Posts Tagged ‘page layout’

10 results.

reMIND cover…maybe.

by Jason Brubaker on September 8, 2009 at 3:25 pm
reMIND cover…maybe.
 
Here is, what was until recently, the final cover for reMIND.  I really wanted to make Sonja(the girl) showcased on the cover and Victuals(the cat) secondary even though the cat is the main character of the book.  The reason is mainly because I thought having a cool chick on the cover of my graphic novel would sell more copies then a precious little kitty picture.  I guess to the audience I was trying to hit anyway.
 
After all I'm going to print this thing hardbound and it needs to sell a few more copies then the guaranteed three to my family.  So everyone seemed to like this cover, and there were some who thought that I intentionally placed a cat at the crotch of Sonja to be a sexual innuendo. Well, I'm sorry to deflate your perverse perspective but that was not my thought process here.  The linear positioning of the cat, girl, and lighthouse just looks really nice to me and I'd buy this book (I think) if I saw it somewhere, assuming the insides were nice as well.
 
I held fast to my non-perverted cover for quite a while but then I decided to email Kazu.  Yes, I'm talking about the Kazu from the Flight anthology.  I was curious what his opinion was about my book and if he had any suggestions.  He kindly mentioned that it might go over well with a comic publisher like Image or Dark Horse but he didn't think the cover looked like a children's book in which a book publisher like Random House or Scholastic would be interested.
 
You see, ever since Jeff Smith started publishing Bone through Random House I've been hooked on this idea that I want to get published by a book publisher, not a comic publisher.  It seems to me like Image doesn't care one way or another if you sell your books or not. There's no real effort on their part to push any sales from what I can see.  Forgive me if you love Image.  That's just my paradigm of the company and I could be totally wrong.
 
So, recently after talking to a few other people about all this, I've decided to draw a new cover that mainly focuses on the cat in his super suit.(that's not really what it's called)  My new cover should focus more on showing off the idea that it's a story about a cat and not a hot chick with a cat.

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Page Progression: Thumbnails to a Finished Painted Comic Page

by Jason Brubaker on November 16, 2009 at 10:50 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

I hope you enjoy this spread because I thought about it way to much. For a simple comic-page layout, I must have sketched 20 versions before finally satisfied. I had the idea of splitting the cats head into different panels early on and it opened a giant can of worms. You might also notice the greenish red hand behind the cat which was another time-suck for me. I still don’t know how obvious I want this hand to be. At one point I had a shadow on the cats body but that never looked quite right.

On the right side is my ode to Christian Schellewald I guess. You see, I bought his book, LA/SF, at the San Diego Comic Con in 2006 after looking through the entire convention. It was one of the only books that really stood out to me, besides Joshua Middleton’s Sky Between Branches. Schellewald’s book is filled with amazing little guasch paintings and sketches of completely normal things. Mostly streets, airplanes, and palm trees, but with every sketch is an amazing composition and what amazed me most was his use of negative space. Almost an entire panel would be painted white and then the lower third would be a cool tree or something. This really opened my eyes to a few things. One, negative space is a really good thing. And two, the whole guash painting approach is a good thing too. I know what you are thinking right now. This guy can’t write to save his life. I know, I know, I may not be J.K. Rowling when it comes to sharing my thoughts but I sure know when I love an artistic style.
Schellewald’s and Middleton’s books are some of the biggest influences on this graphic novel. Middleton’s sketches on his blog just make my head spin. You might have to dig a little for them but it’s worth it.

Anyway, I loved the negative space idea and as you can see, I wholeheartedly applied it to the right side of this page.

Below are a few of the steps that I had to take to get this finished spread.

A step is missing here where I blew up this thumbnail and printed it on 8.5 x 11 paper and traced over it using tracing paper and a bald point pen.
This is the final line work after blowing it up again and printing it on two sheets of legal paper (8.5 x 14) taped together.  I used a light table, bristol board and a mechanical pencil. Scanned to Photoshop, adjusted the contrast and presto.

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WordPress or Blogger?

by Jason Brubaker on January 11, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog
Here is spread 9 of reMIND. 
 

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.
Cons about switching to WordPress from Google's Blogger.
  • 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.
I'm sure there is more that I can add to these list's but for now this is all I can think of.
 
Anyone want to chime in on this?
 
