Well, here’s the completed pencils of the first page. This page threw me a few loops, and I’ve wouund up breaking a few generally acccepted “rules” of comics storytelling in order to set this page up the way I wanted to.

First, I’ve made some changes from the script. This isn’t really a “rule” per se…but you generally don’t want to piss off the person whose story you’re drawing. In this case, though, the story and dialog is all pretty much there, but I’ve just chosen to show things a bit differently, as well as having broken the actions of certain single panels down into multiple panels.

The second rule I’ve broken is one to which I’ve always adhered in the past: when showing a conversation between two people, you should always include an image early-on somewhere of the two interlocutors in the same panel, so that the reader really gets the sense that the two people are in the same room, talking to one another. (A great play on this rule, which is generally shared by the film medium, is in Airplane II: The Sequelwhere there’s a conversation bewteen two people that appears to be going on over a monitor, since we never see the two of the together, but which turns out to be between two people right next to each other who are separated by a small window.)

In this case, though, I really felt that the best place for that image (and the place it was called for in the script) would have been the big center image. However, I really felt that the standard way of doing that–a three-quarters/behind-the-head shot of one person, looking toward the other person–decreased the imact of seeing the bucket for the first time. I wanted his whole body shown and nothing else. Also, I plan to use the called-for shot, a profile of them face-to-face, as the “payoff” panel, after the bucket tells his story.

The other rule is the so-called 180-degree rule, which I flagrantly violate all the time. Its origin is in film, and I generally ignore it because, frankly, comics and movies are two different things.

So, here’s the page, with computer lettering added on top so you can follow the action (although I’ll actually hand letter the final page):

(Click for larger image)

For each panel, I usually start working up a drawing in my sketchbook or on another sheet of paper. Again, I work in colored pencils–starting with a light color and moving to the darker ones to build up an image I’m happy with…to be able to make corrections and move things around without having to start a new drawing every time.

When I’ve got something I’m reasonably happy with, I can scan it, resize it to fit on the bristolboard page that the final artwork will be on, and use a lightbox to trace a rough outline of it onto the board. In this case, though, I wasn’t entirely happy with the colored pencil rough, so I just winged it a bit and copied it onto the board by sight and then refined the image a bit in the pencilling process.

(Click for larger image)

…and thats the final penciled panel to the right.