Sigune’s How Not To Draw Comics - Part XVII
This is it then: we have reached the comic’s last two pages. It took me two years to complete this seventeen-page story; it is also the first comic I have ever completed (my most impressive feat of arms before that was to get stranded at page 23 of one of my interminable sagas). Of course I didn’t work on it continuously, so the two years are a bit of a distortion - actually I drew more than half of the story in the last six months of the term, and most of the time I wasn’t in a particular hurry. It is also the first of my comics projects to get shown outside my small circle of close RL friends. In several ways it has been, for me as an amateur comics artist, something of a milestone, and I can’t help being a little bit proud of it, even if the thing has plenty of flaws.
I hope you enjoy the story’s end!
The Comic So Far:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page Five
Page Six
Page Seven
Page Eight
Page Nine
Page Ten
Page Eleven
Page Twelve
Page Thirteen
Page Fourteen
Page Fifteen
You Are Here:
Having been lured to the Shrieking Shack on a night with a full moon, Severus Snape is about to have a most painful encounter with Remus Lupin in his wolf form when he is held back by James Potter. The two boys manage to make their way to the safety of Hogwarts in time, but though Severus has escaped with his life and all his limbs, Sirius’s potentially lethal plot has made a deep impression on him.
25. In Which the Author is in as Much of a Panic as her Characters Running from a Werewolf
By the time I had finished page fourteen, I was almost desperate. Johane Matte’s deadline was upon me, and my story wasn’t yet at an end! In fact, my outline asked for some twenty pages in all - but it was absolutely unfeasible for me to draw five pages (fifteen had been the very first one to be done) in only one week. I would have to end the tale sooner than originally planned. Actually I had wanted to draw Snape’s confrontation with Dumbledore, because I hadn’t shown any of that in my prose story either, and it seemed an interesting episode. But it would take three pages - three pages I didn’t have the time to draw. I very much regretted having to cut them, but I had no choice. Without Dumbledore, I could finish the story in only two more pages, and if I worked very hard, I could do those within the space of a week. (In the end, I had to take two days off work in order to make it, but don’t tell anyone. Not that it’s anyone’s business how I choose to spend my holidays, but still…)
In any case: watch me panic. I had to improvise, which in the case of comics is a tricky business. But o miracle - I ended up pulling it all off in a way that doesn’t make me blush :D.
I started off with one particular image, of Snape’s anger breaking through his tears:
I pretty much built the rest of the page around that face - literally; it ended up right at the centre of page sixteen. On the sketch page below you can see that I composed the dialogue in pencil. I also broke it down in panels. It is a tiny bit more extensive than what I ended up using; that usually happens when I transfer the text onto the page. Below, drawn with a brush pen, is a first tentative visualisation of the dialogue.
This was the basis; I continued from there to fill the page. If you compare the sketches to the final product, you will notice that I didn’t play around much. As soon as I struck on a convenient image, I used it. I just didn’t have the time to do a lot of experimenting. Luckily pages sixteen and seventeen don’t require much in the way of spectacle; the story is after all slowing down to its ending.
There are several bits about page sixteen that I like - for instance, Sirius and Peter arriving on the scene and lifting some of the gloom. (I found throughout the story that Snape imposed a dark atmosphere. Even before I read how in HBP he redecorated the DADA classroom, his personality left that same kind of imprint on my style. It was always a relief when the Marauders showed up and brought a little light-heartedness with them.) But I guess my favourite bit is the last, broad panel that shows the dynamics between James, Sirius and Peter at that moment; I’m also very fond of Peter’s face in that one - it’s one of the few times that it came out exactly the way I wanted it :-). The sketch shows up on the same page that holds the text for page seventeen (I was composing them together), as well as one of the things I had been aching to draw for some time: McGonagall with her hair down! :P
I had the text and a few images that I liked. That is when I drew a thumbnail to fit everything together. (I’m not sure of the logic of the sequence I followed here *g*… The proper thing to do is probably to get a thumbnail first and then skecth what you need, but - well, I remind you of the title I have been giving to these entries...) There was quite a bit of moving around before all the panels were in my view adequately placed.
There are no further sketches for this page. It is mostly heads, and heads are easy. I drew them directly on the final page.
This time, quite contrary to my usual practice, I pencilled both pages before starting to ink number sixteen - I wanted to be quite, quite sure that everything would fit, because I knew I couldn’t afford to draw an extra page in case it didn’t. It was the best way to go about it, I think, but it was pretty blech. I don’t know whether it is proof of hard work or rather of lack of practice/faulty technique, but inking two pages in a row left my fingers aching something terrible. In fact, I began to wonder whether I couldn’t do a comic without inks in the future XD. But at least I had made it in time. I could send the story to Johane, and prove to my friends that I am perfectly capable of finishing a comic, though admittedly a short one ;-).
