"Ithaqa" Comic Update #3 Thumbnails And The Creative Process

So my artist has provided me with a full set of thumbnails for Issue 1 (The Fool).

(More thumbnails at the bottom if you want to skip my words.) And you should check out Theresa Chiechi's website to see some of her fully fleshed out work. (http://www.theresachiechi.com/)

I'd like to talk briefly about what these are, and why I requested them. Thumbnails are when the artist starts to sketch out a very loose plan for themselves to try and visualize how the panels can fit together and convey a story.

A lot of the time the thumbnails are only used for the artist to reference, but as a writer who writes a pretty full script, I ask to see them. At this stage it is very easy to fix/change things, and I'm not a fan of wasting my artists time.

You'll notice that Theresa has made all kinds of notes on the pages, like "Margaret actually should be in frame" or "can we make this two panels"? Since I'm peeking in on the thumbnails we can address these questions together, quickly, and all the time it takes is to erase a few stick figures.

90% of the time I just go with whatever Theresa suggests because she's the art professional and I'm a shmuck who can't draw for shit. It's important to remember, however, that the artist and the writer are tackling the same story from two very different angles and with different priorities.

For example on page 21 Theresa wanted to be more efficient as an artist and condense 2 panels into 1. This gives her additional space to make the other panels more detailed, (a very important consideration!) but I as the writer am coming not from the perspective of efficiency and detail, I'm concerned with my comedic "beats" or moments getting through.

!

I like having that extra silent panel to give the reader a second before the joke's punchline, because I feel it will flow better in that format. Herein lies the importance of a writer taking a look at the thumbnails (in my opinion).

If I had waited until Theresa had drawn the pencils to notice that we had a difference of opinion, it would take her a lot more time to fix, because she would have started to draw full pages in decent detail by that point.

Going over the thumbnails also gave us some time to spitball together and find creative solutions to problems presented in the script. As the writer I am always trying to cram more panels onto a page than I should (there's just so much story I want to tell!!) We were able to find a number of places where we could condense 2 panels into 1, or sometimes add a panel where one was needed.

Theresa also gave me some much needed pointers on comic book perspective and counseled me from using so many "birds eye view" shots. As a film maker my cinematic mind sometimes gets in the way of what works best for comics.

So anyway enough about me, check out the future layout for issue 1 below, thank you for reading this far! Next up will be the pencils, and I'll be sure to upload them as they come.

If you want to stay up to date on the project please give me a follow, either here or on facebook or instagram (below).
FB: https://www.facebook.com/pg/IthaqaComic/about/?ref=page_internal
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ithaqacomic/