As I color Joe Death and the Graven Image I come across pages that simply won’t work. This is always a knife-edge decision. I could push that inclination to edit aside and just get on with it. Or, I could make it just a little bit better, increasing the chances that this will be an evergreen book, a perennial seller, and a strong foundation for a larger story, more books, with these characters, in this world. Whenever audience readability is on the line, I usually choose the second option. (Old page on left, edited and redrawn page on right)
In this case, Joe and Blue split up, we follow Blue(the moth) for several pages and then return to Joe. But Joe was on the move when they split up, so returning to him without a far shot of the scene could cause confusion, or at least not set the proper scene for the reader. (My friend Shen Leidigh pointed out my lack of set pieces in previous versions and I’ve never forgotten it.) So how to add one more panel and one that’s large enough to do the job of scene-setting? Reducing the number of word balloons always helps. I didn’t cut any words out, I simply lumped a few separate balloons together. Simplification of the drawings helps as well, and this was actually more of a reason to me than the scene-setting reason. The right-hand page works, but as I tried to color it everything got exponentially busier, all those sharp jigs and jags I use can be overused. The worst offender here is panel 2, Joe’s face, on the original version. Compare it with panel 3 on the redrawn page. The shadows are still in the same place, but their application has been reduced to be less obvious. The best surprise of this edit was changing the last word balloon of the page into a squiggly breath sigh. It’s’ both descriptive and emotive. Descriptive of the weather outside and emotionally portraying Joe’s mind and attitude as he speaks. The reader will understand this intuitively because we’ve all given answers when sighing out heavily. “Make sure to take out the trash tonight honey. Tomorrow's trash day,” my wife says. “si-okay-gh…” I respond.
This is my editing process, I use as much of the original as I can, reducing it and cropping it to fit into the new layout. The only thing new in this first layer is in panel 1, the setup scene. The second layer is just a rough and loose pass over, I’m thinking about shapes and how they all interact with each other, the word balloons as well, they are part of the final art, the printed book. Even if you don’t draw the balloons on your final layer the printed book with the words is how the world interacts with your work so include it as early as you can, in the thumbnail stage.
This third layer on the left is the last refining pass, details are thought about here, trying to button up everything so my final line layer can be as quick and effortless as possible. The final layer is like coasting, my brain is still on but since I don’t have to consider the important factors of composition, character expression, or FX placement (snowflakes, demon-light from sword hilt) I can concentrate on making my edges, my line as interesting, or smooth as possible.
Alright, I’ll be back next week to share what these two pages look like colored. If you’d like to be notified sign up for my email newsletter below. I’ll be sharing open blog articles, recommendations, and exclusive stuff there. And if you’ve found this helpful please consider sharing it via your social media. Thanks!