Comics: the mechanics of the medium

[Leigh S]

Great stuff

Thanks!

Knowing how meticulously Alan Moore visualises a page and orchstrates it, could it have been in the original script?  (Not that I'm trying to downplay the importance of the letterer or editor in these kind of decisions, but , you know, Alan Moore...!)

I've seen a few Alan Moore scripts and whilst they're brain-melting in their level of detail, I don't think I've ever seen one that suggests he specifies balloon placements. There's just no realistic way of doing that without seeing the art (beyond the occasional general script instruction like 'Caption (Top Left)' or 'Caption (Bottom Right)').

It's worth also mentioning that the 'fix' is only necessary because of the composition of the main panel. If the composition had been mirrored then the straddling balloon wouldn't have been necessary (and I wonder whether a modern editor wouldn't simply have got the production guys to flip the big frame in Photoshop). That said, I call it a 'fix', but the fact that the eye has to travel right-to-left, against its natural reading direction, introduces an element of effort and disorientation that serves the narrative purpose well.

Whoever's idea it was, they should definitely take a bow.

Cheers

Jim

Cool how such seemingly little details can spark in comics - you're right of course -  If Mr Moore had scripted it, why not just script it so the art was the other way round. Either as a fix to aid the flow once the art presented itself, or as a premeditated act of storytelling, it is smart thinking all round

[I, Cosh]

Yeah, that is class.

[SuperSurfer]

Fascinating stuff, Jim.

Your blog post reminded of a discussion on Jim Shooter's blog of a few years ago, which shed light on the traditional DC lettering process compared to the traditional Marvel method.

Marvel style: writers were responsible for balloon/caption placement (as dialogue and captions were written after art pencils)
DC style: pencillers indicated balloon/caption placement (as pencillers worked from full scripts)

The following was a surprise.

Jim Shooter: "In my career, I have never had a letterer place balloons, nor was I asked to allow it, nor did anyone volunteer to do it, or seem to expect that they should."

Nate Piekos comments on Jim Shooter's blog that he places lettering 50% of the time – some editors are responsible for that.

I was aware that pencillers would sometimes indicate placement but I thought that was just a suggestion. I pretty much assumed placement was considered the responsibility of the letterer – which I would guess is the case in the UK?

http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/05/lettering-and-balloon-placement-memo.html

[Jim_Campbell]

I was aware that pencillers would sometimes indicate placement but I thought that was just a suggestion. I pretty much assumed placement was considered the responsibility of the letterer – which I would guess is the case in the UK?

I've seen placements on exactly three jobs: the artist on one Classical Comics book supplied placement guides that I told the editor I was ignoring because they were terrible*; D'Israeli basically lettered the entire Channel Evil story I worked on himself, and I don't think I varied from his positioning at all**; Joan Hilty (ex-Vertigo) started an anthology book giving me placements, but as soon as she was satisfied that I knew what I was doing, she stopped.

Placements made a lot more sense when the lettering was done directly onto the pencils and was practically impossible to move once it was down. Some editors still do it but many, I believe the overwhelming majority, don't. Editors are far more over-worked now that they were in the Shooter-era and I suspect these days it's easier to let the letterer get on with it and ask them to move stuff if the editor doesn't like it.

Cheers

Jim

*Really. Balloons with tails stretching the entire width of a page-wide panel, cutting across the throats of multiple characters in the process; tails that pointed to odd body-parts; right-to-left reading orders...

**Which seems like an awful lot of work for no reason. The letterer's main objection to placement guides is that they're a waste of time. If it's the correct/obvious place to put a balloon or caption, then we'd have put them there anyway. If you can't trust the letterer to make the right decision when the correct choice is non-obvious, maybe you should hire a better letterer.

[pauljholden]

I've never specified placement, but generally been very lucky with letterers.

-pj

[Jim_Campbell]

I've never specified placement, but generally been very lucky with letterers.

Also: you actually understand that your pages are going to be lettered and leave lots of dead space. I honestly think that specific placements are less important than the artist just roughing in the balloons at the thumbnailing stage so that the composition recognises that there's an additional element to come...

I suspect that you've been less lucky with letterers than letterers have been delighted to work on your pages!

Cheers!

