HOW ARGO DOES COMICS
PART ONE:
THE MAIN PAGE

Hey, alla you Gorgon:Art Types that are looking for tutelage into creating comics using Poser, Photoshop and other graphical tools!  So you'd like to know how I do it?  Well, I'm about to tell you!

Man, I'm just giving away all my hoarded-up knowledge!  ^_^ 

But anyway, let's start with the main page, because no matter how many frames you have, you gotsta have something to put them on.  Right?  Course I'm right! 

0.  ON COMICS

You may ask, why did I number this zero?  Because this is more important than anything else I can tell you.  Comics (whether in book, multipanel or multipage format) are more than simply sequential captioned pictures.  When I say Captioned Pictures, I refer to the sort of work you'll see from me and others at Gorgon:Art-- and on many other sites and groups-- where a rendered picture or photomanip (or multiple ones!) use a caption to describe what happens within the image.  There's nothing wrong with them.  But by themselves, they aren't comics.

Comics are more than just a mixed medium.  As opposed to captioned pictures, in which the story appears as part of the caption to usually describe what is happening within the picture, comics are ordinarily equal parts writing and art, rather than using writing to simply further relay a sense of what is happening in the picture.  How many times have we seen a captioned picture in which the caption is either self-explanatory, or even unnecessary, to the overall whole?  How many times have we seen a captioned picture in which the caption goes far beyond the description of what is happening within the pictures?  Probably quite a few times. 

The thing is, you won't very often find that in comics.  Even in comic panels where there are no words, the lack of dialogue or captions is in itself a statement, done to effect.  In other words, in a comic, a prospective reader must notice both the writing and art, and you as a creator must use both to progress your story along and keep the reader interested in what happens next. 

1.  KEEP YOUR TARGET PAGE IN MIND THROUGH IT ALL!

I cannot stress this enough!  The first thing you should always do, before all else on a comic, is remember what your final pages are going to look like.  I don't just mean the layout of your frames (although you should keep that in mind, as well), but the final format and size constraints that you'll have to work within.  The reason I say this is because when you're working in Poser (or your 3D program of choice) you should try to render your pictures to stay in tune with your final format.  You don't HAVE to do this... you can always resize your pictures later in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, but in the long run, pictures tend to look better at a 1:1 ratio then they will resized.

So how do I do this?  Well, my usual format of choice for comic pages is 800 pixels across, simply because if I'm web-publishing, the vast majority of the people browsing (in other words, most of the people who will be looking at the work) tend to use an 800 x 600 screen resolution.  I could go larger, and a lot of times, it would be easier if I did... but that would mean a lot of sidescrolling.  For pictures, that's all right, usually, since they're one-shot images.  But Comics tend to require people to flip from page to page already to follow a story, so making them take a step further and sidescroll to see some panels is an extra step that's a pain to some viewers.  Up and down, I usually opt for 1200 pixels, or two screens on an 800 x 600 monitor.  However, this is less worrisome than the left to right scrolling, since most folks are used to scrolling down anyway to follow the text of a story.  So 1200, 1600, even 1800 pixels isn't too far out of the ordinary.  Just make sure you keep your final page size in mind.  Why?

Because, simply, if you don't, you run the risk of being forced to cut off panels, making them too big, or just, all in all, having a pretty amateur-looking final product.  So decide on a finished product format, and keep that size in mind from beginning concept, through the renders, to the final product.  It will be tres helpful if you do.

2. CHECK YOUR SCRIPT

So what do I mean by keeping this in mind from concept to render to finished product?  Simple enough.  Let's take a quick look at a script for a comic I will likely never do, below.  You do make scripts, right?  Maybe you don't.  If not (and on occasion, I haven't, so it's not uncommon, especially if we're doing it for a fringe group like ours rather than for general consumption), you'll still want to at least take notes for your general scenes, snatches of dialogue and such.  For this exercise, I've BS'd something up to show you how I would do it professionally.

PAGE FOUR

INT - SUPERCOMPADRES' SECURITY ROOM - DAY

PANEL 1:
HEROINE 1 looks downcast at being told that the only way to beating the Villain of the Week.

    HEROINE 1:
            But what if I don't WANT to become a statue?

    HEROINE 1: (connected)
            It's just... just so LAME.

PANEL 2:
HEROINE 2 gives an approximation of a shrug.

    HEROINE 2:
            Look.  You're a heroine in Hub City.  It's just UNDERSTOOD that these things happen.  Get over it.

(Etc.)

