinking about is using your artist's prerogative and swap the side the Dad is standing on, this would have the result of Dredd appearing to fire over our right shoulder (from the boy's POV of course). Anyway one worth toying with to see if something works better.

Quote from: Wake on 21 February, 2010, 12:03:50 AM
Quote from: Emperor on 19 January, 2010, 08:08:19 PMUnfortunately the script index on Barney doesn't seem to work but there are others over there if you nose around.

Logan sent me an email about this and the index has now been fixed.

Thanks for doing that, it opens up the number of scripts people have to play with.
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Jim_Campbell

Just a quick follow-up ... you've done a good job with allowing room for the lettering on this. I wanted to show how it's the breaking of the panel borders that really messes up the flow. If your letterer is on the ball, then they'll use the balloons to clarify the flow of the page (although you obviously shouldn't be relying on this in sample pages!), as shown below:



As you can see, the balloons would have drawn the reader's eye in the required direction, but the end of the Lawgiver's barrel creates this unwanted link between panels 3 and 5 that's almost impossible to break.

Cheers!

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

TordelBack

This is absolutely fascinating stuff.  Thanks everybody, especially James, you brave bugger.

James

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 21 February, 2010, 10:49:27 AM
Just a quick follow-up ... you've done a good job with allowing room for the lettering on this. I wanted to show how it's the breaking of the panel borders that really messes up the flow. If your letterer is on the ball, then they'll use the balloons to clarify the flow of the page (although you obviously shouldn't be relying on this in sample pages!), as shown below:



As you can see, the balloons would have drawn the reader's eye in the required direction, but the end of the Lawgiver's barrel creates this unwanted link between panels 3 and 5 that's almost impossible to break.

Cheers!

Jim

Thanks Jim,

I've lettered it too:



Quite similar in a lot of places. I was going for the first 4 caption boxes to pull you down into the main image. I can see now that perhaps if the 4th box was over the sofa it would lead you down towards panel 3 and move the flow in the right direction.

I'm not gonna change too much, the last 3 panels obviously I'll fix, kinda defeats the point of me figuring these things out on my own. I appreciate all the feedback, it's all completely valid.

Once I've done a couple more pages I'll put them up for your merciless rending of my work!

Cheers again,

James


uncle fester

Good on you for putting your stuff out there for criticism though, James. I'd say it's probably rare to have a forum where criticism will be completely constructive and where you can get helpful pointers from pro artists. Best of luck with the submission!

Jim_Campbell

#21
Quote from: James on 21 February, 2010, 11:51:58 AM
I've lettered it too:

Nice job. Blambot FX Pro, I note -- excellent choice, although I prefer a heavier stroke to a drop shadow, myself. Nate Piekos argues that SFX shouldn't have punctuation (like the exclamation mark here) and I'm inclined to agree, pretty much any SFX will look nicer if you leave the exclamation mark off. In this case, it would also remove the tangent between the bottom point and Dredd's helmet.


QuoteI can see now that perhaps if the 4th box was over the sofa it would lead you down towards panel 3 and move the flow in the right direction.

Where would the title block go? Bear in mind that I haven't put the 'credit card' on here either!

QuoteOnce I've done a couple more pages I'll put them up for your merciless rending of my work!

I want to stress that the quality of the drawing is excellent, James -- I've lettered some pages that were paying jobs for the artist and they were a long way short of the standard you're demonstrating here.

Cheers!

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

radiator

I've got a six page Dredd strip (Generation Killer) that's been on the back burner for 6 months or so - I've been waiting until I sort my computer/printer/scanner situation out so I can finish it.

When it's done I'll try and post it here.


locustsofdeath!

Oh yeah, I'd love to see it Radiator. I've liked your work since I've seen it on the board - be cool to see a strip.

Nice work James, very brave to put it here. But to get advice from 'old pros' like PJ and 'older' pros like Jim is invaluable. I wish I could get my scripts critiqued like this.

Darren Stephens

Do it, Radiator! Also, James, fair play for kicking this off. Takes some balls, that. Really like that page too. Nice stuff. And the crits have been very interesting and thought provoking.  ;)
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James

Couple of questions for you, Jim; If my lettering font is too 'wide' which it is, I can reduce the width to say, 90%, in Illustrator is there any way to save that edit and my font selection as default? Also the stroke and fill values are set to black by default, I want them to be black an White.

Basically what I want us to open illustrator and start lettering, not faffing about with font sizes and stuff before I get started.

Any tips?

Mike Gloady

Very brave of you to put it out here for criticism, James.  Well done and lucky you for getting such amazing feedback from such talented folks.  The way everyone's chipped in to help has reminded me why I love this board.

Good luck with your remaining pages, James.  Will you be attempting to redo this page with the criticism in mind?
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TordelBack

Pages from Radiator would be a treat!  One of the most unique art styles on this sickeningly talented board.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: James on 21 February, 2010, 01:57:56 PM
Couple of questions for you, Jim; If my lettering font is too 'wide' which it is, I can reduce the width to say, 90%, in Illustrator is there any way to save that edit and my font selection as default? Also the stroke and fill values are set to black by default, I want them to be black an White.

Basically what I want us to open illustrator and start lettering, not faffing about with font sizes and stuff before I get started.

Any tips?

Right ... Illustrator is pretty rubbish for this sort of stuff. If it wasn't vastly superior for complex path operations, I'd be tempted to use InDesign, where I could assign character style sheets to the numeric keypad and save myself a lot of bother. However, it is better, so you're stuck with it.

What I have is a blank lettering document (well, several, one for each publisher so that the artboard is set to the correct page size) with speech balloons and pre-formatted text on the pasteboard at the side of the document. First thing I do is copy the first bit of dialogue for the page out of the script, stick it on the AI document and pick the lettering style up with the eye-dropper from the pre-formatted text that's already there. All then copy and paste in all the rest of the text for the page, and it should continue to use that formatting.

The problem with stroke and fill is that you don't necessarily want it to be black and white -- for dialogue text you want a black fill and no stroke.

Try these keystrokes:

D - will reset stroke and fill to Default -- black stroke and white fill.

X - toggle between having stroke and fill colour selected for editing.

, - (comma) will change the stroke or fill (whichever is active for editing) to the current foreground colour

/ - will change the stroke or fill (whichever is active) to transparent.

Thus, if you currently have a red stroke and a gradient fill for whatever SFX you were working on, but now you want black stroke and white fill. Hit X and you will have your black stroke and white fill. If you hit SHIFT-X, the stroke and fill colours will swap and you will have a white stroke and a black fill. If the stroke is currently active, ie - at the front, as below...



... then simply hit / and you will have a black fill and no stroke. If the fill is active, hit X, and the stroke will come to the front and you can hit / ...

It's absolutely worth forcing yourself to use these keystrokes until they're imprinted on your brain ...!

Cheers

Jim

Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

locustsofdeath!

Jim, how did you letter before all this computer wankery? I've always wondered what letterers did 'before'. Just have steady hands? Use some sort of typewriter keys? Pardon my ignorance.