With the recent demand for More Bootcamps in the 'Defaults' thread, I thought now's the time to start my own (with Pyras's blessing).
So without furthur ado...
The long and short of it is basically:
I'm gonna teach you how I make comics.After your battle or your BB is complete, you're free to hold on to everything you've learned and cherish it forever, or say "fuck that noise" and you do you. Ideally, you take what works for you and ditch what doesn't. Hell, most of my method is comprised of a buncha other methods smashed together. So no hard feelings there.
The only real requirement to sign up is that you gotta want it. Like, you gotta really
want it. I've got no issue spending a lotta time with someone who can sit there and tell me they wanna do comics the rest of their life and wanna put in the effort. That's the ideal. If it's just some passing fancy and you wanna pick up some tips and tricks and finish your comic 'whenever', then this ain't the camp for you.
Here's gonna be the basic run-down for each student (And an overview of the process for any passersby):
We make a time table.You tell me how long you wanna work on this and we'll start figuring it out from there. In a one-week battle, I'd advocate for: 1 day of scripting, 1 day of layouts, 2 days of lineart, 2 days of color, 1 day of wiggleroom.
WritingI'll help you out with formatting your comic script. Comics are one of those weird mediums with no set format to their script. But in the scripting phase we won't be thinking in panels, just in pages. Worrying about the breakdown is the next step, so cluttering your mind with anything other than plot, pacing, and character dynamic would just be extraneous.
LayoutsHere's where we take that script and break it down. As long as you know where each page stops and starts in your script, you can allot exactly as much space as needed for your panels. Important panels are bigger, small actions and movements are smaller. At this time we'll also be thinking a lot about proportion and perspective. The more accurate and closer your layouts are to rough pencils, the less work you need to revise in the lineart stage. At this point we'll also be experimenting a lot with moving the camera around to get the most storytelling out of the least work. It's about working smart, not hard.
LineartWith accurate-enough layouts, you can ink right over em and skip pencils entirely. Which is an incredible timesaver. But this would also be where any tightening of the layouts would be. Ideally, in this step, we'll delve into heavy shadows, aka "Spot blacks" and how they can direct the eye and aid composition in framing the important elements of a panel--while also blacking out the areas you don't want to, or, don't have time to draw. Work smart not hard, people.
ColorsArguably, the easiest and most fun part. At first, we'll probably relegate it to one-color-per-scene, this way the reader can easily tell when we've moved the story, and the artist can focus on making all their color choices look good in relation to that One Color. Then we can delve into coloring your lineart to soften it up, the importance of soft-shading vs hard-shading. Stuff like that. Plus general polishing. The polish really can push something from really good, to really great when done right.
TL;DRYou want in? You gotta be serious about it. You're learning my method of makin comics good-n-fast and workin smart not hard.
People who really need the help will be picked first, with people I've got the most confidence in coming in later. I'll probably only take one student at a time but we'll see.
Right now its Tuesday, and I'll probably make my first choice of student on Thursday.
Student List (In Order Probably):Alouise
Syraxis
Pitafish
Rhimwil
einsam
Colbitzer
@ 3:32 PM Apr 17th