Knee deep in snow. Feels like home. While waiting for spring to wake us up from hibernation, the action here is on hyperdrive. The design of the page needs to give a sense of urgency. Smaller, vertical panels will help us get that feeling across.
Two videos for this post. Again, this page was a tough one. Not because it is a fight scene per se, but because I wanted to show a fight scene in a different way. This is more about the confusion that reigns in such a situation. Different ideas I tried…
Big post! This time, the videos are for the whole thing, sketching, penciling and inking. But first, the thumbnail sketches. This was not an easy scene to direct. Many sketches were needed.
The action picks up. More panels per page, more suspense… and more stuff to draw. And more reference needed. But let’s start with the thumbnail sketches.
The trick for this page was to have subsequent horizontal panels featuring a bunch of vertical shapes, the trees, without them looking too much like they’re one and the same. I tried to make them go out of the frame in different spots and changed the grey VS black tones to avoid as much confusion…
This is the page where the Raven, being our narrator, propels us into the story. In a way, Maelstrom is nothing but a campfire story. Only here, it’s a raven that has a flashlight under its beak. Ha! Here is the thumbnail sketch used for the final page. Note that I decided to drop the top…
Here’s the second half of the “big” layout. I waited until now to show you the thumbnail sketch. Trying to avoiding a spoiler, here. To me, it still works as two single page as both halves show the character answering each other. It’s as if the first half is one character speaking and the second…
For this one, I hesitated. I didn’t know if this page (and the next) was just redundant and made the action slow down. I still don’t know. You tell me. What made me keep it is the design, although I wanted to get the story moving progressively faster with more panels per page, the idea was…
As I said before about the previous page, I was thinking of a larger layout that could combine page 3 and 4 into a vertical format. Here’s the bottom part of the design; we’re inside the house with the tree growing in the middle.
Page 3 is based on a layout in two parts. Hopefully, it will read well as separate pages. Here’s the sketch which is about letter size. You’ll note that I changed my mind about the raven landing on the first (big) panel instead of the second one.