…Actually, this is where a big chunk of the story only just begins, isn’t it? At least, that’s how it seems to me :-).
Thank you very much for reading, and especially for commenting :D. You have made the sharing of this story a great pleasure to me!
I hope you enjoy the story’s end!
The Comic So Far:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page Five
Page Six
Page Seven
Page Eight
Page Nine
Page Ten
Page Eleven
Page Twelve
Page Thirteen
Page Fourteen
Page Fifteen
You Are Here:
Having been lured to the Shrieking Shack on a night with a full moon, Severus Snape is about to have a most painful encounter with Remus Lupin in his wolf form when he is held back by James Potter. The two boys manage to make their way to the safety of Hogwarts in time, but though Severus has escaped with his life and all his limbs, Sirius’s potentially lethal plot has made a deep impression on him.
25. In Which the Author is in as Much of a Panic as her Characters Running from a Werewolf
By the time I had finished page fourteen, I was almost desperate. Johane Matte’s deadline was upon me, and my story wasn’t yet at an end! In fact, my outline asked for some twenty pages in all - but it was absolutely unfeasible for me to draw five pages (fifteen had been the very first one to be done) in only one week. I would have to end the tale sooner than originally planned. Actually I had wanted to draw Snape’s confrontation with Dumbledore, because I hadn’t shown any of that in my prose story either, and it seemed an interesting episode. But it would take three pages - three pages I didn’t have the time to draw. I very much regretted having to cut them, but I had no choice. Without Dumbledore, I could finish the story in only two more pages, and if I worked very hard, I could do those within the space of a week. (In the end, I had to take two days off work in order to make it, but don’t tell anyone. Not that it’s anyone’s business how I choose to spend my holidays, but still…)
In any case: watch me panic. I had to improvise, which in the case of comics is a tricky business. But o miracle - I ended up pulling it all off in a way that doesn’t make me blush :D.
I started off with one particular image, of Snape’s anger breaking through his tears:
I pretty much built the rest of the page around that face - literally; it ended up right at the centre of page sixteen. On the sketch page below you can see that I composed the dialogue in pencil. I also broke it down in panels. It is a tiny bit more extensive than what I ended up using; that usually happens when I transfer the text onto the page. Below, drawn with a brush pen, is a first tentative visualisation of the dialogue.
This was the basis; I continued from there to fill the page. If you compare the sketches to the final product, you will notice that I didn’t play around much. As soon as I struck on a convenient image, I used it. I just didn’t have the time to do a lot of experimenting. Luckily pages sixteen and seventeen don’t require much in the way of spectacle; the story is after all slowing down to its ending.
There are several bits about page sixteen that I like - for instance, Sirius and Peter arriving on the scene and lifting some of the gloom. (I found throughout the story that Snape imposed a dark atmosphere. Even before I read how in HBP he redecorated the DADA classroom, his personality left that same kind of imprint on my style. It was always a relief when the Marauders showed up and brought a little light-heartedness with them.) But I guess my favourite bit is the last, broad panel that shows the dynamics between James, Sirius and Peter at that moment; I’m also very fond of Peter’s face in that one - it’s one of the few times that it came out exactly the way I wanted it :-). The sketch shows up on the same page that holds the text for page seventeen (I was composing them together), as well as one of the things I had been aching to draw for some time: McGonagall with her hair down! :P
I had the text and a few images that I liked. That is when I drew a thumbnail to fit everything together. (I’m not sure of the logic of the sequence I followed here *g*… The proper thing to do is probably to get a thumbnail first and then skecth what you need, but - well, I remind you of the title I have been giving to these entries...) There was quite a bit of moving around before all the panels were in my view adequately placed.
There are no further sketches for this page. It is mostly heads, and heads are easy. I drew them directly on the final page.
This time, quite contrary to my usual practice, I pencilled both pages before starting to ink number sixteen - I wanted to be quite, quite sure that everything would fit, because I knew I couldn’t afford to draw an extra page in case it didn’t. It was the best way to go about it, I think, but it was pretty blech. I don’t know whether it is proof of hard work or rather of lack of practice/faulty technique, but inking two pages in a row left my fingers aching something terrible. In fact, I began to wonder whether I couldn’t do a comic without inks in the future XD. But at least I had made it in time. I could send the story to Johane, and prove to my friends that I am perfectly capable of finishing a comic, though admittedly a short one ;-).
…Actually, this is where a big chunk of the story only just begins, isn’t it? At least, that’s how it seems to me :-).
Thank you very much for reading, and especially for commenting :D. You have made the sharing of this story a great pleasure to me!