I would like to ask for guidance since I look up on your work, your one of my biggest inspos.
When you get to create your comic strips/stories, how do you plan your backgrounds?
I've been wanting to make my own stories for the longest time but I never know when to start with sceneries. I've tried to look for possible tutorials out there but I never find ones that are clear enough on actually "teaching how to plan for them" or "how to think when making them" (for lack of better explanation). The closest guidence I've find that helps a bit is composition tutorials, but they're not really what I'm looking for qwqUu, I mostly struggle to imagine and plan "where my characters are supposed to be in scenery wise. I mustered up the courage to ask for some tips from you today since I come by on Tumblr from time to time, and I saw that you were gonna start over with your "Felt World" comic and was really curious on what was your process ●0● ✨️
If there's any misspellings I apologize, my main language is Spanish qwqUu
HII Sorry for the late reply, I haven't been online much!
I think what you're referring to is staging! Basically staging is where do you place things for most clarity and interest, like a stage or set.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very experienced comic book reader or artist, BUT I do use a lot of my animation knowledge when making comics; I keep in mind where characters stand in relation to each other so readers don't get confused, I vary the camera angle so it's not all static, straight ahead angles (although that might be what you want, it depends on the style) and I use the shape of the panel to convey mood.
I will say, a lot of it is just experimentation! What conveys the mood I want, how do I tell that the most clearly and with as little room for confusion as possible?
For example, let's use a prompt; Albin, Donna, Ricky, Lune, and Myra are sitting around a dinner table in Ricky's family home, and they're having a lively conversation about something lighthearted.
That's usually enough text to fill one page, and I'm gonna use my knowledge of the characters to tell as much as I can using just visual storytelling.
Here's and example of what I'd make based on the prompt:
This is a really rough doodle of what my sketches usually looks like, and as you can see I added notes to show my thought process :)!
Basically, I like to answer these questions in the following hierarchy:
Do we know where we are? What time of day? What weather? (choose weather relevant to the story, i.e. if it rains it has to be for a reason) - you don't need to reestablish the setting on every page but if the setting is unclear, this is priority nr 1!
who is where and what are they doing? - once you've established where everyone relevant is, you don't need to show them in every panel. Only for visual interest or when their dialogue or reaction is important.
What do the readers need to observe and what are they supposed to feel about it? - This is a bit more vague but also the most relevant, if you can't answer this question, you have made an unnecessary filler page!
As an example, the answer here is "the characters are enjoying each others company in a safe setting. Donna is comfortable enough to cackle loudly and the rest look like they are laughing at something Albin said/did and playfully teasing him about it. Lune drinks out of a champagne coupe while the rest uses regular drinking glasses because she's fancy, Myra needs cushions to reach the table because Ricky's family has large furniture, Albin has picked a spot not close to Donna (what is so special about this spot?), and Ricky sits where he can get up and serve people quickly (he never relaxes)"
I realize this is more about character staging than backgrounds in general, but I think backgrounds are kind of complementary to what the characters are doing rather than the opposite. The characters drive the story, the backgrounds are there to give the context!
I hope that helped at least a little bit!! :) Thank you for the question!! ^^
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