I read someplace that you should make rules for yourself when working on your own project like a graphic novel. One of my rules is to have a maximum of 4 panels per page unless it's the same camera angle repeated over and over. This repeated frame technique is pretty much inspired completely from working in the world of animation and storyboards for the last decade. Sometimes it's fun to explore a locked down sequence of frames to show the movements and visually explain how things happen over a period of time.
I guess my decisions here are mainly to show Victuals struggle to leave the comfort of the lighthouse to get back to the water. I'm hoping that my audience will wonder why he left the lighthouse as well as notice the first words coming from his mouth. Cat's talk?
Oh yeah, and I'm not using Comic Sans anymore.
Another thing I have been toying with is the idea of switching from Google's blogging service to WordPress.org. A few things have come up swaying me to go this route.
Here is a list of my reasons, so far, for switching from Blogger to WordPress.
- WordPress looks much more professional.
- Since it's open-source it has more options for how to set it up.
- Once it's set up right, it's amazing what you can do with it and it's easy.
- reMINDblog.com will be an actual domain instead of a forwarded domain name.
- All the content will be on my server and controlled by me.
- I can use ComicPress to easily display my pages in an orderly fashion.
- I can have a menu at the top with About, Contact, Links, Tutorials, Etc.
- Blogger is just SOOOOOO easy to setup, I will miss that.
- Now I need to pay for a server.
- Lots of my artist friends are on Blogger so I don't want to be an outcast. (don't laugh at me)
- I might have to start over trying to get traffic if I switch over.
Nice page, the repetition works well. I like the idea of making rules for your project but I'm curious why you decided on a four panel limit per page. Was it an arbitrary choice or do you think pages function better with a low panel count?
I came to the decision after reading Mouse Guard issue #1 shortly after it came out. I was so inspired by the simplicity of the story and how every page was a work of art. I found as many of them as I could at the time and noticed that there was a max of four panels per page. This seemed to keep each page simple and clean because it wasn't cluttered trying to jam 14 story points into a page. Instead the reader could just focus on the simple point of the page. That's the main reason I chose 4 per page. I think it all depends on what you want to covey as a writer/artist in your GN.
nice spread j
you would certainly be missed!
and of course i would follow your new blog if you switched but how could i tell you when i finally got my pages uploaded?
Scheier – Thank you once again!
Erich – I will just subscribe to your RSS feed and be emailed when you post something new. Don't worry, I will definitely be staying in touch. After all, how many of us are trying to make our own GN and posting the progress.
Ah, the ancient debate over of WordPress vs. Blogger.
I myself have been using Blogger for my comic for two years now, and started playing with self-hosted WordPress for the new project I’m working on.
The main advantages that I see with Blogger are that it’s free, and fairly easy to use. But WordPress is much better, in so many ways:
• You can use ComicPress. Only after struggling for months with customizing a Blogger template and scrapping for scripts that will give you only part of ComicPress can do, do you learn to appreciate the true value of ComicPress.
• Changing layouts is so much easier with WordPress. In comparison, try changing a blogger template after you installed several Widgets and scripts pnto it. The problem with the Blogger template is that the layout (CSS) is on the same file as the content (widgets, scripts). In WordPress you can edit several different CSS files, without changing the content.
• Blogger can be fine with displaying images as long as you stick with your blogspot domain (it uses Picasa for that). But once you switch to your own custom domain, you get annoying restrictions on image sizes that can be displayed in your blog from Picasa. Then you have to revert to using such services as flickr or tinypic. WordPress doesn’t really solve this, but self hosting does – you’ll store your images on your own host (and ComicPress will handle the technicalities for you).
So, judging by my own experience, I’d say self-hosted WordPress is better, definitely. And it’s worth every penny. The only reason I’m still using Blogger for my comic is that I already managed to have something good working there, and I don’t have spare time to invest in migrating everything to WordPress. But as mentioned, for any new projects, I’ll go with self-hosted WordPress… as long as I can afford it :-)
Good luck!
Personally I find if it's not a blog I don't tend to follow it. It just drops off my radar, no matter how much I love the content. I suppose it depends if you want the site to best display your pages (WordPress) or just track the progress of their creation (Blogger).
Hey Jason – thanks for the plug. Keep hammering away at these fantastic pages. With a bit of patience and some elbow grease, things will fall into place quicker than you think!
Good luck!
Hey Drezz, Wow, the first one to comment on the upgraded reMINDblog. Thanks for all your advice.
I like the new look to your blog. Awesome! It looks very dynamic! Great job. On the debate between Blogger and WordPress. I’m a big fan of wordpress, that’s what I use form my own blog.
-Shazam!