Let's look at what I've done here, because as I said, scripting helps quite a bit in a couple things.  First, it helps in the general set-up of my scenes.  I know what sets I'm using, I know what I want to model, what I want to create, the mood and the facial expressions, and on top of that, I know how much dialogue I'm going to use on a given panel.  Believe you me, that is 31 flavors of important when it comes to rendering.  Now, your scripts don't have to be this detailed... I've done this mostly for effect.  But if you're working with a co-conspirator, or are the writer dealing with a separate artist, you may even want to go into more detail so there are no crossed wires.

So let's see what I've done.

First, I've established that this is Page Four.  If you're script-writing, you want to keep your PAGES in mind, even if you don't keep your PANELS (or page subdivisions) straight.  The reason for this, from a writing standpoint, is obvious.  An end of a page is a great place for a cliffhanger or page-turner.  Suppose your story revolves around a pair of nubile young victims women walking through an art gallery.  Your last couple panels on the page settle in around the first woman, and in the last panel, you have a tight closeup of her eyes or face, displaying a shocked expression as she turns to her friend, perhaps a gasped bit of dialogue

Who isn't going to turn the page to find out what happened to cause that?  That's the power of knowing how your page is laid out.

Okay, after the page heading, I've shown this little bit of gobbledygook: INT - SUPERCOMPADRES' SECURITY ROOM - DAY.  What the bejeezus is that? 

This is what is referred to as a SLUG.  Used mostly for my (or my artists') note, this tells me where this scene is established.  INT refers to it being an Interior shot, rather than an Exterior (or EXT) camera angle.  If I'd said EXT - HALL OF JUSTICE, it would mean we'd want an establishing shot of the Hall of Justice, instead.  The second part, SUPERCOMPADRES' SECURITY ROOM, tells me (or again, my artist) that the scene is taking place within a specific locale.  This is extremely important if you have plans of shifting locations within your script.  And the last is a sign to help with lighting and/or background placement.  If there's a window in the room, we should see that it's daytime.  Now, if I'd completely left the slug off, this conversation could be happening anywhere, and if we'd passed this off to another artist, he'd have to use his discretion as to where the scene appeared, which would probably not be to our best interest.

After that, I've broken my panels up and given brief descriptions of what is happening within each, to help myself set mood, expressions, and the like.  Something to be more aware of, however, is the amount of dialogue I've used.  A good rule of thumb is not to go overboard on any panel except for possibly a full-page one.  Someone on a scripting board I once went to suggest no more than 350 characters to a standard-sized panel.  I couldn't tell you whether that works or not.  But you will likely want to tighten up your dialogue something fierce to accommodate smaller panel size.

But none of that takes into account my chosen page size, shown at left.  So let's try that again with some notes added for my own help.

PAGE FOUR

INT - SUPERCOMPADRES' SECURITY ROOM - DAY

PANEL 1:
(250 x 500 - tight shot, leave room for dialogue balloons)
HEROINE 1 looks downcast at being told that the only way to beating the Villain of the Week.

    HEROINE 1:
            But what if I don't WANT to become a statue?

    HEROINE 1: (connected)
            It's just... just so LAME.

PANEL 2:
(250 x 500 med-tight shot, leave room as in panel 1)
HEROINE 2 gives an approximation of a shrug.

    HEROINE 2:
            Look.  You're a heroine in Hub City.  It's just UNDERSTOOD that these things happen.  Get over it.

What does this little bit do for me?  Well, for starters, I've pretty much decided that these two panels will take up about 2/3 of my page across, leaving room for gutters (the little area between and around panels.)  It also tells me that, all things being equal, I will want to render my last  picture at about 250 x 500 for my last panel to fit.  How did I come up with that?

800 pixels - 10 pixel left-hand gutter = 790 pixels.
790 pixels - 250 pixel first panel = 540 pixels.
540 pixels - 10 pixel tweener gutter (5 pixels per panel for 1 and 2) = 530 pixels.
530 pixels - 250 pixel second panel = 280 pixels.
280 pixels - 10 pixel tweener gutter (5 pixels per panel for 2 and 3) = 270 pixels.
270 pixels - 10 pixel right-hand gutter = 260 pixels.
260 pixels - 10 pixel (5 per side) panel BORDER = 250 pixels.

That might be a lot more math than you want to deal with.  And if so, that's okay.  You don't necessarily have to put all of that into perfect focus.  But at least keep it in mind when you're rendering your panels.  (Let's see... I used up 500 panels on my first frame, so if my page is 800 across, I don't want to render this at 400 x 400.)  It'll help you from having to make edits that might look rushed in the end.  Of course, you don't have to feel constrained to small size images.  You can create images that are half-page size, full-page size, or anything of the like, depending on how you'd like your story to appear.

