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Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Current Workspace

I'm hard at work on the second complete draft of my graphic memoir.  So I thought I'd share a little about my work process for this stage of the practice.

The first full draft of the project exists on notecards.  I used a drafting technique I learned at The Center for Cartoon Studies during the wonderful graphic novel workshop taught in the summers by Paul Karasik.  Basically each index card is a thumbnail of a page.  It includes brief, very rough layout sketches, and a list at the bottom of what each tier of comics on that page will convey.  It is a fast and complete way to work through the story without committing too much time to script or art that might just get tossed.  I completed a 320 page rough draft version in about six weeks.

This second full draft is much slower (I've been working since the first of November, I have about 200 pages sketched in six months), but still rough and faster than a final version would be.  I am spending more time working out sketches.  And I am writing the script.

To keep things moving quickly, I am doing it all digitally.  And since I'm most comfortable and experienced as a writer, I am creating my script in my trusty tool, Scrivener, on my computer, while creating the page drafts on my ipad in Procreate.



As each page is drafted, I print it out, and put it in a giant binder, which I then use for continuity reference as I go.  Plus, it's just cool to see your project growing!

When I finish, I will have a script draft that matches the rough draft of the comic.  And then I'll see what seems like the best way for me to move along to the next draft. 

I know that the way I write involves many drafts of things, and I already have a long list of changes I will need to make in draft three.

I keep noticing how similar the process is to when I wrote my mystery novels.  And, of course, how different the process is, since I'm working in a completely different medium.

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