![]() Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is a successful series, and Neil Gaiman is known for The Sandman. Graphic novels (and comic strips) are literary devices, too. InDesign is great, but it does so many things - there might be an app out there that steamlines the process.In this post, Writers Write looks at writing graphic novels and comic strips. We might try to find some software that's made more for comic books rather than a big, bloated professional page layout software. The time involved photographing, resizing and adjusting took entirely too long - and didn't end up looking super awesome. Next time around we're going to try having her work with some sort of Wacom tablet so her drawings are going straight in to the computer. Mainly - pick size for your pages so that two will fit on an 8.5x11 sheet. So far we've only printed a few copies at Kinkos - and while I'm used to setting up booklets for print I wasn't used to working with a copy shop to do that (instead of a place with a printing press). It was a good learning experience, though! ![]() ![]() Next time around I need to make sure that I don't pin a big part of the process on me. Sadly, it probably took me twice as long to do this part as it did Adali to do her part. I didn't realize that I was going to have to photograph over 65 drawings, re-assemble them in page layout software and add all the text myself. This was the part I should have thought through better. I loved how he pitched in and helped his big sister. Jett sat and helped her out by erasing her pencil lines. She rocked it :)Īnother thing that was cool about this part was that she had drawn everything in pencil and then went back over with ink. It was time for me to leave her alone and let her make her art. This was the part where I was able to let her go. She had the rough version of the comic, the character designs and the story. She's a bit of a perfectionist and I knew she would get hung up on not being happy with a page if one of the 10 drawings wasn't right. Then I would re-assemble the whole thing in some page layout software. So I had her take each panel we had sketched together and re-draw it on a brand new page. I knew that asking Adali to draw out every page by herself - every panel, frame and text bubble was too much. Using the story she wrote, but still improvising and playing with it as we drew was so much fun. I had a blast working on this part with her. It was time to start paneling things together. We worked on this part together - I did some really quick sketches and helped her layout the pages - and we fleshed out the story so that it worked better in the panel layout. Comic books come in a very unique format, though. So now we had the big idea, the story and the characters. This was a lot of fun and she probably enjoyed this part the most. Show them at different angles, what weapons they carry, what clothes they were going to wear. Sometimes we'll look at concept art for the characters in the new 2012 series, so I told Adali that she needed to do concept art for each of the main characters in the story. We've mentioned before that we're big Ninja Turtle fans here at the Longnecker household. Once that was done, I told her to go write the stroy on her own. The key here wasn't to spend hours researching writing structure (she's only 8), but to help her understand the basics of how good stories are told. Settling on the reliable 3-act structure (Setup, Conflict & Resolution) we talked through what each phase meant and how we could work ninjas into a 3 act story. Since our goal was a proper comic book, we spent some time looking into basic story structure. "Adali, what do you want to make a comic book about?" "NINJAS," she said. So I told her we were going to approach it in "phases." This way she wouldn't be overwhelmed and we could tackle each major step together. To take on something that made her push through the dip we all face when trying to finish a project. I wanted her to know what it was like to work towards something bit by bit. I told her she was going to make her own comic book! Needless to say this went over very well ) I wanted to make sure she didn't just draw a few pictures and call it a day, though. But sometimes we push through and something really cool happens.Ī couple of months ago I sat down with Adali (our oldest) and gave her a school project. We talk a lot around here about trying to be a family that makes more than we consume. Please read our disclosure for more info. This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews.
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