Note again that you don't necessarily have to have a script... I did everything in the Catalyst/Gem Stone finale on the fly, although I had a definite idea of the direction I was going, and even made notes on some of the dialogue beforehand.  But having at least a small semblance of a script helps immensely.

3.  WORKING IN PHOTOSHOP (or Whatever Paint Program You Use): THE MAIN PAGE

Okay, so now you've rendered your panels at whatever size you think is best.  The first thing you want to do, of course, is create your new blank page, using the File > New command.  You can name it if you like, but the important thing is that here is where you'll be plugging in those pixel width and heights I was telling you about.  Photoshop (and most other programs) allow you to choose what background color your new image will be, so if you're planning on a background and gutters in a color other than white, make that your background color first and select Background Color for your contents.

Now that you have that, you're going to want to open the images you've saved as your panels, and after working them, copy and paste them into this new document.  Very important note here... ALWAYS copy and paste your panels onto your main page AFTER doing postwork to them, but BEFORE adding dialogue balloons and captions.  The reason for this?  There are a couple:

First, postwork edits always work best on larger, un-resized pictures.  You might find you'll have to crop/resize pictures when you plop them in, and editing on that picture will become that much more difficult with compressed pixels.  Also, if you have added text and have to resize the frame to fit it in, you'll have blocky, sometimes illegible text. 

On top of that, Photoshop and Paintshop Pro both have a nasty tendency to point-size fonts proportionate to your image size.  So a 12-point font on a 400 x 200 panel may actually appear larger when you copy and paste than a font on a 600 x 600 panel.  You want your fonts to be uniform all the way across your page, most likely... or if you want larger fonts for effect, YOU want to be the one to decide that, not a brainless program bias.

So let's see how we copy and paste our panels in, hm?

3a. PANEL (RE)SIZING

This is the hardest thing to remember most times.  Not only do you have to consider your panel itself, but the panel BORDER, as well, or your comic will look like a group of pictures, rather than the newsstand style that the big name companies use.  In other words, you want to not only have your background set, but a color set for the frames of your panels.  Let's assume that I've gone ahead and rendered my panel at 250 x 500 like my script called for, and I've done all the postwork I need to.  So now is where I want to put in a panel border before I copy and paste it to the main page.

I have no clue about Paint Shop Pro-- although likely it's very similar-- but fortunately, Photoshop has a command to help me out here.  I select the color I want to use for the border as the background color of the image, and go into Image > Canvas Size.  NOT Image Size!  The Image Size feature resizes my entire picture, while the Canvas Size merely adds pixels of my current background color while locking (anchoring) my current image where I tell it.  I figure a ten pixel border (five per side) is going to be enough, so I plug in my new sizes by adding 10 to my current canvas size and anchoring my picture in the middle.

That done, I should end up with something close to what I have on the right hand side, here.  You can of course opt to have larger borders, but for now, these work fine for my uses.

What I would NOT suggest is copying and pasting your panels in and then using Photoshop's Stroke tool in the Blending Options dialogue to craft panel borders.  First off, the Stroke tool adds rounded borders, rather than square ones.  And even if that works for your purposes, the stroke tool extends itself if you have to touch up a panel afterward, say with your text balloons and such. 

All righty.  Now, with Photoshop (and this might be true with PSP.  I have no idea.), every time you copy and paste onto your new page, Photoshop will very kindly give it a new Layer in your Layers window.  That's important for being able to keep your panels separate from one another.  It'll be even more important later when you go to add dialogue.  But for now, just keep in mind that your background will always be your lowest layer, and layers higher on the hierarchy will appear over layers lower than them in the hierarchy.

So now I paste into my full size page, and take my move tool (the icon with the four sided arrow) and move my frame into position.  Zoom in tight to do this...  remember that you've done your panel sizes in terms of pixels, so you want to place it as close to exact as you can so you don't have to nudge everything over when you add your other panels.  I've done a couple already.  Let's see what it looks like... keep in mind I've chosen my background and border colors for best effect to be seen here:

So that's how I place images onto a larger background.  Obviously, your results might be different.  Now, one thing that you'll notice is that I left a lot of room, or dead space, for my dialogue.  This is something you'll definitely want to keep in mind for later, when we start adding dialogue and captions.  The more room you have while keeping with the general tone of the pictures, the more you can fiddle with the dialogue and even expand it later for clarity.

I should also point out that I did not create these panels specifically for this project.  For a more full view of how these panels linked together in part of a story I was working on a few months or so back (albeit not a statue-oriented one... sorry!) feel free to check out the whole sordid thing HERE.

And next?  I show you how to add some dialogue balloons.  Stay Tuned!