PJ Holden's Blog

I can’t remember when or where I first read this little bit of writing wisdom, certainly it was a long time ago and it’s stuck with me, though not for writing. It’s from the book “100 ways to improve your writing” by Gary Provost, I’ve since ordered the book up (it’s a fun little collection of snippets like this that I’m sure can help any writer). I’ll let you read it and tell you what I think…

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music. 

Ok. Now, as this applies to comics – writing comics isn’t writing. Your reader will only ever read the words you’ve written if they’re included in dialogue or captions (or any other narrative tricks you’ve picked up), for the most part you’re writing for an artist and there it’s about clarity and being succinct. (Five words sentences? Great as long as it’s of the line “Dredd stands firm, looking grim.”)

But what is important is that the lessons within this little gem be applied across the board to your comics. Instead of “five word sentences” think “small identical sized panels” – a few? ok, But then let them explode! Build up energy with a bunch of panels, burst out with a splash. Make the panels interesting to look at and it will be interesting. Humans are easily bored, it’s a genetic thing (I once saw an experiment with a sea cucumber showing how even something with barely a brain can be bored) it’s why flashing lights attract us, why sitting still can make things invisible and why the coctail party phenomena works.

Your comics can be guilty of many crimes, but boring should never be one of them.

If you’re a reader of my old blog, you’ll have read periodic updates on how I work – primarily because like me in a party, the moment I feel like I’m comfortable I have to upended a table and jump out a window (or find a tiny kitchen corner to hide in).

The current process goes like this:

Read script.

Create a multi page document of the length of the script + a few pages at the back for layouts/designs.

Use a page at the back, creating a page frame (a specific layer in clip studio paint) and divide it so it’s exactly nine frames, which I’ll use as my guideline for thumbs.

Digital thumbs, I find drawn this way are actually more detailed than my normal pencilled thumbs, and can sometimes double as pencils.

Happy with thumbs, I’ll cut the thumb out for the first page, then paste that into the first document, scaling it up to fill the page.

I’ll create a “pencils” folder (setting it to draft – again a Clip Studio Paint specific thing) and make it a pale blue colour, dropping the enlarged thumb in. I’ll create a new pencil layer within that folder, and trace/finish the rough thumbs into useable pencils.

Once I’ve got my pencils, I’ll create an inks layer, and just ink the damn thing.

That’s it.

I’ve a couple of rules of thumbs for making the digital work go smoother, but you’ll have to be a backstage patreon for that!

Sometimes I get a big chunk of a page done on one day, but don’t count it as a finished page, then count it the next day when finished. On that basis, I finished two pages today and, I think, two yesterday? Can’t remember. Sometimes you work so fast you lose track.

Luckily it’s all digital so I don’t have to keep piles of paper beside me. (That’s a nightmare, three pages a day of paper printout, sounds great but try managing all those sheets of paper coming off your drawing board like you’re a printer with the output tray disconnected)

Anyway here’s a dredd head I’m happy with (Dredd in winter gear)

I’ve never drawn this many Dredd’s in one strip before. It’s funny how your strength can suddenly become a weakness – I had a great dredd chin down pat, but suddenly I’ve got to draw lots of Dredd’s and you’re desperate not to repeat the same old face/expression.

Behind the scenes, I explain what’s going on with this scaffolding I’ve drawn all over Dredd’s face, but here’s the picture for everyone else!

Look, I’ve drawn the world’s angriest lawman professionally for coming up on 16 years (and a stint as an enthusiastic amateur for the best part of all my life up until then) and I still haven’t figured him out.

This Dredd head (Dredd is in a winter outfit, so it’s a little different to his normal gear) looks ok, probably – perspective on faces/heads is tricky since we’re not perfectly square shapes (well, my head is, but your’s probably isn’t).

If you haven’t spotted what’s desperatly wrong with this pic – it’s Dredd’s helmet (and the bit of neck that’s missing, but we’ll ignore that)

But drawing a very simple perspective cube over/ around the head though, we can get find points which should match up (without trying to plot the entire shape in perspective) and these points can then help us correct the shot – I’ve drawn a rough perspective cube in red, with guidelines, and put little blue arrows where I think the corrections need to go.

I pick points on the helmet that I think SHOULD line up and then fix the drawing to do so.

Looking at the blue arrows on the bottom (left and right) it should be very obvious that the bottom of Dredd’s helmet doesn’t match, in effect making the right side of his helmet look longer than the other side.

The blue arrows at the top (again on left and right) should match up where the eye slots are, but again, should be obvious here they just don’t.

(You can see this is a really rough perspective grid though, so I’m not overly fussed on 100% accuracy, just a rough “looks about right” which is far easier)

But editing the drawing and making these things match up, we get this…

We’ve used those little blue arrows to help us place the features of the helmet so the line up in perspective.

Without the grid…

It’s a subtle thing, but I think this is a better dredd (oh, I added that bit of neck)

No… to erase this dredd forever since I didn’t draw him quite angry enough for the script… bugger.

Two pages completed today.

