Sigune's How Not To Draw Comics - Part VI
Look! It’s a miracle: here is Page Four, so incredibly shortly after Page Three! I’m afraid the reason is simply that I haven’t got a lot to say about Page Four. It just went rather well - thank God that sometimes happens too! And, well, perhaps the fact that I’ve been enjoying a week’s holiday may have something to do with the new entry as well.
Exclusive: a brainstorm in images ;-)!
The Comic So Far:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
9. The Painful Practice of Editing
It’s a bit of a nuisance in view of the aim of this, er, series - the goal being, after all, that I explain how I go about creating this comic - but as I went over the sketches for Page Four I discovered that I really don’t remember in what sequence I designed pages three, four and five. That is, sketches for all three pages are all over the place, next to one another on my scrap paper. My guess is that I thought of those three pages in terms of a small, separate episode rather than as ‘just’ a continuation of the main story. I knew all the things I needed to happen in this episode and threw them onto the paper in a rather random way, to order and arrange them later. The result is that what you get here is a kind of medley of what has been, is now, and is yet to come :D… Have a chaotic entry…
To recapitulate:
Severus is ambushed by James and Sirius on his passage through the Transfiguration corridor. He falls victim to a Tripping Jinx, drops his schoolbag, and as a result of this, his ink bottle breaks and his Transfiguration homework is sprayed with black goo. In retaliation, Severus sets James on fire during a temporary inattention caused by Lily Evans passing by. Unfortunately, the ever-alert Minerva McGonagall has been witness to this spot of vengeance.
I mentioned last time that I wanted the jinx episode to act as a sort of trigger for Snape - an event that fuels his determination to find out what the Marauders are up to and to expose their ‘sinister secrets’. I think the following series of sketches show rather well how I constructed the episode. I did not write a scenario for this at any time, so the sketches are, to put it dramatically (yay!), the birth of a plot part. This is pretty much the way my ‘pictorial mind’ works :D.
1) Far left: Snape is walking in the corridor with his schoolbag in his arms. (I really like this image, particularly the way Severus’ feet are placed, and his hand lying flat on his bag. I couldn’t explain why I’m so taken with these bits; I just am. Unfortunately I had to cut the picture from the definitive page.)
2) Left to middle: Snape’s eyes widen - AARGH! He is TRIPPED!
Lacuna: there is no falling bag and no soiled parchment. That’s on another sketch page. Presumably it’s a detail I worked out later.
3) A rather grumpy Lily Evans walks past. (I like this picture too, in particular the way she holds her bag; but this one, too, got cut and replaced in the final version of page three. She’s more cheerful there and mocks James rather than to snub him. I have changed the design of her bag as well: this one is too much like Snape’s.)
4) On the far right, we see James, with his back to the viewer, being distracted by Lily’s appearance. At this stage, I only knew he would have to turn his back to Severus at that point; I had not yet decided on the high-flown, roguish address to Lily. The one on the scrap page is merely neutral and doesn’t tell you much about what type of boy James is. Anyway:
5) Below on the far right we get the results of a moment’s inattention: James’s bum is on fire, thanks to Severus. (The act of arson itself is, once again, on another sketch page previously posted.)
6) Top of the page, to the right: McGonagall has received a large blot instead of a scroll of homework. She demands an explanation.
There follows another lacuna - no explanation on Snape’s part - but
7) Below in the middle, McGonagall is looking very stern indeed and her gaze is directed at
8) *gasp* Snape’s boots?! ;-) (I needed to do the boots twice because the angle wasn’t satisfactory at the first try - the one on the left. They look rather boring from the front, and a lot more exciting in three-quarter view.)
As I said last time, this particular sequence is really of minor importance plot-wise, but the way I set it out here was going to take up quite a lot of page time. The episode didn’t deserve that; the comic is really all about Snape ending up facing a werewolf and being rescued by a boy he hates. In the end, of all the things I sketched here I retained only the tripping Severus from the middle, and the second shot of the boots. Everything else got either cut or condensed, so that plot elements 3, 4 and 5, including the fire-setting and McGonagall witnessing it, all went into no more than one panel. (It was a wrench, honestly.)
