1000 Things To Learn, #2: The Curriculum, Part 1

I previously enumerated the different branches of what I'm calling The Curriculum, HERE.  I thought I'd take a moment to list these things out in greater detail.  The Curriculum is what, in my estimation, it takes to become successful at making a graphic novel.  At least, I think so.  These seem to be the things that need to be focused on to get where I want to be.  These items are listed in order of their chronological place in the actual creation of a graphic story.  I'll be dissecting each of these in greater depth in future posts.  Am I rambling?  Here are numbers 1 - 6.  Let's see if this makes sense:

Scripting - This is where it all starts.  You need a story before you draw a damn thing and you've got to write that story convincingly.  What's one of the best ways to learn to write convincingly?  By reading.  Read as much as you can, not just Graphic novels and comics, read everything you can get your hands on.

Art Direction - What is the ultimate look of the final product?  Will it have a solid Jack Kirby spin to it or are you going for the fluid line of Yoshitaka Amano?  Gather your influences about yourself and distill them down into the important elements that you want to visually represent.

 The sensual feel of Yoshitaka Amano

Anatomy - This is a bit of an outlier.  Anatomy is something you should be working on ALL THE TIME.  Even if you're ultimately cartooning.  Draw from life, draw from photos, draw from statues.  Learn how muscles and bone fit together.  Learn where fat gathers.  The comic artist David Finch says he drew every page in Bridgman's Drawing From Life three times and then did it again with the book closed.  I can't think of a much better task to set for oneself.

Character Design - At this point you probably already have a pretty good idea what your characters will look like.  Here is where your project will really start to come to life though.  Draw those characters in different clothing, with different expressions.  Go wild at this point as you try to nail down what exactly this person or creature will look like.  When you have designs that you're happy with then it's time to draw what are called Turnarounds.  That is, draw them from the front, back and at least one side, focusing on the continuity of the character.

Thumbnails - Here begins the visualization of your project.  The more you include in this step, the better time you'll have later on.  They say: "More time on the front end, means less time on the back end."  Or if you want to go old wives': "A stitch in time saves nine."  What I mean is you should get as much detail and direction into your thumbnails as possible.  Include lighting direction and placement of word bubbles, everything.

Cartooning - This is something that manga artists really excel at.  Sometimes, being that comics are a static medium, you need to really ramp up the emotion.  Rather than just simply making the text in the word balloon bold and adding exclamation points, you might need to tweak the features and emotions of the character.  It can come in handy to have the confidence to step outside reality sometimes.

My goal over the past few weeks has been to buckle down on this curriculum as hard as possible, studying and practicing the different items on the list whenever I have spare time.  Feeling adventurous, like you want to hone your own chops?  Join me!
Stay tuned for number 7 - 12 next week.