ACTION!!!

sometime in the 1990s a good old fashioned fight in a comic book turned into huge splash pages full of dynamic pin ups of a single captured pose often breaking through the very panels.  too much of a good thing. they tried so hard for impact that they robbed the scene of it's very point...implied motion.

now...i don't have a whole lot of action in my stories because in horror and comedy the crucial thing is what happens before and after the violence.  but from time to time, and with certain characters a fight is needed to solidify his/her credibility or cement his character.  but alas i am not here to give away story telling techniques, i have here to give away comic book illustrating techniques.  so here is a correct way to imply motion...to lay out a physical confrontation...to present violence in am impactful way.

let's start with this simple two panel tier.

simple but effective. more motion and impact is felt here than in a whole annuals worth of splash pages.  why?  I'll tell you.  set up. the first panel is motionless, the camera angle is dull, the background is unremarkable...the only thing you have to focus on is the hand.  it is drawn waaaaay back.  the readers eye is going deep into the world of that panel.  the eye puts the reader behind all three characters. ONLY TO HAVE IT GET SLAPPED BACK OUT in panel two.  ALSO  look at the actual lengths of the two panels ( i think i went over this before) a longer panel is perceived as taking more time than a short panel.  so the long panel gives the eye time to pause and then the next panel being short and crowded seems to happen instantly.  it's all relative get it? its all a long tedious set up, every panel every page has a purpose.  and every vanishing point has a puspose.  you'll notice here that inpanel one the backgound is a comfortable distance away, the riferiderator and ceiling lines are fairly unremakable, but in panel two they are closer and have sparp angles to them that pull right into the swinging hand.

now take a look at what is a fantastic page if i do say so myself

now let me break down why this works.

a  panel one is an establishing shot...reminding the reader of the surroundings...building up some tension.  there is not a lot of implied line work leading you into the next frame, and that is on purpose.  again i want the reader to pause...to slow down, so that in panel two POW!  short quick panel, with a drastic change in camera angle.  and since this is a fight, and we want the illusion of continued movement, not just a pin-up, we need to start moving the readers eye around very quickly. so all the major lines are circling around, moving the readers eye from panel to panel. (follow the arrows.)  in fact in panel two and three the eyeball is back to back and could be perceived as simply, in a flip book sort of way, as turning it's "head" as you look from one panel to the next.  

NOW comes the fun part, Panel 5 and 6.  this is where the art of inking properly comes in.  in order to get the readers eye to go deep into the panel we have three distinct thicknesses of inked lines.  the thicker the ink the more the image pops out and the closer it seems to be to the reader. the eye (blue) is really thick, even thicker that the border line, the tentacle and figure (green) is thinner but still thinner than the background and finally the hand is as thin as the wall and dispenser.  the hand is perceived as being farthest away thanks in part to the line variances.  so that BAM! in the second panel, after you have been looking nice and deep, an eyeball fulla soap is waiting for you first thing!  and the eyeball and soap is right up in your face thanks to the extra thick line really jumping out from the background. (now take a look again at the non colored version)...kinda neat huh?

the final series of panels is my own recipe.  I needed alot of stuff to be noticed that is also supposed to be going on at the same time. some of the things need to be larger than others,  we need to notice the tentacle knocking the door open, we need to see the kid run off, the eye ball wincing in pain, and eventually washing itself off on the other side of the room away from the door that was knocked open.  in order for this to be understood as happening mostly simultaneously we need all these panels to have a common connection.  the scream breaks through the borders and ties them together...simple, effective.  BUT  there is another element.  the horizon line.  (that would be the level of the camera))  each panel has it's own set of vanishing points but they ALL share the exact same horizon line (blue), this keeps these panels from being a random mess of camera shots that make the eye feel like it's jumping around...cause when the eye is jumping around the brain thinks more time is passing.  even more subtly, the words and the horizon line block off the screaming eye from everything else.  an implied barrier is keeping the screaming eye the center of attention even though all hell is breaking loose in the panels with tentacles, children and cowboys flying around.

so there is that. a lot of implied motion in just one little page...and probably way to much thought. as always, this is an art not a science...some of this crap may have only worked because of some other element in here that happened on accident that i didn't even notice AND for the amount of work and thought...this should probably be better than it is, there may be elements in here i haven't noticed that are holding some things back.  who the fuck really knows? Oh, i almost forgot in panel 6 there is a bunch of veins that are almost a mirror image of the soap squiggles hitting the eye.  i don't know if that did anything for the flow but it gave me something to do with the veins besides hide a dirty word in them. 

And now that i look at this page two years or so after i drew it i realize that i forgot to draw Tex's Halo!  that is the lone reason why this is not my favorite Arsenic Lullaby page of all time.  My favorite is the page were Joe throws the fetus into the sleeping woman's window from Arsenic Lullaby No.2.  maybe I'll break that down next time, it was done on a COMPLETELY different layout theory than i use now.  More of a Mike "i drink like a girl" Mignolia, golden ratio, type layout. as a matter of fact, if there is a page you like from Arsenic Lullaby and want me to explain- e-mail me.  I'd like to do this at least once a month.