PJ Holden::Blog

I’m gonna be a guest at this year’s Caption – taking place in Oford from 31st July to 1st August – a comic convention devoted to the small press. I’ll be talking digital comics and probably a lot more.

http://caption.org/ (can’t see me mentioned on the website, but, unless they’re pulling my leg, I’m deffo a guest).

Anyhue, I misunderstood the brief and here’s a mad scientist (this years theme was “Mad Science”)

Here’s what’s out right now:

Johnny Woo a Hong Tong Ghost Story by Gordon Rennie and me.
Judge Dredd Megazine issue #298 (available to buy digitally from www.clickwheel.net here ) quality of the pure b&w isn’t great, though I’m reliably informed they’re gonna fix that – but you can download it now and redownload at a later date. And, at £1.99 it may appear pricey compared to some yankee comics on comixology – don’t forget, you’re getting around 130 pages of content (one hundred and thirty…)

Judge Dredd Megazine issue #299 second and final part of the Woo story, out in your local newsagents…

What’s coming up

A Judge Dredd story by me and Al Ewing.

And…

Some stuff I can’t talk about, but, if it all works out, it’ll be one work for hire gig and two creator owned projects – which is, exactly how I’d like my entire career to work.
Anyhue, if you see my work pick it up – then write in to Tharg to let him know!

This is a page 4 from the Judge Dredd strip Dragon’s Den (which, I’ve coloured up myself here).

I’d really love another stab at this page – specifically I’d redo the composition.
The original pose is somewhat stiff, the fact that it’s Dredd dressed as a Knight (in a suit of off cuts of metal and wire) meant that the concept carried it a lot. But, as you can see from the simplified sketch of the page – the figure is stiff (the blue line represents the ‘action’-line or spine, it’s pretty dead straight, the figure itself forms a boxy shape – helped by the staff). A redone sketch simple massages some of those elements, but really helps a great deal – here the action line is a slight curve adding a little dynamisim to the pose. Dredd’s chin is held up – giving him more of a heroic look, and the staff is held at an angle giving the composition a triangular shape.

They’re little things, but the help.

I’ve never really understood composition. I’ve seen lots and lots of books on the topic, and various images broken down into constituent parts (with lots of references to golden means, triangles and other things) but I’ve never really -if you’ll forgive the phrase- grokked it.

Which, as you can probably imagine, is a major problem when you make your living comes from drawing.

Being of a fairly analytical mind, though, I have replaced the whole concept of ‘composition’ with the idea of panels as puzzles. Each panel has certain key bits of information that you, as the artist, have to convey. The writer will let you know what they are and you have to do your damn best to work that out and figure out how to tell the reader the same information – but with pictures.

So, to that end, I’m gonna give you my thoughts on a page of the recent Dredd “Dragon’s Den” – written by Gordon Rennie.

Ok, first thing to note, is that Gordon tends to write in two page chunks. There is ALWAYS at least one very clear scene change within that two pages (and you want, as best as possible, to turn a page onto a scene change – or, rather, you want to avoid changing a scene mid page). In this case, I saw the the last panel – as being a logical place to put a splash page, it would give plenty of room for what was required, but, more importantly, a splash page would give a large dramatic impact on the reader (part of the problem: how do I make this BIG shot look impressive? answer: use the entire page). As it happened, I ended up with a second splash page in this Dredd – which, ordinarily, would be two splash pages more than usual for Dredd – but both really served the story well (the second splash was Dredd dressed in a Knight’s armour assembled from various 21st Century detritus).

The approach:

Read script. Reread script. Get a feel for what’s going on and what’s important. I took this script as a mythic piece, not a real story so much as a story of a legend, so that impacted the story telling – the other big impact was that I was filling in for Cliff Robinson – who did such an amazing job on the first two parts that I think he had thrill power overload. I took over and, as best as I could, tried to make the changeover in artists as graceful as possible (I think it worked best on the first page and went downhill from there…)

Third reading of the script, I note the number of panels at the top of each scripted page – page 1 would have 8 (yikes! still, 2000AD pages are big) and page 2 would have 1.