Also, I wanted to thank Drezz at iDrawDigital for writing an article about reMIND!  Go and check out his blog all about comics if you have a minute.
 

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reMIND – Spread 10

by Jason Brubaker on January 18, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Click image to enlarge.

I have to say that this is almost my favorite finished spread. I just love how the lighting turned out with the warm sun blasting everything in the bedroom and kitchen. This was also around the time I started running out of large Bristol board sheets in which to put a full spread.  I wanted to finish another page that Saturday and I had a bunch of animation paper laying around so I decided to draw individual frames on it instead. What I discovered changed my whole process and I've never looked back.  

You see, back in the day it was ingrained into my mind that I needed to layout a comic page on Blue Line Pro.  When shrunk down 65% it fits exactly to a standard comic size page. Everything had to be perfected on that Blue Line Pro because there was no Photoshop at my fingertips to edit any mistakes. Until recently I always felt like I needed to draw all the panels together, after all, how would I sell the originals if it wasn't nicely arranged exactly as it is in the comic.

Well, I'm here to tell you when I tried to sell original art at the Ape Con a few years ago along other graphic novel publishers, I had more luck selling small originals then selling large ones. In fact I sold about 20 small originals that were 4" x 4" and three that were 4" x 8". Nothing larger then that sold. Hmmm. Maybe my large artwork sucks but that's not the point.

To this day I draw all the frames separately except for sometimes with a few small ones. I like the idea of arranging it all in Photoshop however I want. I still stick very closely to my original thumbnail and sketches which are all still drawn as a whole. The only things I'm still unhappy with, on this page, are the ugly blue sound effects.  I really need to draw something better to replace them.

Here is the thumbnail.

And here are the finished frames.

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Spread 11 – reMIND

by Jason Brubaker on January 25, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Here is spread 11 of reMIND. Click to enlarge.

This spread was a fun test. A test to see if I could push your eyes back and forth between the same frames. Feel free to throw out any ideas to make this work better if you think it's broken. There are just so many rules that people create when trying to explain how to do something. Comics and graphic novels have a handful when trying to lead the eye around the page. I think I understand the rules. The fact is, as long as the average person can read the story without getting pulled out of the scene because they are confused then I feel like I've had success. And if the average person can think, "Hmmm, that was different but I liked it for some reason." then I'm a superstar in my own mind.  

Speaking of superstars. I need to hand out a bunch of "Thank you's" in this post so hold on to your seats.

Last week was a roller coaster for me.  Every night after work I was up till the wee hours of the morning testing my new WordPress blog, transferring over old posts, downloading plug-ins, deleting plug-ins, testing layouts, wondering what I'm doing, reading help forums, testing links, fixing links and emailing my friend for help while crying.  I got in seriously over my head and I promised I'd deliver two posts a week to my 11 Google followers. What was I thinking? By Wednesday night everything was up and running like planned thanks to my longtime friend and shorttime IT guru, Rand Fugate, who wrote all the CSS madness in the background to make my sweet menu bar look totally rad!  

Just in time too because literally 2 hours later, Jerry from CartoonBrew, wrote an amazing article about reMIND releasing the floodgates of traffic to scour and pour over every crevice of my newborn blog to it's embarrassingly short end.  Thursday I got the same amount of hits every 15 minutes as I'd normally get in a day.  That was a rush.  That day at work, people were giving me high-fives down the hallway and beautiful women were winking. Okay, so maybe not, but I still felt pretty cool about myself.

Later on, BlackStar9000, put a link to reMIND on Reddit.com.  I've never heard of Reddit before but, WOW, that place really generates traffic too. Thanks Blackstar9000, whoever you are!  You alone sent over 1000 unique viewers to my time-suck and are on my list of new heroes. So if anyone is reading this, can you do me a huge favor and go to Reddit to vote up reMIND or down if you really must.  I still need all the help I can get!

Then Saturday rolls around and Nate Simpson links to reMIND from ProjectWaldo! Thanks Nate!!! ProjectWaldo has greatly inspired me in so many ways and Nate's blog is the best thing on the internet in my opinion. So go there right now if you've never heard of it. Click on his pages and see the magic.

So thanks for all your comments last week and several emails. I really enjoyed responding to everyone. It was a real shot in the arm. In fact, now I REALLY need to step up my game and get more pages finished.  

