From Script To Page

Hello to everyone reading this. It's early. I'm swaddled in a dressing gown on the couch, listening to the radiators start to hiss and warm things up.

In production:

• PuddleJumpers - Clear Skies 1-shot

Working On:

• PuddleJumpers - PROJECT Strange Fish

Thinking About

• Tumult Issue 1
• PuddleJumpers Outline

Clear skies continues production at pace. Vicky has just sent me four finished pages of pencils (one of which you can see below) and is now cracking on with the inks and colours for those same pages. Very excited to be able to share what the final comic is going to look with you in the future.

I thought today I'd give you a peek behind the curtain at the comic script itself so you can see what information Vicky is working with, and how that information then finds its way onto the page. So, below is the first page of 'Clear Skies'.

You'll note there are some pinterest links in there. These function as a key tool for me in terms of providing visual inspiration and giving an overall sense of the vibes I'm hoping to evoke in the comic. If you'd like to check that particular board out you can find it here. But here's a quick screenshot to give you an idea:

As you can see, it's not like I'm trying to pick images that only suit the exact setting or moment I'm writing about. The intention is more to demonstrate to Vicky where my head is at in terms of rough appearance/colour palette/etc.

Back to the script itself. If you read the script and then look at what actually makes it to the page you'll note there are some details that don't find their way into the panels. That is partially a result of this being the first page in the comic. A piece of advice I was given by Claire Napier as part of her editorial feedback was to get any information the artist needs into the script as early as possible. Which makes complete sense but was something I neglected in earlier drafts.

There are other parts of the script which don't survive the drafting process. You'll note in the script that I have power gauges inset into the first panel to highlight how both planes are running low on energy. However, when Vicky's art came through it became clear that those insets would crowd the image, so we went looking for other ways to integrate that message into the page, eventually settling on a more subtle addition of a power gauge in one of the panels later in the page. (Different designs for this can be seen below. Vicky also did some work to make the power socket more 'plug-like' as I wanted to make sure it was clear these planes are flying on energy, not fuel.)

You'll notice that there's lettering in the script that hasn't made it onto the page yet. I'm currently on the hunt for a letterer for the comic and hope to have someone to introduce in the coming weeks. I'm excited to see how the lettering works with Vicky's pages, and how it interacts with and changes my script. Working with an artist has already influenced the way I write comics, and I'm looking forward to learning and developing further as I develop a better understanding of how a letterer responds to the script.

More soon.

Alex.