[For the How of this, see my previous comics entry.]
That was page three material, essentially. Page four would be the confrontation between Snape and McGonagall. If page three gave me no end of trouble (you may remember it took several thumbnails to get right; I have no thumbnail of page four), page four hardly gave me any at all. It’s the good old Snape-cum-McGonagall magic! Give me the combination of those two and I am in my element :D. I love writing them together. One of my favourite bits of home-made fanfic is an unpublished fragment in which McGonagall tells Snape off for his immature behaviour in the PoA Hospital Wing Scene; another favourite, equally unpublished and unknown, has them at each other’s throats when twenty-one-year-old Snape comes to Hogwarts to sign his contract as Potions master. I imagine McGonagall as being one of the few teachers who ever managed to inspire awe in Snape-the-student, and as one of the few witches whom he respects as an adult wizard. They differ on essential points, which makes it fun to write them arguing; and the fact that they resemble each other in terms of strictness and house loyalty adds interest to their relationship.
In any case, here I was, having fun with Severus and Minerva:
There is a small, cowering Snape in the far right corner; I discarded that approach and decided to opt for a cheekier sixteen-year-old Severus. So, although he is for a second taken aback by McGonagall’s posture and tone, Snape gets to talk back to her - after all, he feels he is perfectly justified in his actions.
Below are a few faces - the vague one with the fringe of beard in the middle has nothing whatsoever to do with the comic, it’s Gawain - of which the most interesting is that of Evan Rosier, to the right. (I often misspell his name as ‘Rozier’. I can’t help it. With a z, it is the name of the street where I work, and I keep having to stop and think about the spelling when I type poor Evan’s name :D.)
Rosier brings us to the next scrap page: he appears to the left of the kneeling Severus in the middle. I don’t know how he comes across; I meant him to look like a handsome but snotty snob. He got cut from page four, but he’ll appear on six and seven. The role I have given him is that of the nasty pure-blood Slytherin - his generation’s Draco Malfoy, so to speak. I originally intended him to be part of the a panel where Severus kneels down to tie his bootstraps and gets laughed at by James and Sirius, to provide the perspective of Slytherin, the house of the ambitious, on one of theirs who keeps losing the house points in a quarrel with a bunch of Gryffindor pranksters. He was cut out of the picture when it became obvious that I’d run out of space, and so his entry into the story got delayed by a few pages.
Also dropped to the floor of the editing room: a shot of Severus looking down at his boots (far right, toppled over); and McGonagall sweeping into the room and delivering her parting shot. The text was added to another panel, but the close-up of her shoes with spats (!) was unfortunately lost.
The bottom left and middle of the page show that I was already contemplating the next page - that is, I was writing out the next bit of text, and it turned out I had to start a new page to accommodate it. Neither the pensive Severus (which I like) on the left, nor the rather zombie-looking one in the middle (which is just weird), made it there.
Finally: I really have no idea what the head of a gloating adult Severus saying, “Do you indeed?” in Gothic script at the top of the page is all about :D.
Here, then, is the completed page:
I suppose I gave quite a lot of space to the first two panels, and I’m not sure whether my choices of which things to cut are at all justified. I base them on my own likes and dislikes and on my own estimation of the good continuity of the story, but the test lies, of course, with the reader who doesn’t know what I was thinking when I made my editing decisions.
Personally I’m rather happy with this page, primarily because of McGonagall and how she turned out. I have been told by friends that she looks much too stern, but I disagree. That is, she looks just like I have her in my head: middle-aged, with square glasses and a tight black bun, and a forbidding air. She will be allowed to show another side of herself at a later stage in the story, but this here is the McGonagall who maintains strict discipline among her students and won’t allow for silly schoolboy nonsense.
The one thing I regret about the page is the panel bottom left, the close-up of Severus’ face. I used to like it very much when I drew it, but in the meantime I have changed my mind. There is something about the shape of the nose that displeases me, and I wouldn’t draw the eyes like that anymore. On the other hand, I am still very fond of Snape’s profile in the panel top left. I love the whole panel, but Severus’ face especially :-).
