Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thumbnails


This is kinda a follow-up to the post that I made earlier this week, where I talked about scripts. Thumbnails/breakdowns are the step that follows the scripting stage. The timing is good, as my student Maddi and I are at this point now. Her script is in a near finished state and I emailed her yesterday with a brief explanation about how I do my thumbnails and included the example that I am using for this post. These 2 pages are from the upcoming Don mini. In a very rough form, they show the panels and within them the placement of characters. Also, at this time I try to include some idea about what I want the dialogue to be. Once the book is laid out, we can see what each page will look like and make changes to the story or visuals if we decide it's needed.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks Jim! It's great to see these inside looks at the creation process. As somebody who is interested in self publishing a comic down the road, this is really helpful. I really appreciate it, thanks again!

    I look forward to future posts like this.

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  2. Thanks Jim. You are one of the few in the business that will spend time like this so that fans know what goes on in the creative process.

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  3. I hate to be unoriginal, but... Thanks Jim! Great post. It is very interesting to see more of the process that goes into making a comic book. Murph's old blog often showed the art, and now you and Peter Laird are sharing a lot of that, but the plot/dialoge aspects of the process were always more or less a mystery. Thanks for shedding light on that.

    Also, is Maddi planning on publishing the comic book when she is finished? I would be interested in seeing what she comes up with.

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  4. You have no idea how excited I am for this :)

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  5. -->> .. i wonder how long do these thumbs average to process.

    My professor usually whipped em out in under 10 min. for ideas in relegation to various projects regarding things like his T V guide covers and Charles Shultz projects..

    Tho' that stuff is a bit different than this.

    >v<

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  6. Your question about whether Maddi is going to publish her comic is a good one- I honestly don't know in what form she presents her finished book at the end of her project. Next time I email her I'll ask her this question and find out if she's actually going to do a print run. I'll let you know.
    As for how long to thumbnail a comic- it usually takes me a full work day to get it done. Here at Mirage I guess it's considered part of the pencilling process, so there is no dedicated thumbnailing fee. Because of this, when it comes to laying out a book I'm always trying to sneak ways to get it done when I'm not here at the studio.

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  7. In college I learn that the most important steps in a comic page is the thumbnails and the roughs. It just Great to see how other artist " get it done and put it on paper. Its inspiring... thanks...
    jason

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