MAKE COMICS: The Layout

I had forgotten that one of the things I love about making comics is the way they take shape from script to layout to finishes. 

It's the discovery, the way visual, thematic, and story connections are built. It's the way problems of space and storytelling are solved. Where you learn (and I learn a LOT) that something is just not going to WORK even though it sounded good on paper and looked real good in my head.

However, the layout stage gives me a rash. You'd think I was committing the final version, the way I dither and panic and sweat. Sure, I am making the map that takes me the rest of the way to the depot where the art is prised from my "just one more thing" hands. (Or at the depot where I fling it like a mailbag, glad to see the back of it.) 

It's the layout stage that tests my mettle every time. I currently have a car that does not go in reverse, except when it's pushed. The slightest incline that leaves the front lower than the back is a misery. I have to dig in and push. When I was out a couple days ago, looking for King's beagle Murphy (who is now a first-time offender), I got stuck making a u-turn where the street has a hump from new asphalt. It is a modest hump. It took me ten minutes and bruises on my arms, legs and boobs to get it over the hump and down the other side.

Doing layouts is like that. The slightest obstacle and I have to get out and push. It's when I set the brake because my arms are exhausted, and I stand there, looking at my problem in disgust while my arms dangle uselessly and I think how awesome it's going to be when I have actual reverse again. 
Doing layouts is also like when I crest the incline, and things begin to roll. The last page is invaribly the one I avoided, and also invariably the one that gets an elegant solution, all the more pleasing because it wasn't easy to get there.

Now, I go on to the inking and painting, which is a whole 'nother well of doubt and torment.

Commissions:
Jodi
Kynn
Austin Books
Prickles (STILL, sorry)
(your commission here)

  
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