Behind the Walls is a making-of series that explores the challenges and insights we have while making our first comic:
.Translating a script to the page
When it comes to taking a script and turning it into a comic page, one of the most difficult things for me (
) is, actually, to do the layout. The way you read a text and the way you read an image are very different things when you think about it.When you see a page full of text, you can't really absorb any information about the text, unless you stop to read it word for word.
But like, when you see a page, and it has a drawing, the first thing you see is the whole picture.
Of course, you can't see and absorb everything there is to that picture without looking at it a bit closer and taking some time, but you can see how different the rhythm is between text and image.
Sometimes, it's a bit funny trying to translate that rhythm and that flow into a different media.
So, I always try to keep that in mind when I'm doing the first sketches, because I need the page to make sense as a whole, instead of just, like, the panels.
I have to think about which scenes are the most important, because if I say that every single scene in a comic is the most important, then none of them are really important. There are certain moments, certain story beats where you just want the reader to stop and take some more time on it - like when Plague Rat accidentally finds a not-so-alive person.
That's something we want the reader to stop and think about, and look at it.
So, yeah, layout, figuring out, the sizes of the panels and how to put emphasis on the right things so the whole picture makes more sense - that's the most difficult part of taking a script and turning it into a comic page, at least for me.
Script to panel