One of the things that I did last night was my layouts for my “Penciling the Page” class (which used to be called “Layout for Comics”). The class is primarily about how to assemble a script into a visually interesting comic page. We’d just finished a class about different panel “tricks” that can make your page interesting.
Our homework assignment, then, was to create a page that used 7 of those tricks. As for story, the requirement was that this be a 2-page story, as follows:
- Page 1: a pair of characters are trapped inside somewhere.
- Page 2: using a prop discovered in the environment, they escape.
Here are my thumbnails.
Doing this as homework gave me extra time to make the thumbnails a bit tighter than I might have made them in class, but they’re still just thumbnails. Here are the tricks:
- Pg. 1, panel 1 is inset in panel 2
- Pg. 1, panel 2 uses full bleed
- Pg. 1, panels 2, 3, 4 and 5 use cascading panels
- Pg. 1, panel 5 and Pg. 2, panel 1 (and 2) use panel exits, where stuff extends beyond the boundaries of the panel borders
- Pg. 1 is all done in widescreen panels
- Pg. 2, panel 2 is an example of a half-border panel (which is a variation on borderless panel)
- Pg. 2, panels 3-8 is an example of a picket fence.
I really liked the way this wacky little story worked out. Yes, it’s true that I don’t explain how we got into the situation in the first place, but whatever.
