Latest Posts by genny-grotesque - Page 2

im pretty sure you've answered smth like this before, but i looked around for a hot second and couldn't find it. so, sorry if this is a repeat question, but how do you get dynamic comic panels? because i've been playing around with my own comic idea for a while but all i can come up with is just,,,,3x3 square panels. and i doubt that's very interesting to look at. is figuring out panels just something that comes with more dynamic posing/environments and whatnot, or is it a skill all on its own? and if so, how can i improve?

(btw i just wanna say thanks for everything you do, i've been watching osp's videos for years and i'm pretty sure yall have shaped part of my personality. so,,,thanks for that.)

Ahh, dynamic comic panels. It's definitely a skill of its own. The way I like to think about it, comic panel layouts are similar to a translation of the camera movement in film and animation. In the same way a movie wouldn't be shot entirely in shot-reverse-shot camera-A-camera-B medium shots, a comic probably won't be entirely framed in equilateral uniform panels.

Comic panels have one weakness and one strength in contrast with camera shots: the weakness is that comics are static and can't actually move the camera to follow the action, but the strength is that comics are not bound to a specific aspect ratio like cameras are. If a camera wants a close-in shot on a character's reaction, it'll by necessity have a decent chunk of empty space on either side. If a camera wants an establishing shot of something really tall or big, it'll need to pan across it rather than capturing the whole thing in one shot. In comics, in contrast, we can do a close-in shot on a character's reaction that's narrow enough that they're basically the only thing in frame, and if we want to show a really tall thing we can just put it in a really tall panel.

Of course, the baseline mechanical consideration for panel construction is that panels of different sizes can frame things differently. If you want a wide, establishing shot of a location, you probably don't want to try and squeeze that into the same kind of half-width panel you'd use for basic dialogue.

Smaller panels can put focus on smaller details, while larger panels imply a pulling-back of focus. Every panel basically implies a single beat of time passing - the size, shape, and arrangement of that panel helps indicate exactly how much time and what rhythm it carries in the story overall. In this one, three short stacked panels imply a miniature montage of "what we're doing to get ready to go into the spooky cave."

Panels used for character conversation can be relatively small, only large enough to accommodate the speech bubbles and the relevant character's expression, but that can be played with too. If a character's saying a lot at once, you might want to put all that in a wide panel rather than having to space the dialogue across panels unnecessarily.

Wide panels are also good for showing more motion, or highlighting a character's position relative to their environment. Its visual equivalent in film would be a medium-shot, but it can fill a similar role as a film wide-shot, situating a character in their environment and allowing for more close-in shots later.

Wide panels that show a character in their environment are also good for showing how other characters are reacting to that character, so I often use them to follow smaller panels of close-shot dialogue - like cutting to a medium-shot to show the characters moving after a conversation.

I personally tend to be a lot more willing to play with panel width than panel height - tall panels are usually restricted to establishing shots or narrow reaction-shot inserts. This is because tall panels really eat into how much you can fit on any given page. In my early chapters, like the sentinel fight, I used a lot of very tall panels, and that meant the fight felt a lot slower.

I don't hate how it looks, but I could've arranged it more efficiently.

More funky panel arrangements can be used to split the difference - smaller insert panels over larger backgrounds can let you sort of get the best of both worlds, producing a large panel with the impact of a splash page while also allowing you to insert more standard character reactions and dialogue.

Tall panels are good for adding depth and a sense of scale, but wide panels flow more readily with the way we naturally read comics - in general, we read horizontally, not vertically.

You also can play around with panel arrangements to imply things about the mindset or state of a character. In this one, I used the narrowing panels and the reduced skew of the border to highlight a character falling unconscious.

And in this one, I used a rare case of identically-shaped panels to indicate a character slowly waking up. Since he wasn't yet aware of what his situation was, using identically-shaped panels helped communicate that he's feeling about the same across all three panels, despite the change in status quo.

