compo 1 again (my second time) comic book version!

Here we go again! And happily so: I’ve done all the classes that vilppuacademy.com offers several times (hey 50% off when you redo a class, how’s that for a friendly deal?).

Each time I’ve redone a class I’ve noticed two things:

A/ the lessons (at least those that were there the first time I did the class – Glenn keeps adding stuff to the academy all the time) say something different to me. It’s as if I had never heard them, I remember once I even wondered if I was listening to the right one (during my 3rd time doing Head drawing class). We learn a lot during a class, far more than we realise, and when we revisit the material we hear another level of info. Very strange feeling at first but great: we go on learning more, I guess that is because Glenn puts so much of his knowledge and experience in the video lessons.

B/ I noticed that I have new problem, a new level of problem so to speak, redoing a class, as if ok, first time got rid of the first layer, let’s attack the second one. And even during the normal and regular learning curve induced “I can’t draw anymore!” moment of despair, I never go back to before the first time I did the class. (and after such an horrible moment of plateau I make a huge step forward – a classic, normal, a good thing when it happens! change is disturbing!)

This time I decided to redo compo1 (and 2 later) but instead of doing it with illustrations I’ll do it with comicbook pages! (you can do illustrations, paintings, comics, storyboard anything, Glenn has done them all during his career anyway :-D)

Comic book pages are harder than illustrations (which I did during my first compo1) first of all it is composed of several drawing and not just one, each has to be well composed and to it is added the “camera movements” from one panel to the other, which is also part of composition.

Of course I started reading all books i could find on comics (those not meant for 4 year old kids :c) and books on story boarding which has a lot in common with comics (and many differences too).

Week one, here is what I did:

Oops! there is one big big rule in story boarding and comics called the 180° rule that says: dont have your character jump from left to right unless we see the motion of the camera  going on their other side is clear.

Well, I read 500 pages about that and bam! first set of panels I do it twice!

I guess that is one of those mistakes you have to do yourself once so that you never do them again, knowing intellectually something is not knowing “physically” that thing (like an artisan knows its tools)

Glenn did not miss that and was not too enthusiastic about the rest of the page: standard set of panels, plain camera angles…. meh…. redo!

Of course he gave me some directions during the video critic and during the live chat (I did ask many question, apologies to my fellow chatters!)

Next week I’ll have to do week two assignment… plus redo this one, but no worries: during week threee I’ll work on the week three assignement and on week one and two (as ruff is they were so far bad or as final publishable pages if they were ok).

So I rush back to work.

Next week: let’s try and respect the so called 180° rule! and do good compo too.