Jim

[Hawkmumbler]

Kurt Busiek recently did a series of excellent tweets on the importance of leaving head space to the top-left hand side of panels for letterers. Very enlightening.

[Colin YNWA]

Love this type of stuff, fantastic post Jim.

[pauljholden]

I've never specified placement, but generally been very lucky with letterers.

Also: you actually understand that your pages are going to be lettered and leave lots of dead space. I honestly think that specific placements are less important than the artist just roughing in the balloons at the thumbnailing stage so that the composition recognises that there's an additional element to come...

I suspect that you've been less lucky with letterers than letterers have been delighted to work on your pages!

Cheers!

Jim

Ah You! I think it helps that a) I used to letter my own work, b) when I did that I worked with the most verbose writer I've ever worked with (and I love him very much, but blimey he can write) and c) I'm a strict proponent of 2000AD's 10 commandments...

To wit:
1 The first person to speak should always be on the left

2 Always leave the top 25% of the panel empty for lettering

3 Leave room for the title and the credits on the first page

4 Leave a 5mm gutter between each panel

5 Keep the camera angles varied and visually interesting

6 Tell the story – show what's relevent

7 Make your characters act and react – show what's relevant

8 Never bleed the story of the last panel of the page – leave room for the
next prog line

9 Lead the readers eye smoothly across the page

10 if you're not sure about something, ask the editorial team


-pj

[JayzusB.Christ]

This thread is a belter, necropost or not.  Re. flatting - correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can make out; it doesn't matter what colours are used; as long as the areas are broken up for the actual colourist...?

[Jim_Campbell]

it doesn't matter what colours are used; as long as the areas are broken up for the actual colourist...?

Exactly that. Where a dedicated flatter is used, that person isn't being hired to make colour choices — the colourist will do that. It's literally just a matter of making the process of selecting different sections of the artwork as easy as possible.

Cheers

Jim

[Hawkmumbler]

How asinine can this process be? Like say you have two panels, one's a distance shot of two people in a room, fully body shots. The second is a close up of human muscle fibre. I can get the first instance being like the examples on page 1, but would each muscle fibre jn the second example have to be 'flatted' a different colour? Or is it simply filled in entirely with a bucket feature the same colour and the line art is what the colourist is expected to determin detail in a later stage?

[Jim_Campbell]

The second is a close up of human muscle fibre. I can get the first instance being like the examples on page 1, but would each muscle fibre jn the second example have to be 'flatted' a different colour? Or is it simply filled in entirely with a bucket feature the same colour and the line art is what the colourist is expected to determin detail in a later stage?

No, because the muscle as a whole is a 'thing' that the colourist will need to give tone, value and form to. The fibres are detail which the colourist can deal with as they see fit. Hair that is rendered in detail as part of the line art would also be flatted, generally, as a single block of colour.

But you can't fill it with the paint bucket (in Photoshop, at least) because you don't want to leave gaps where the linework is. Notice in this example how the colours are continuous blocks that all meet up flush. It's this requirement that makes flatting both tedious and difficult to automate.

As I said earlier in the thread, there are Photoshop plug-ins that claim to make this process easier, but my limited, amateur experience has never found using these much quicker than doing it the hard way.

Cheers!

Jim

[pauljholden]

How asinine can this process be? Like say you have two panels, one's a distance shot of two people in a room, fully body shots. The second is a close up of human muscle fibre. I can get the first instance being like the examples on page 1, but would each muscle fibre jn the second example have to be 'flatted' a different colour? Or is it simply filled in entirely with a bucket feature the same colour and the line art is what the colourist is expected to determin detail in a later stage?

This is why people are better than algorithms, a good flatter will make a judgement call based on what their colourist prefers (depending on the closeup you may actually want veins and other things flatted separately...)

-pj

[JayzusB.Christ]

it doesn't matter what colours are used; as long as the areas are broken up for the actual colourist...?

Exactly that. Where a dedicated flatter is used, that person isn't being hired to make colour choices — the colourist will do that. It's literally just a matter of making the process of selecting different sections of the artwork as easy as possible.

Cheers

Jim

Thanks; I get you now.  I totally understand why a colourist would outsource this - Christ, but I hate that lasso tool.