Fight scenes make things more complicated, of course. A lot more is happening, which means I usually make the panels on average somewhat bigger to avoid losing detail. I often board dialogue-heavy pages with four lines of panels, but for fight scenes I almost always use three to allow for more verticality in each individual panel. I also tend to skew the top and bottom panel borders more, and might skew the side borders to more extreme angles, because this (a) produces an unbalancing effect that makes the scene feel more hectic, and (b) can draw the eye in helpful directions to follow the movement. In this scene, the top and bottom borders are skewed to narrow as they move to the right, which, combined with the middle border also skewing down and to the right, draws the eye to naturally follow that movement - we slide down from the first panel to the second, and then across to the third panel of the taller, wider reaction shot.

In this case, I skew the panels one way on the first line during the gradual push-in from a wide shot to a close-up, and then on the second line I skew the panel border the opposite way, because the vibe of the fight has very suddenly changed. It also draws the eye up and to the right to see the character’s initial moment of realization before we cut wider for their more dramatic reaction shot.

I don’t really have this down to a science or anything. I can explain in hindsight why I did a lot of these things, but during the storyboarding process when I’m laying it out I really mostly make these decisions based on ✨vibes✨. My general suggestion for getting a feel for it is, as always, play around with it and read a fuckton of comic books.

now calling canon things in south park i don’t like “matt and trey’s headcanons”

rebloging for when i wanna watch a new anime

Vaguely Describing Anime

Akudama Drive: We cheer for criminals since the government is corrupt

Angels of Death: Escape room

Assassination Classroom: Loser students try to assassinate their teacher

Attack on Titan: Death. Death everywhere.

Bungo Stray Dogs: Group of weirdos rival another group of weirdos and a completely different group of weirdos pops up every once in a while

Classroom of the Elite: Rich/smart bastards

Death Note: Boy with God complex thinks he’s the worlds savior with a notebook

Death Parade: When you die you get to play games

Demon Slayer: Boy and his sister hunt down Michael Jackson

Fairy Tail: Chaos

Free!: Shirtless men swimming

Fruits Basket: The zodiacs love the sweet innocent girl, she’s so kind to them

Given: BL with badass music

Haikyuu: Volleyball played by crows and baby crow

High-Rise Invasion: In this world, it’s kill or be killed

Hunter X Hunter: Where’s dad?

If My Favorite Pop Idol Make it to the Budokan, I Would Die: Two girls are each other’s number one supporter

Inuyasha: Back to the Future

Jujutsu Kaisen: Kid eats fingers to save people

Kenka Boncho Otome: Girl Beats Boys: Fuck grades, let’s fight

Kiss Him, Not Me!: …..kiss him, not her

Komi Can’t Communicate: The definition of “shaking in my boots”

Ultramarine Magmel: Big scary continent vs one man and his assistant

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Dragon girl wants to be stepped on by a human girl

My Hero Academia: Ate some hair and now lots of people want to kill him for some reason

One Piece: Pirates of the Caribbean with hundreds of twists and secrets

One-Punch Man: Man is bored and too strong

Ouran High School Host Club: Poor student needs to crossdresser to pay off debt to rich people

Parasyte: The Maxim: Alien and boy fight evil

Pretty Boy Detective Club: Sherlock played by five kids who are too pretty

SK8 The Infinity: Possibly gay boys skate

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me!

Soul Eater: Human weapon eats souls with his partner

The Devil is a Part-Timer: Satan works at a knockoff McDonald’s

The Disastrous Life of Saiki. K: Legit psychic wants to be left alone

The Future Diary: Hunger Games

The Millionaire Detective - Balance: UNLIMITED: Rich boy and cop with PTSD fight crime

The Morose Mononokean: Boy befriends yokai

The Seven Deadly Sins: Demons, goddesses, giants, fairies, and humans fight

Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun: Girl befriends ghosts

Wonder Egg Priority: Kids fight to bring people back from the dead

Yuri On Ice: Gay ice skating

when the sources you have to use on the assignment dont support your actual opinion so u just have to lie

Not to sound like an old fart here but my philosophy about video games is like. A kid living out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with no internet access for miles should be able to purchase a game from walmart, take that game home, put it in their console, and play the whole game with all of its features and the only thing lack of internet affects is the inability to play online with others. Nothing else. They shouldn't be missing entire chunks of the game becuase they can't download a patch. The game shouldn't be borderline empty or unplayable without a patch.

