Recently I've been on a comic book kick. I got nostalgic for the comic titles I collected as a kid and wanted to see what those characters have been up to lately, as well as catch up on stories I missed out on. For the last month or two I've been reading old issues from Marvel and DC every night. One of my favorite comics, which started out as a cartoon series, was Batman Beyond. I always thought it was a little underrated and had a lot more potential to grow. It got me to thinking: I have a great Batman Beyond story, how would I "screenwrite" for a comic book? That's the kind of person I am; always wanting to learn everything about every art that I'm interested in and make one of my own. In fact, I may even make it my life's goal to have at least one successful work of art in film, literature, comics, television, and video games. I should probably try and focus on one success first.
Anyway, this lead me to wonder how comics are made. As a kid, I always noticed that they had writers in the credits of the comics and they were separate from the artists, and I was curious what it took to be a writer for comic books? Do they fill in the blanks for an artist? Do they tell the artist what to draw? How does that all come together since art and writing seem so interdependent art forms that need to be in sync in a comic. Somehow or another I found my way to the book, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. It appears to be a standard in the industry, someone even wrote a spoof of it. It was easy to get through not only because it's written in comic form, but because it's a fascinating look into the art and philosophy behind comics and even art in general. The author knows so well how comics work and how the reader's brain will react that he'll often tell the reader how he's currently reacting to a previous panel. Very cool. It also made me want to look more into famous art movements. Of course, the book also touched on story-writing as well. There's great art theory about lines and color and why comics choose the styles they use. All in all, great read, highly recommended.
Anyway, this lead me to wonder how comics are made. As a kid, I always noticed that they had writers in the credits of the comics and they were separate from the artists, and I was curious what it took to be a writer for comic books? Do they fill in the blanks for an artist? Do they tell the artist what to draw? How does that all come together since art and writing seem so interdependent art forms that need to be in sync in a comic. Somehow or another I found my way to the book, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. It appears to be a standard in the industry, someone even wrote a spoof of it. It was easy to get through not only because it's written in comic form, but because it's a fascinating look into the art and philosophy behind comics and even art in general. The author knows so well how comics work and how the reader's brain will react that he'll often tell the reader how he's currently reacting to a previous panel. Very cool. It also made me want to look more into famous art movements. Of course, the book also touched on story-writing as well. There's great art theory about lines and color and why comics choose the styles they use. All in all, great read, highly recommended.
The next thing I wanted to know was formatting. It appears every company has their own style. They're all pretty similar, but with subtle nuances. If one were going to submit to one of these companies, he should look into their specific format first. For my purposes, I just wanted to see the basic format and how it differs from the screen. I found a great script format example on Dark Horse's website. The PDF in the link has most of the scenarios typical to comics such as how to format for sound-effects, speech, narration, etc. It answers a lot of the questions I had in regard to how much art planning the writer does. Understanding that he's responsible for determining panel content and quantity was really interesting, and in general I really liked this doc because I could see more of the technical process. I'd love to get a chance to check out a comic production company or get any feedback from someone in the industry.
So, this was a fun adventuring into how comics work. I'm still interested in learning more. I start character design classes at the Animation Academy next Tuesday, so as I'm practicing designing characters, I will more than likely want to throw some story in. I'm also really excited to get this Batman Beyond story onto paper, but I have a few writing projects ahead of it, that it's going to have to go on the back-burner. This week, I will be focused on writing for my feature script, DeathWorld, so no updates on my Unity game until the week of the 10th.
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