Thumbnails. I start looking at the script while doodling the thumbnails – the panel count guides me, as well as the amount of dialogue/captions – they shape the size of the panels. Then I have to figure out what else is in the panel.

Let’s look at Panels 1-4 in some ridiculous levels of details.

While each panel could be drawn in completely different ways what I’ve done is I’ve drawn the entire set of panels as a slow close up on to Dredd’s helmet, each panel building on the previous one. This wasn’t as scripted as such, rather, the panel descriptions gave enough details that it seemed the most logical way of handling it.

Panel 1 is, in reality an establishing shot, but doesn’t really show much detail – there’s plenty of rubble so we get the sense that the Mutant (foreground dude with goggles on his head) somewhere inside some rubble (this scene is set deep within the bowls of an old Mall in the Cursed Earth). Dredd’s bike is there (destroyed in the previous episode and in the foregroun)- if you know what you’re looking for, otherwise it’s just more rubble. Dredd is sitting deeply in shadow (all shots of Dredd without his helmet require Dredd to be sitting in shadow!). The rubble that frames Dredd and the subsequent deep shadow, makes sure that he doesn’t get too lost in the details of the rubble.

Panel 2 we pull in tighter, the mutants face is looking round at Dredd – we only get a glimpse of the mutant here, for two reasons: 1) it’s NOT strictly essential, though it DOES tie into the previous panel – and I’m very big on continuity between panels (I try to imagine some way to always link one panel to the next and I’ll describe each as I go). Dredd’s shifted position here, lifting some tool with hone hand and cradling his helmet (snigger).
Panel 3 tight on Dredd – the contuity here is Dredd’s own face – heavily shadowed previously, the shadow is carried through and ties panels 2&3 together. He’s working now on the helmet mic.

Panel 4 tight shot on the helmet – I really should have included a little bit of the ‘screwdriver’ (or whatever it is Dredd is holding) to make sure you know that this is still the same helmet (otherwise it could be a totally different one…) But I think it still holds together.

And here’s that tier showing how each panel has an element of the previous (yes, I got carried away… sorry!)

And, here’s how I anticipate a reader will actually read the page:

I think, the important thing is we read let to right, but only when there’s something to “read” – failing that we go searching for something of interest. In the case of panel one, my eyes scan down until we get to the mutant, whereupon I read and move towards Dredd. Panel two, I think, naturally, I follow the eyeline of the mutant to Dredd (and I read his body and end at the knee – oddly). Panel 3 focus goes from Dredd’s chin to the bit of the Helmet he’s working on. And Panel 4 doesn’t really force the reader to any particular point – save around the mask – below the “S” shape (whereupon they’ll be met by the dialogue).

You’ll have to excuse another example, really I’m searching for ways to think about/talk about this. The following image are the elements that I imagine are focal on the page – ie, what’s important/less important. If this was a static image – such as a painting this is, I think, how you’d think about the composition. In short: for a static image, composition only needs to consider the two dimensions of the drawing (height and width) for a comic you have to take that into account PLUS time (or, more specifically, how a reader will ‘read’ the material)
(Red is the most important element within a panel, pink is secondary to that)

The next tier is a scene change:

Panel 5 is another Judge talking to Dredd, at this point the dialogue is holding the story telling elements together – The helmet from the previous panel visually links to this panel (as Gordon has in the script). The dialogue/captions/etc confirm this is a different judge in a different location (though, I hope, that is also clear from the art). I quite like that the widescreen panel is a change of tempo from the previous panels.
Panels 6-8

Camera pulls out to show that this judge is in a right pickle. The effect I’m going for on panels 6-7 is a pan from one situation to another. While, I think you could have done the same thing with one wide panel (merging the two panels into one) something magical happens in the gutter. It establishes that these eggs are important. No gutter? Then the reader’s eyes would be steered to look at the place where the gutter should be and wondering why that bit is important. (Their eyes are being steered by all the debris that is flowing down, helping both suggest jeopardy and steer the storytelling).