Next: Severus in his nightclothes…
Exclusive: a brainstorm in images ;-)!
The Comic So Far:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
9. The Painful Practice of Editing
It’s a bit of a nuisance in view of the aim of this, er, series - the goal being, after all, that I explain how I go about creating this comic - but as I went over the sketches for Page Four I discovered that I really don’t remember in what sequence I designed pages three, four and five. That is, sketches for all three pages are all over the place, next to one another on my scrap paper. My guess is that I thought of those three pages in terms of a small, separate episode rather than as ‘just’ a continuation of the main story. I knew all the things I needed to happen in this episode and threw them onto the paper in a rather random way, to order and arrange them later. The result is that what you get here is a kind of medley of what has been, is now, and is yet to come :D… Have a chaotic entry…
To recapitulate:
Severus is ambushed by James and Sirius on his passage through the Transfiguration corridor. He falls victim to a Tripping Jinx, drops his schoolbag, and as a result of this, his ink bottle breaks and his Transfiguration homework is sprayed with black goo. In retaliation, Severus sets James on fire during a temporary inattention caused by Lily Evans passing by. Unfortunately, the ever-alert Minerva McGonagall has been witness to this spot of vengeance.
I mentioned last time that I wanted the jinx episode to act as a sort of trigger for Snape - an event that fuels his determination to find out what the Marauders are up to and to expose their ‘sinister secrets’. I think the following series of sketches show rather well how I constructed the episode. I did not write a scenario for this at any time, so the sketches are, to put it dramatically (yay!), the birth of a plot part. This is pretty much the way my ‘pictorial mind’ works :D.
1) Far left: Snape is walking in the corridor with his schoolbag in his arms. (I really like this image, particularly the way Severus’ feet are placed, and his hand lying flat on his bag. I couldn’t explain why I’m so taken with these bits; I just am. Unfortunately I had to cut the picture from the definitive page.)
2) Left to middle: Snape’s eyes widen - AARGH! He is TRIPPED!
Lacuna: there is no falling bag and no soiled parchment. That’s on another sketch page. Presumably it’s a detail I worked out later.
3) A rather grumpy Lily Evans walks past. (I like this picture too, in particular the way she holds her bag; but this one, too, got cut and replaced in the final version of page three. She’s more cheerful there and mocks James rather than to snub him. I have changed the design of her bag as well: this one is too much like Snape’s.)
4) On the far right, we see James, with his back to the viewer, being distracted by Lily’s appearance. At this stage, I only knew he would have to turn his back to Severus at that point; I had not yet decided on the high-flown, roguish address to Lily. The one on the scrap page is merely neutral and doesn’t tell you much about what type of boy James is. Anyway:
5) Below on the far right we get the results of a moment’s inattention: James’s bum is on fire, thanks to Severus. (The act of arson itself is, once again, on another sketch page previously posted.)
6) Top of the page, to the right: McGonagall has received a large blot instead of a scroll of homework. She demands an explanation.
There follows another lacuna - no explanation on Snape’s part - but
7) Below in the middle, McGonagall is looking very stern indeed and her gaze is directed at
8) *gasp* Snape’s boots?! ;-) (I needed to do the boots twice because the angle wasn’t satisfactory at the first try - the one on the left. They look rather boring from the front, and a lot more exciting in three-quarter view.)
As I said last time, this particular sequence is really of minor importance plot-wise, but the way I set it out here was going to take up quite a lot of page time. The episode didn’t deserve that; the comic is really all about Snape ending up facing a werewolf and being rescued by a boy he hates. In the end, of all the things I sketched here I retained only the tripping Severus from the middle, and the second shot of the boots. Everything else got either cut or condensed, so that plot elements 3, 4 and 5, including the fire-setting and McGonagall witnessing it, all went into no more than one panel. (It was a wrench, honestly.)
[For the How of this, see my previous comics entry.]