WIP on Dredd…(following the post on reflections, I got this in to a panel that I’m pleased with)

And did a second page today, can’t speak about it – it’s a pitch, so it’ll be long time before it’s firm enough to speak off, but you can see this…

Kids back at school, wife at work. Got plenty done. Still doesn’t seem like enough though.

(These pages are entirely digital)

Spoiler free, look at those idiotic tanks.

Pencilled and inked a page today, of which this is a part – hot off the digital tablet.

Even at two pages per day this month I may not catch up on everything I have to do.

So it was 25 years ago yesterday since the Batman animated adventures debuted.

I’m unsure of how old this (unsolicited) batman sample is, but it’s at least half that.

Even as I did these pencils I was aware they were far tighter than my usual. Now they just look insanely tight.

(five vertical panels? I bet I thought I was the bees knees, but it’s largely unreadable – also, why put batman’s ears on top of black, I should’ve made the bg at the top lighter. And … Bruce Timm much? actually no, not even a fraction of Bruce Timm, but look at that bored Commissionor Gordon/security guard.)

This page has nothing going for it. NOTHING.

I was pretty pleased with the Bat-goggles, and I still like the chunky batman on panel 2 though that big dildo-like building is fairly distracting.

(and I clearly used up all the perspective grid on that first page, cus here it’s all Aldus Huxley doors of perception perspective…)

I was asked in Feb to do a little interview for a student. Here’s that…

As a parent who is working professionally within the comics industry, do you encourage your kids to read comics, and why?

I think I’d always encourage my kids to read, regardless of what it is they’re reading. I like comics, and comics got me through a tough time as a reader, but my kids don’t seem to have picked up that deep love I had for them and treat comics as just another way to entertain themselves when they’ve been told they’ve got to come off youtube.

Given the current state of the industry, do you think young readers are catered to enough? Does the industry put enough emphasis on younger readers? Is there anything you think the industry could do,
from a publisher or retail level even, that would help open the door for kids into comics? Or is there anything that they are doing at 

the moment that you think is encouraging?

Price I think is the big issue. There’s plenty of kids comics on shelves in the newsagents and supermarkets (in fact more than at any time I remember) but they’re expensive especially compared to the hours of entertainment that can be had from video games, and it would be nice if all comics shops had a section that matched the Big Bang’s shelves for kid friendly fare.

What is your opinion on the all-ages books that are currently available? A common phrase used in comics retail, when suggesting comics for a new adult/teenage customer, is that there is a comic out
there for everyone, do you think this statement applies to younger readers or do you think more publishers should be focusing on the all-ages market?

I wish I could speak with some authority here, but I can’t. My experience is limited to my experience, and I have a tendency (like most parents) to try and impose my tastes on my kids, I want them to read 2000AD – I’d LOVE a younger age version of 2000AD – but they love pokemon and are pretty well served on that front.

What do you think kids could learn or what could benefit them from reading comics at a young age?

There’s an enormous amount of benefits to reading comics, I think – and many not so obvious. Expanding a child’s vocabulary seems pretty obvious but I think it broadens your thinking and helps you understand new more complex subjects sooner. Granted that’s often a little backfiring (I mean, it’s great my kids know what radioactive means, but it’s less great that they think it means it can grant them the powers of any animal that is radioactive as long as it bites them). It’s also amazing way to expand a child’s empathy, and can teach them social situations and how to react, again, comics being comics, there’s a hyperbolic nature to these things, but the little moments grounded in real life can help kids deal with knowing right from wrong, and knowing what side society they really want to belong to.

Tom King on twitter just posted this gorgeous page… The story telling is great here (though you’re coming in to the middle of the story so it’s not immediatly apparent that the the two voices are from one person – Two-Face

Art by CLAY MANN (not a batman villain) Seth T Mann (possibly related?) and Jordie Bellaire (the fresh princess)

Unscripted was the sequence where the bridge is reflected, it’s a beautiful composition, and it really works for both the story telling and the character. You can wait years to get a chance to pull off a cool looking story telling trick that is not just attractive but actually makes sense for the story.

No, the lettering (not sure who lettered it) is equally great, but it throws up one of the great conundrums of lettering… which is…

Speech doesn’t come from reflections.

It works here though, because, I suppose, Harvey’s evil side is a reflection and the illusion isn’t broken, partly because the speech is coming from a human reflected on a surface and there are no other humans in the panel. If you included, say, someone stood on the embankment watching it, the speech would suddenly seem weird – how’s it coming from there? (You’d think).

I only flagged it up because it’s interesting, and it’s interesting to see it done right (as here) as it is to see it done wrong – I drew a strip where, thinking I’d be super clever) I had two characters talking, with the characters drawn as reflections on the back of Dredd’s helmet.

I hadn’t taken in to account where the dialogue was coming from.

In this instance, the best location might have been if the dialogue had appeared coming from off panel with the characters reflections just being on the helmet.

As it was, the letterer had the dialogue coming off the reflections making it look a little like Dredd was talking to himself.

Can’t put my hands on the original art, so here’s a little simulation … 

(I’d note, if you have a specific intent in mind as an artist, probably best to let your editor and letterer in on it!)

Anyway, something to … REFLECT ON! hashtag dadjoke hashtag still got it.