Panel 8 is the same thing from a different angle as the Judge attempts an escape – making sure to get the badge in can be an important story telling in Dredd’s world (if done subtly!) as it’s often the only way to tell one judge from another (unless you start resorting to facial hair or tattoos!) The background detritus is flowing in a different direction here which is a subtle cue that we’re looking at the same thing from a different angle.

And here’s that last tier as I imagine a reader will actually read it:

And, finally, the visual continuity tying those three panels together (I leave as an exercise for the reader how those three are tied to the previous – though it should be fairly obvious…)

(I would not that firstly, the repeating background rubble really helps to tie everything together – its presence in all panels ensures that you’re aware this is set in the same place, and that – a failing on my part – panel 8 would have worked a little better if i’d managed to get one or two of those eggs into that panel somewhere).

Of course, if I’m completely honest, I don’t really spend this much time thinking about composition. I sit down, read the panel description and try and figure out :

A) How can I get all this dialogue in.
B) What’s the bare minimum I need to draw to convey the information that’s required of me.
C) Now that I’ve figured that out, how can i make this panel/post look more dramatic/interesting.

When considered like that, the process is about solving a puzzle. How do I make it look like the character is in serious peril? How do I highlight these eggs? How do I make the character look resolved into stoic action? And how do I tie those things all together and make it look cool…?

Though I do that for each panel, I do it while considering the page as a whole (which is why small thumbnails are of use).

So, that’s one page. Let me know if you have any comments/questions!

-pj

Hey man, it’s the digital age! So here’s some info all comic artists should know about bitmap image formats (and, if you’re a masochist, you can drill into the wikipedia entires I’ve sprinkled throughout):

Ok, let me define BITMAP – imagine a grid, within that grid each element (or pixel) contains a filled in colour. If your grid is big enough then the grid will look like a picture. And that’s a bitmap.

(Alternatively, there are VECTOR formats – VECTOR formats are like someone describing what a picture looks like – “in the centre is a red circle with a diameter of 300, then, 30mms to the left is a blue square that’s 15cm x 15cm” – the advantage of a vector format is that you can scale it – ie make it bigger – without decreasing the quality, the disadvantage is that, for MOST comic art, it’s pretty useless at describing artwork)

Now, BITMAP image formats are Designed to hold as much information in as little space as possible This is accomplished by using compression. There are two very basic types of compression: LOSSLESS and LOSSY.

LOSSLESS compression is designed to compress the data while keeping every single bit of information intact. This works brilliantly for some things (notably, b&w, cartoony type images, and comic book lettering – that is lettering that has been converted to artwork).

LOSSY compression is designed to compress data while throwing away information that the human eye doesn’t really process, so works brilliantly for natural colours, photos or paintings. The eye can see around 200 shades of green and only a handful of shades of red – and this style of compression makes use of that fact. An artifact of this, though, is that it looks terrible with images that it doesn’t compress well (b&w, cartoony, and comic book lettering) – these are the dreaded “Jaggies”
So, now we’ve covered the basics, let’s get some image formats:

GIF – the GIF format is a LOSSLESS compression that works brilliantly for b&w. Some key factors:
1) It can hold up to 256 colours – that means, for fully painted work it’s absolutely rubbish – it looks poor and doesn’t compress well at all.
2) Because it’s lossless it really is brilliantly sharp for lettering and cartoony colours.
3) You can actually specify how many colours you want the gif format to hold, making a small file size EVEN smaller. Typical pure b&w comic art can often be reduced to four colours without any loss of fidelity and it can make a big difference on your file sizes.
4) It’s a common format on the internet and designed to handle relatively small images photoshop, for example, will not allow you to export a gif if the image is too physically large.

GIF is my favoured method of emailing people decent sized web preview images – large (ie around 1024pixels wide) can be surprisingly small if you reduce the number of colours to four or so.