That was page three material, essentially. Page four would be the confrontation between Snape and McGonagall. If page three gave me no end of trouble (you may remember it took several thumbnails to get right; I have no thumbnail of page four), page four hardly gave me any at all. It’s the good old Snape-cum-McGonagall magic! Give me the combination of those two and I am in my element :D. I love writing them together. One of my favourite bits of home-made fanfic is an unpublished fragment in which McGonagall tells Snape off for his immature behaviour in the PoA Hospital Wing Scene; another favourite, equally unpublished and unknown, has them at each other’s throats when twenty-one-year-old Snape comes to Hogwarts to sign his contract as Potions master. I imagine McGonagall as being one of the few teachers who ever managed to inspire awe in Snape-the-student, and as one of the few witches whom he respects as an adult wizard. They differ on essential points, which makes it fun to write them arguing; and the fact that they resemble each other in terms of strictness and house loyalty adds interest to their relationship.
In any case, here I was, having fun with Severus and Minerva:
There is a small, cowering Snape in the far right corner; I discarded that approach and decided to opt for a cheekier sixteen-year-old Severus. So, although he is for a second taken aback by McGonagall’s posture and tone, Snape gets to talk back to her - after all, he feels he is perfectly justified in his actions.
Below are a few faces - the vague one with the fringe of beard in the middle has nothing whatsoever to do with the comic, it’s Gawain - of which the most interesting is that of Evan Rosier, to the right. (I often misspell his name as ‘Rozier’. I can’t help it. With a z, it is the name of the street where I work, and I keep having to stop and think about the spelling when I type poor Evan’s name :D.)
Rosier brings us to the next scrap page: he appears to the left of the kneeling Severus in the middle. I don’t know how he comes across; I meant him to look like a handsome but snotty snob. He got cut from page four, but he’ll appear on six and seven. The role I have given him is that of the nasty pure-blood Slytherin - his generation’s Draco Malfoy, so to speak. I originally intended him to be part of the a panel where Severus kneels down to tie his bootstraps and gets laughed at by James and Sirius, to provide the perspective of Slytherin, the house of the ambitious, on one of theirs who keeps losing the house points in a quarrel with a bunch of Gryffindor pranksters. He was cut out of the picture when it became obvious that I’d run out of space, and so his entry into the story got delayed by a few pages.
Also dropped to the floor of the editing room: a shot of Severus looking down at his boots (far right, toppled over); and McGonagall sweeping into the room and delivering her parting shot. The text was added to another panel, but the close-up of her shoes with spats (!) was unfortunately lost.
The bottom left and middle of the page show that I was already contemplating the next page - that is, I was writing out the next bit of text, and it turned out I had to start a new page to accommodate it. Neither the pensive Severus (which I like) on the left, nor the rather zombie-looking one in the middle (which is just weird), made it there.
Finally: I really have no idea what the head of a gloating adult Severus saying, “Do you indeed?” in Gothic script at the top of the page is all about :D.
Here, then, is the completed page:
I suppose I gave quite a lot of space to the first two panels, and I’m not sure whether my choices of which things to cut are at all justified. I base them on my own likes and dislikes and on my own estimation of the good continuity of the story, but the test lies, of course, with the reader who doesn’t know what I was thinking when I made my editing decisions.
Personally I’m rather happy with this page, primarily because of McGonagall and how she turned out. I have been told by friends that she looks much too stern, but I disagree. That is, she looks just like I have her in my head: middle-aged, with square glasses and a tight black bun, and a forbidding air. She will be allowed to show another side of herself at a later stage in the story, but this here is the McGonagall who maintains strict discipline among her students and won’t allow for silly schoolboy nonsense.
The one thing I regret about the page is the panel bottom left, the close-up of Severus’ face. I used to like it very much when I drew it, but in the meantime I have changed my mind. There is something about the shape of the nose that displeases me, and I wouldn’t draw the eyes like that anymore. On the other hand, I am still very fond of Snape’s profile in the panel top left. I love the whole panel, but Severus’ face especially :-).
Next: Severus in his nightclothes…