i,,,,,didnt like alois' ending

idk why, i wanted a happy ending for him! but,,,for some reason it was very unsatisfying :/

i thought ciel and sebastians ending was Peak Comedy though. nothing else will ever be that funny again. its kinda sad that he left all his friends and family and stuff but the fact that sebastian has to be his butler for eternity is. So Funny to me.

also Fuck claude. all my homies hate claude.

i also didnt like hannah??? but idk why lol

alois is kinda a terrible person but i 💖💖💖💖

hes my fav 💖💖💖

rewatching black butler, the only thing i remember about it is alois being a camp gay and me reading waaaay to much ciel x reader fanfiction for an 11 year old lmao

im like,,,,,super convinced that belos is a human. im not on toh tumblr a lot so idk if this is a popular theory but it should be bc it makes a lot of sense

RESEMBLANCE TO A SLUMBERING HUMAN FIGURE

BONESBOROUGH IS MADE UP OF A SLUMBERING(dead) HUMAN(oid) FIGURE.

“luz is from connecticut? what a nothing state. why connecticut?”

connecticut: 

nico and leo are best friends actually

Me trying to not go insane realizing that it’s 4 pm so soon it will be like 6 pm and I’ll have to start ‘winding down’ for the evening and then it’ll be 8 and then 10 and it’ll be time to do my evening activities and then it’ll be midnight and then it’ll be time for me to go to bed again just so I can wake up and be ever conscious of the passage of time and how meaningless it has become for another day and try to prevent myself from going insane again

who was gonna tell me Alvin and the chipmunks were a thing in the 50s

and won 2 grammys

I thought it was just the films!

@artistfallen

every time i listen to “you’re a mean one mr. grinch” i can’t help but sit there and think “what did the grinch do to hurt you?” because dude just stands there for 2 minutes and 58 seconds and drags the grinch into the dirt

okay for those of you wanting an update, she just got to the episode and guessed it immediately. (im writing this as she texts me about it)

like right when she got to it she was like "Amity has a crush on Luz ans wants to ask them to prom" (she headcanons luz as enby btw) which, good on her for figuring the whole episode out, i didnt even guess the note was a love note when i first watched. but she thinks shes wrong so....

her: "amitys afraid of getting outted and people knowing about her crush on luz"

me: "is that your actual prediction or just something u want"

her: "just hopes and dreams 😔😔"

she loves luz's dress. tbh dont we all? luz has a great fashion sense

She found out she was right!! or at least she said "I mean technically we don't know w h o she was gonna ask but the figure looked like Luz so I'm gonna say I was right" so shes going to be really excited

SHE GOT TO IT she's gloating about how she knew what was going to happen, and yeah she did, so she should. shes so excited that they actually got together she just keeps saying how happy she is :,) and how she knew it all along.

now i can openly talk about lumity w her without spoiling anything

brooooo i got my friend to watch the owl house and td her there was a canon gay ship and she thinks its going to be willow and luz but she doesnt want that, she ships lumity. and i really CANNOT wait for her to reach the grom ep. like i literally CANT WAIT I...

brooooo i got my friend to watch the owl house and td her there was a canon gay ship and she thinks its going to be willow and luz but she doesnt want that, she ships lumity. and i really CANNOT wait for her to reach the grom ep. like i literally CANT WAIT I...

i liked ttc bc of nico lmao

this might be controversial but if battle of the labyrinth is your fav book you care about the metaphors, if the last olympian is your fav you just care about percabeth, if the lightning thief is your fav you care about family, if the sea of monsters is your fav you care about adventure, if titan’s curse is your fav you actually care about the plot

yeah there’s a lot of work we still need to do but i am literally begging y’all to let people celebrate. let us just have one day of happiness before we return to the grime truth of reality

an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks

the scarlet ibis

marigolds

the diamond necklace

the monkey’s paw

the open boat

the lady and the tiger

the minister’s black veil

an occurrence at owl creek bridge

a rose for emily

(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)

the cask of amontillado

the yellow wallpaper

the most dangerous game

a good man is hard to find

some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15

add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed

leo valdez:

Hi.

Me sell hats. Okay, poke?

Come to old old old haus, poke. Bring coines.

-hat mouse