dupe
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comic shots tutorial
🕑 Added 2019-09-14 02:50:22 +0000 UTCthis tutorial is available to all patrons because tutorial streams were voted for this month! although eventually i'll upload it publicly because i have strong feelings especially about public education and free access to information.
anyway, an unconventional way to do this tutorial, but since it was about comics, i figured it should be a comic.
originally this was going to be part of the big comics tutorial i wanted to do.
i decided i'm just going to crack pieces off of the ideas i presented in there and make smaller tutorials. it's probably less exhausting for an audience as much as myself.
only a few things were cut, such as the reassurance that these aren't rules but guides for if something feels wrong, since i opted for a different lead-out, or dupe elaborating on different ways comics readers will engage with extrasensory information brought along by conditioning through film (like how cartoons with engage with a camera when it's all drawn by hand, or maybe even imagining the foley of tapping an empty fishbowl when viewing them tapping on the imaginary camera's lens).
the other major thing cut was explaining why each shot might look a little bit WEIRD, and connecting it to furries and how some furry designs look UNCANNY and others look fine, despite having wildly different proportions.
human bodies have key points that the brain focuses on to identify other humans and what looks strange, in art these are usually called golden proportions, used to make sure your anatomy is right.
so, for example, cutting off below the ribcage near the belly button is weird because the stomach itself doesn't add a lot to the general line of action in the spine or emoting, but your elbows rest there, so it's cutting the camera at a pivotal joint used for emoting with gesticulations. cutting off at the clavicles is weird because it causes the shoulders to create a tangent with the camera's cutting point, removing another pivotal emotive element... unless they're really tense, i guess.
i also removed more in-detail explanations for shot purposes because i feel like that info is easily accessible online. there are lots of charts explaining basic camera shots in film available already for free. this one just focused on comics specifically.
anyway, i'm glad to have written it all out. it was really useful to go over.
Comments
Peligrin
Thanks I loved this and it’s really helped me with some shit I’m insecure about, like too many headshots
gray Folie
thank you. the guy i pulled most heavy inspiration from for starting to make comics of my own would always say he treated comics like a storyboard, which sounded like a great alternative to art school in my 14-year-old brain at the time. i wouldn't say it's perfect advice now -- storyboards have different pacing and quality control from comics, and most importantly no speech bubbles to account for -- but it was useful for starting to take interest in film and other modes of storytelling in general. it's a little interesting to compare it to a lot of comic composition advice i've seen over the ages i've seen which can range from focusing mainly on counting panels and giving the entire page a line of action within the panel structure (mainly for comic books, where when you open the book, you'll be seeing it from a distance where the structure is more obvious than the content at first), or focusing mainly on the structure of the speech bubbles for web strip formats which mainly only change up the dialogue and punchline instead of the panel interiors and exteriors. not sure how well the application of film concepts apply to kinds of comics outside of long form narratives yet, but it's useful to have it written down for building on it later.
Will Toledo
The "cinematography" in your work is always excellent - better than most movies! I really enjoy seeing the way you play with the camera throughout a scene & make it "move" despite the restricted format. I'm glad it was tutorialed!