Some of the emails I received brought up the following points that I promise to address in the near future.

  • I need more in depth coloring tutorials and my process of creating tones.
  • What do you do with flats? Why make them?
  • Explain how I use paint textures in my pages.
  • My writing sucks and seems cliche. Why don't I hire a professional to help me?
  • How would someone approach coloring a comic with different mediums like colored pencils or watercolors.

To add to bullet point number 4. If anyone sees any grammar or spelling errors then feel free to let me know. You are my temporary editors until Jeremy Barlow rocks it!  Spelling and grammar are my mortal enemies.

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T-shirts and Postcards

by Jason Brubaker on May 10, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Here are pages 52 and 53 of reMIND. Click to enlarge. Right-click to open full size in a new window.

This was a fun spread not only to show off the crazy ideas in my head but also because it has a interesting composition. I really wanted to push the way the panels were laid out in an open book. If you divide the two pages exactly in half you will notice that the fold is going to be cutting through the large left image. I’m not sure if this is done a lot in comics or graphic novels but I’ve been consciously doing it every now and then in reMIND just to make an interesting looking book. There’s also something about all that empty space in the bottom of the last frame that really makes me happy.  I wish I could give a more in depth analysis of these pages but its Mother’s Day (the day I wrote this) and my wife needs more attention then this blog so I gotta get to the point and cut this short.

I’ve got some cool tutorials in the works on how I color this graphic novel. I’ll have more info soon once I get it all together but from the looks of it, it will be a 7 week set of tutorials to cover the whole process.

T-Shirts and Post Cards

The T-shirts are in and looking sweet. Here are some pics of my personal collection after they were washed. The second picture is the back which says “reMIND a graphic novel”.

One thing I realized while printing up this first batch is how much I don’t know about T-shirt sizes. For instance, I only printed a few sizes in XL and this is about the second most popular size request. That’s what I get for assuming everyone is a weak little wimp like me. From now on the shirts will go for the fairly standard price of $15 plus shipping($4.00 for US residence). So the new total is $19 for a shirt. No more gorilla packs for $10. Sorry. That was just a pre-order deal but I might offer something like that again for the next shirt whenever I get around to making another.

I also printed up 100 high quality postcards to hand out at comic stores and pin up on bulletin boards. I’m putting a few in each gorilla pack too. The cards are getting here on Wednesday so it looks like the Gorilla Packs will be sent a few days later then I thought. Sorry about that. Here’s what they look like.

Only a few more shirts are in stock which are:

Small – Sold Out

Medium – 6

Large – 5

[EDIT] My paypal button isn’t working again so instead just use the donation box to the left. Make sure to make it for $19 (this includes shipping) and include your address and shirt size. If you want a shirt sent outside of the US then add whatever amount you think will cover the extra shipping costs. ONLY MEDIUM AND LARGE SHIRTS LEFT.

I’m going to be selling some of these to friends at work so grab them while you can. I’m not sure when I’m going to print more but I guarantee I will make some XL and XXL next time. Thanks for all your support in buying the Gorilla Pack pre-orders and being willing to hang up fliers and cards for reMIND in your little hubs.

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Making Comics – Thumbnails

by Jason Brubaker on May 13, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Page Layouts and Thumbnails - How I Started

Planning out pages has been the most challenging aspect of creating reMIND and when planning a good set of pages, I always start with thumbnails. I’ve mentioned it before in the past assuming everyone knows what I’m talking about but since every artist is unique with their workflow I figure I should show the early stages of mine. I also noticed many young artists visiting here, trying to make heads or tails on how to start their own comic or graphic novel so hopefully this can shed some light on the subject enough to get the ball rolling.

After I finish a loose script (and I mean loose. No dialogue. A script with the main plot points. About a chapter per page) I started my thumbnails. Thumbnails are super small drawings just to get the initial ideas of composition and page layouts out of my head and on paper. Sometimes I have a clear idea in my mind but most of the time I don’t. If I have absolutely no idea where to start I force something out, however crude it may be, and this usually gives way to ideas that eventually start to gel.

I usually don’t like to show my thumbnails because they are so sloppy and bad. In the case of the pages above, you can really see where I struggled to figure out what to do. There are a few rehashed versions of the same things. Now days I like to draw my thumbnails with ink. This forces me away from little details. If I mess up then I have to start another one. It keeps the ideas fluid and loose.

