Visual Scripting, My First Attempts

In my last post, I talked about Jessica Abel's wonderful technique of visual scripting and how my experiments with it changed my comics for the better.

Below are a few shots showing the development of one page of my memoir.

I didn't have Adobe InDesign at the time I did this, so my work looks a little different than Abel's does, but I used all the same principles.  I am working on my iPad Pro, using Adobe Comp CC (free) and Procreate.

I did the visual scripting in Adobe Comp CC.  For this chapter, my foundational grid was a 3x3, nine-panel grid.  So I drew that in first, knowing I might adjust as I went.

You can see the start here:  boxes of different shapes indicate different kinds of words which will appear on the page.  I am typing them in to help determine the amount of space the words will take in each panel, even though I intend to handwrite the words later.

The red words describe what I think I will draw in each panel.

Remember, this is drafting.  Anything can change.  And most of it does.

Below, the script is evolving.  Do I need 9 panels or the 8 I had originally thought of?  If each panel is a distinct action... hmmm.... what, if anything, can I eliminate?  What needs the best focus?

Of course, significant revisions occurred...

Once I had it the way I wanted it (knowing, of course, that revisions can and will alway occur), I sent a .jpg of the visual script to Procreate.  There I imported it as a layer, and drew over it.  Below is my working draft.

Once I felt sure it was working, I began to color.

And that's how I have begun to use visual scripting in my work. 

I still do less formal drafting, of course, capturing ideas or quick sequences.  Testing out alternative versions of things.  I'm still a creator who simply has to draw or write a thing before I know it's going to work.  But once I have a fairly clear idea of how a scene is going to go, this visual scripting is the next best step for me!

Give it a try!