JPG – JPG is a LOSSY format, that uses some clever maths to throw certain colours and details away from the image.
1) Ideal for photos – the JPG format can hold a massive amount of colours/information in a relatively small size by throwing away lots of stuff that you wouldn’t notice. You can also specify how much information it should discard.2) Editing a JPG and then resaving as a JPG will reduce the quality. In fact, if you keep opening and saving the same JPG eventually you’ll have nothing but a handful of weirdly coloured pixels3) JPGs have a problem going from one extreme colour to another – rapid transitions from black to white (as you’d find, for example, in lettering) the transition areas end up clogged full of ‘artifacts‘ – weird little quilted bits of colour in the picture.

JPG is a great way to deal with full painted art, and, with a low level of compression the artifacts on lettering aren’t too noticable. BUT it DOES NOT remain 100% true to the image as created – by virtue of being a lossy compression format.

PNG – designed to overcome many of the limitations of GIF – the PNG format is a LOSSLESS format that allows millions of colours and adds lots of cool features for people building websites, but for our discussion only a couple of things are relevant:
1) Can compress comics relatively well – allowing for lots of colours while keeping the true to the original artwork.
2) File sizes are usually bigger than GIF for smaller images
3) Only the past few years has it been widely supported – many windows based PCs running old version of software can’t really see PNGs properly.

PNGs a good format, but, as it’s so (relatively) new, unless you need it’s advantages it’s probably easier to stick to GIF or JPG for emailing or putting on a website.

TIFF – Lossless format designed for print.
1) Tiff files can be physically massive while being tiny in memory. Even an A3 pure B&W image can compress down to as little as 300kb.2) Pretty much the lingua franca of comic pros sending art for publishing.
3) Can also hold colour and layers – though, once you start doing that, files get big pretty damn quick.

TIFF – if you’re publishing your work, you’ll find yourself using TIFF – photoshop (for example) offers multiple ways to compress TIFF files, but, afaik, most people go for the standard LZW compression.

PSD Uncompressed file format, used by Photoshop.
1) Files are MASSIVE
2) It’s photoshop’s default format

Well, that’s it. If you use PHOTOSHOP you’ll use PSD. If you don’t – well, PSD files are so universal most publishers will have something that can read them, but you’re better off sticking to TIFF for this.

So, to sum up:

If you’re putting a b&w or cartoony comic on the web: use GIF (or PNG if you don’t mind internet explorer 5 users missing out) if you’re putting a fully painted/full colour comic on the web use JPG.

If you’re sending files to a publisher use TIFF.

Hope that helps, if you find anything in error, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I’ll update.

This is an early peak …

UPDATED: With Script!

Script by Al Ewing.

This is a one page, goofy future shock style story for submission to whatever odd little think Mark Miller is cooking up – it’s kind of an open audition on his website.
Anyhue, I pencilled in about 30 minutes – really quick, simple pencils. This goofy style I could pencil forever. Then I started inking. First in Manga Studio – which I’ve been really playing with a lot in the past few months – I’ve inked about four publishable pages in it and, to be honest, as much as I really like a lot of things about it (and some of those things are amazing) I’m finding that I’m just too fond of the tradional brush inking to really let go. So I abandoned that page and reinked by hand. And you can see al of that here. There’s a couple of problems I find (and mostly my own doing). When inking with a brush I ink in a very linear fashion, one panel after the other. On MS (and the cintiq) I pick and peck at things I want to ink. Leading to a fairly unsatisfying sense of lack-of-completion. It’s also very hard to see the bigger picture, plus you tend to get bogged down in minutiae – looking at the headshot below you can see I feathered, and over rendered what is, in essence a very simple head shot. And I kept going, adding a colour to it. Madness.
Anyhue, hope you like, and wish me luck!

This is for my own amusement, a mock-2000AD annual cover. (Which, if you see me at a con I may have in print form…)

Dredd, Rogue, Johnny Alpha and Rojaws – what’s not to love?

(Symmetry is a little too dead on, but still…)

Clockwise from left: Shouty, Skewfy, Molar (he's bad to the core), "Come on you pencil heads!", Thinker, Mr Magoo's brother.