So I had planned on posting another screencast today about how to use comicpress the “right way.” Really it was just a quick screencast on how to use comicpress with a child theme so that when you upgrade you don’t lose your edits. Needless to say it was an horrific disaster.
Instead I’m just gonna ramble about a mistake I made in yesterdays strip that was pointed out by Josh Baumen of Caffeinated Toothpaste. To get right to the point here’s the mistake I made:
What’s the problem? Why did Josh take time out of his day to craft a well worded email about this panel?
Take a look at how your eye should move across a three four panel strip:
Now take a look at how your eye moved across yesterdays strip:
Look at that mess. You start with a gentle move following the sidewalk and quickly are force to u-turn right out of the strip, across your computer monitor and up into that awesome vintage Care Bears poster you keep up at the office. It is at this point I have completely lost your attention. How can anyone compete with the Care Bears?
Josh suggested that to fix this problem I simply flip the panel like this:
From a visual standpoint this is a fantastic solution. Just look at how much nicer the flow is:
Perfect left to right with a bit of a zig zag to keep your interest. Of course now the text is reversed and there is the huge problem (for me at least) that the stairs and the mailbox are on the wrong side of the building. Eventually I’ll have to redraw that panel from the corner of the entry way so as to get a left to right movement of Paul and Scott (the guy in the green coat is Paul’s friend Scott.)
2816 has been partly an exercise for me. First of all I wanted to do a long term project that sustained itself. I’ve done larger works before but never without huge breaks between them. Second I wanted to work on a strip and rather than stress about every little mistake as I’m working, learn from the ones I made yesterday so as to not repeat them. I’m not a master of the craft and never will be so trying to make every strip a masterpiece only ends in failure.
So while comics are a blast to make and I’m trying not to stress the little details and rules of visual language, as Josh said “the ultimate purpose is knowing stuff like that so you can go ahead and break those rules when you feel like it.”
Aw man, quite humbling. I really like the look of the final variation. The stairs and the mailbox might be on the wrong side, but who is to know that? My wife occasionally calls me on panels that aren’t quite true to the facts, but I think composition and storytelling take priority over something that looks great but is technically wrong.
It’s also speaks volumes about the quality of your work when the flow of a strip can be fixed with the flipping of a single panel. Hats off to you, sir.
Thanks Josh,
While I can just flip the panel and all would be well I’ll never be able to quite the little captain of consistency that lives on my shoulder. He will scream until it’s right. So, a quick redraw at some point should fix it. I know that hardly anyone would notice but 2816 is a real place after all. I can only take so much creative license.
Nice post, and as mentioned, nice fix. It seems to create the illusion of the switching sides though. As Scott is to the right of Paul when they enter the building, and at the door but not in the hallway. I suppose they could have made a U-turn inside the building and then another one before coming to the door if it’s a large building. Or they just switched sides, I guess that happens. Anyway, the second one works better over all, so go for it. By the way, thanks for a nice comic.
I really like that you’re posting this behind-the-scenes commentary. Very interesting to me as a layman. And the changed art definitely makes the flow much clearer.