Single Page Comic, the first John Space adventure.
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Hello,
I want to develop my character John Space, the space ranger, by starting a webcomic or comic. It would be the opportunity to add some comic/graphic novel work into my portfolio
John Space is meant to be fun, but also clever. A bit like Indiana Jones. In some stories he might just look goofy.
Anyway, as I never did a comic before, I decided to start with a single page comic. Which is quite limiting for telling a story and introduce a character. So I decided to make a goofy story, as single page comics are often humorous.
Here is my first pass at thumbnailing. Please let me know if the story is understandable at that stage. And whether it is at least a bit funny. Also feel free to comment on composition and layout and story beats! That would be great!
Find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nodragem/
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@Geoffrey-Mégardon I don’t know much about the comic realm but I did find it entertaining! Some of it was a little hard to decipher at this stage, but the layout and composition of each panel is really nice.
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I think this is looking pretty good! I just started a one page comic of my own literary last night so it’s nice to see someone else diving into this. Paneling and composition can be so tricky but I think you’re doing it well. Consider the stage this is at it wasn’t too confusing or hard to read. The only issue I could see here is how many panels there are. Typically a comic page has 4 to 8 panels while you’re has 11 so it’s a bit busy. However this is a one page comic so that might be the exception. If you were telling a story over more pages then 9+ panels should definitely be avoided I think. Bear in mind I am not experienced in making comics so this advice is purely coming from what I have learned from others and observed from reading.
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Thank you for your feedback! I will be working on it this weekend (can’t wait!).
@Griffin-McPherson nice to hear that you are starting a single page comic too! Can’t wait to see your work! yes, I noticed that the maximum was usually 9, but as you said, for a single page comic, it might not be too bad
I am working on a A4 format actually. It does not look too bad when printed. I was afraid of the font being too small, but Comic Sans 11 point is actually bigger than expected. Did you decide on a font?Find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nodragem/
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@Geoffrey-Mégardon no clue about font or font size. Can’t recall what the norm is but I should probably figure that out to see how much space I need to leave for speech bubbles
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Here is some updates. I basically made a second pass, to tighten the ideas/sketches.
It is less tight than what I was planing, but there are poses that were challenging and a lot of design decisions that slowed me down. I did not do a lot of preparation work, so I had to improvise a lot (how do a spaceship outside door work? How does that monster look like? Etc).
It is taking much longer than anticipated, but I guess that is the price to pay when not doing any preparation work!
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Pretty awesome for you first onepager!
The only thing that is confusing for me is the panel on which one sees the tree for the first time. Panel says: "Important item in the middle of the panel: TREE", but the text introducing this panel says "But I've also got sleeping pills for her". So my eyes expect to see something that fits together with that. And doesn't.
I THINK the small thing on the top of the tree-panel suggests a sleeping injection, but as the text says "pills" and nowhere else it gets clear that he has a weapon that can send sleep "injections", that's a little bit hard to understand.
How about making the tree-panel a "standalone" panel, with no diagonal egdes and a bubble in it that says "Finally!"? Diagonals are for action (or disagreement), and in my imagination he is in no hurry anymore when the door to the tree opens, but has already defeated the AI.
And the victory over the AI happens in the panel before? The last John who makes a hand stand could rip out some cables with the free hand or do anything that makes clear he switches of the AI? Or smash it on the ground if it some kind of drone. And the text could only say "Gotcha!", as this would be enough and would not take away much space.
In the panel in which he is taking a nacho, it would be more natural to mak him look at his FINGERS and the nacho they are touching, instead of lookinh upwards.
Oh, instead of my suggestion of writing "Finally" into the tree-panel, you can put the "Target retrieved" there, and the text "The only tree grown nachos in the universe" fits much better into the panel where the nachos are visible for the first time.
