Test Page

I've been thinking about starting a new OilCan Drive comic book story lately. The way I've always been taught to do comic book pages was to draw them at a 10"x15" size and then shrink them down to fit the actual book. But, I've been working at different sizes for so long lately that I thought I might be able to draw a comic book page a little smaller to save some time.

I figured it might be good to do a quick test page to get a feel for how it would be to draw the page at a smaller size. I have been so busy these past few weeks that I just never found time to do it. Until, one night, right before bed, I decided I'd sit down and simply draw out the boxes and see how big a space I was dealing with.

I started drawing and laying out the lines of the page at around 3am. Once I got the layout done I figured, to heck with it, I'm just going to sketch out the page until I am tired. So, with a blue pencil in hand, I started sketching away. And, in about half an hour this is what I came up with.

I shot the photo in color but turned it into a grayscale piece so you could see the drawing a bit easier. I did like the way the drawing felt at this size and sketching out the page gave me an idea of what I might need to change or some of the problems I need to address in the future when I do a page. One of the first problems I saw is that it's been so long since I've done a comic book page is that I didn't leave too much room for word balloons or dialogue. So, I'll need to keep that in mind a bit more when I start drawing actual pages.

And, as far as decisions, after doing this test page I think I will go back to the 10"x15" page size. It will give me more room to draw and, hopefully, will let me draw stuff around the same size but still leave room for dialogue.

But, it was still a good test. And it felt great to sketch out a comic book page again.

Have a great weekend.