Thumbnails can easily get really messy and scattered here and there and lost on small random pieces of paper. To battle this bad habit I’ve learned to keep all my thumbnails in nice tidy sketchbooks. I learned this working with many commercial directors. Many would keep similar hard bound sketchbooks clearly marked for each project in which they could collect all their random thoughts.

I started doing this for reMIND long before it was a graphic novel. The top book with the Fuel sticker is full of storyboards and concept art when I was planning on making reMIND an animation called “Vittles”. Most of these pages are full of clipped sketches and thumbnails, taped down to keep organized. I’m glad I did this otherwise I would have lost track of most of it.

This is the first image of Victuals (Vittles at the time) that I liked. I cut it out and taped it to the front page. Yeah, that says Tender Vittles 3.2 for some dumb reason. I just like that cat food name. I don’t have a cat…really. I don’t even really like cats. I just like drawing Victuals.

Above are some storyboard thumbnails for the animated version in it’s extremely early stages. The yellow panels were sticky notes that I later taped in the book. The lower left page is the first sketch of a lizard man. Sonja was going to be a boy at one point and above is a sketch.

Anyway, that’s my way to develop ideas. I’ve got to keep it all organized or I never get anything finished. And hey, it’s fun to look at later on…or put in a blog.

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SUPER RED!

by Jason Brubaker on June 3, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Posted In: Blog

So first off, I want to welcome all the new viewers from Sarah Ellerton’s The Phoenix Requiem. She is so nice to give me a link on the front page of her site. It’s more than I could have ever asked for and I am super grateful! It’s exciting to see all the new visitors and comments. I’ve noticed a bunch of new notes to address on older pages with typos. I assure you I’ll get to ‘em soon but for now I have a SUPER RED crab to blind you with. Only because I had several people interested in seeing it.

So here is the final version, first, so you can see the difference easily.

And here is the SUPER RED version that almost made the cut. I’m sure there is a group who likes this one better than what I chose. When the book is printed, you can print out the SUPER RED version and tape it over the page if you want.

And because I still like it strangely enough for unknown reasons, I’ll throw in the old version of the left page. There was a middle version where I tried to implement the crab into this version but it looked awful so I just threw it out. It’s better if it’s not seen anyway.

In addition to next weeks new pages, I’ll post a sweet interview with Trent Kaniuga, the creator behind CreeD. We started a Google document just talking about the creative process of making comics and graphic novels. I’m sure you’ll like it if your interested in behind the scenes stuff. I’m just waiting to get some cool new art from Trent to top it all off. See you Monday!

P.S. Please vote for reMIND so I can get into the top 100 this month! VOTE HERE!

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And Then I Blacked Out

by Jason Brubaker on June 7, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

To my relief, we are finally at the end of our flashback. Talk about a burden off my shoulders. You see, now that it’s out there for everyone to see, I can’t trick myself into rethinking it anymore than I should. When I write stories, (not saying I’m a writer or anything) I always get hung up on what needs to happen at what time and how much is too much information. As you can see, I like stories that keep you guessing. I just hope that after 3 months of flashbacks, you can forgive me for not exactly explaining how Victuals became a cat.

Last week I said I’d start posting page specific info under the pages but I decided to change my mind again. I’ll keep all my long winded jabbering here on the blog so I don’t have to write two posts. Just trying to keep you on your toes. Click the image below to see the new pages then swing back here for more info below.

This page was one of the last pages I colored before I took a long break from reMIND back in 2009. I made some minor adjustments to it before posting it and was tempted to dial every color around resulting in a completely new piece. I saw myself opening a massive can of worms so I quickly deleted all the new color tests to stick with the original. It’s hard because I feel like I’ve learned so much about color in the last year that some of my older pages feel flat. I used to enjoy making the colors really flat because it was the only way I knew how. Not saying I’m way better now, just more daring I think.

Well, hope your ready to move forward with the story now. I know I am, and trust me, it gets crazy. More stuff will be revealed soon, so bare with me.

This week I finally finessed 6 pages that have been giving me a run for my money. I finally cracked the color pallet and I’m very relieved. To celebrate, I whipped open my sketchbook and frantically scribbled thumbnails for book 2 of reMIND knowing that it still needed lots of figuring out. I can’t do thumbnails very long because they drain on my brain. I’m happy to say I figured out some of the stranger pages.

