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Pacing
Today, I got the nicest compliment over in the DrunkDuck forums. Jason Embury (who seems to have worked for just about everyone in comics) said that, thus far, Cowboys and Aliens has a nice sense of pacing. This is a thrill to me, because of all the things I've been worried about with the comic, pacing is number one. I know I can do research. I'm confident in my ability to write dialog. But pacing in panels? That's a tough one, and still pretty new to me.
One of the things I'm trying to think about with each half-page that I write is that the final panel should, in some way, make you want to "turn the page." You've got to want to come back tomorrow and see what happens next. At the same time, when we eventually go to print, the half-pages need to feel like complete pages when they're stacked on top of each other. They used to talk about how comics issues had to have a feeling of an arc every 23 pages--where as whole graphic novels could arc at their leisure. Web comics have to have something to pull you through each page or half-page (depending on how you're posting), and have to transition well so you don't feel as though you've missed anything.
Something you'll see as you're reading C&A (if you're keeping up) is that the beginning of the third week of posting will have a small inset of a landscape-shot. This is because between the last page of week two and the first page of week three, I didn't include a sensible transition. I ended the "flashback" and figured, hey, we can move straight into the story now. As it turned out, that really mucked up the page composition, and gave us the toughest challenge so far in the process of getting the comic made. When Rick came up with the inset, bam, that fixed what we were missing, and suddenly, it felt like we had a transition.
Just a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head while working on the comic. I'm hoping to be back and posting regularly again starting this coming week, assuming I've got interesting things to say!
One of the things I'm trying to think about with each half-page that I write is that the final panel should, in some way, make you want to "turn the page." You've got to want to come back tomorrow and see what happens next. At the same time, when we eventually go to print, the half-pages need to feel like complete pages when they're stacked on top of each other. They used to talk about how comics issues had to have a feeling of an arc every 23 pages--where as whole graphic novels could arc at their leisure. Web comics have to have something to pull you through each page or half-page (depending on how you're posting), and have to transition well so you don't feel as though you've missed anything.
Something you'll see as you're reading C&A (if you're keeping up) is that the beginning of the third week of posting will have a small inset of a landscape-shot. This is because between the last page of week two and the first page of week three, I didn't include a sensible transition. I ended the "flashback" and figured, hey, we can move straight into the story now. As it turned out, that really mucked up the page composition, and gave us the toughest challenge so far in the process of getting the comic made. When Rick came up with the inset, bam, that fixed what we were missing, and suddenly, it felt like we had a transition.
Just a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head while working on the comic. I'm hoping to be back and posting regularly again starting this coming week, assuming I've got interesting things to say!
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I look forward to being interrogated!
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