On the other hand, I’ve been a bit antsy this week because I should be hearing from the Xeric Foundation soon regarding their decision to give me $5000 in grant money to help print reMIND. If they decide to give me the cash, it will relieve sooooooo much financial pressure on this project. Wow.

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The Phoenix Requiem

So last week I decided to be really bold and email two of the top notch webcomics out there to introduce myself. These guys get hounded by webcomics all the time, trying to share links or get free promotion so I knew I could easily just be ignored. To my surprise, both of them responded right away with kind words about my comic. Sarah Ellerton of The Phoenix Requiem tweeted a link to reMIND the next morning sending over 100 visits alone.

Later that day she plugged my comic on the front page of her site sending a massive throng to devour and savor tender Victuals. I’m super grateful for how willing talented people are to support this project in it’s early stages. If any of you are not already coming from Phoenix Requiem, then you’ve really gotta see what an amazing graphic novel she is doing. It’s massive and very professional unlike 99% of the webcomics out there.

I’ll talk about who the other top notch webcomic is next week.

Oh yeah, since Sarah showered kindness on reMIND I’ve gotten so much traffic that I’ve moved up to number 3 on the ComicBlogElite! I took a screen capture just to prove it.

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T-shirt Update

Last week I was emailed to see if any more shirts were left. I still have about 5 medium and 5 large left. If anyone wants one just donate at least $19 and let me know the size and your address. This pays for shipping and handling too. If you are in Europe (as many of my last buyer were) then please add an additional $9 to your donation to cover the shipping charges.

Recap: $19 for US. $28 for Europe. Only Medium and Large in stock. Here is a picture incase you missed it last time. Front and back.

[EDIT]   Only 1 medium and 2 large shirts left now.

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One of reMIND’s true fans, Andy Bailey, sent me an email saying he got his t-shirt. He attached a cool picture of his placement of reMIND postcards at his restaurant in the U.K. Check it out! Thanks for the pic Andy! In case your interested, Andy has a wordpress plugin called CommentLuv. Download it at comluv.com.

If anyone is brave enough, I’d love to see some pics of you wearing your reMIND shirts. I’ll post them here so my 20 fans can appreciate it as well. Come on, you know you want to be internet famous.

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Last but not least, please vote for reMIND at TopWebComics. If you do, I’ll show you a panel of the next page. Here’s a link:

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Thumbnails to Color – Pages 68 and 69

by Jason Brubaker on July 15, 2010 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

These last few weeks have been filled with late nights working on my Kickstarter video that soon switched to late nights celebrating at the amount of pledges. Then once the elation settled I spent a few late nights stressing about all the people who are now expecting a book or painting. I need a chiropractor after the amount of hours I spent bending my head towards the computer. I seriously need to start working on reMIND again. Oh yeah, AND my tutorials. Sorry about that. I promise to get back on it… after the San Diego Comic Con. Yeah, sorry about that too.

Getting my pages finished is the first goal here and I’m happy to say that I spent last night working on the same page I’ve been working on for the last 3 weeks. Yeah, I know. I need to hurry because you want your book.

Let me take a moment to thank you all for your amazing support in all this. I am truly overwhelmed with the amount of money given to this project. At the time of this writing (Wednesday night), we only have $652 left to raise in pledges to hit my ultimate goal of $6000.  At the rate we are going this should happen in a few days. What does this mean? Well, with the grant money of $5000 and the $6000 in pledges, we have reached the $11,000 price tag needed to print reMIND in it’s beautiful cloth binding. I thought this goal was a long way off and I never really thought about what I would do with any money over that amount. At this point I think it will go towards more books. I have a few other ideas that I’m thinking about as a special thank you to all the pledgers.

Anyway, since I don’t have a finely tuned post for this Thursday, I’ll substitute it with a few process pieces. Here are all the steps I took in getting to the finished piece of pages 68 and 69. Notice how the thumbnails didn’t have the first 3 frames of Cyrene at the top. I also had to adjust some of the frames to make room. During the sketch process I usually draw on tracing paper with a pen but this time I used a Prismacolor pencil for some reason. Sometimes I just feel like it I guess. The final lines where with a mechanical pencil as usual but as you can see I couldn’t figure out Sonja’s body very well so I fixed it up in Photoshop before the coloring process.

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