Creating a Green Asphalt Comic Page

Even though I'm still plugging away at it, I'd like to share some of my thoughts on developing my own personal comic with a page that went through a rather radical change from it's creation and finalization.

So here's the initial sketch. Fist off this sketch shows one of the big no-no's that I tried to avoid from the very beginning of my comic that being that panel 3 is offset from the line that panel 2 is. Not to mention I felt the last panel is very bland and not particularly interesting visually or from a narrative standpoint.

Ok so here is the newer sketch after a bit of thought in between gigs. I felt the first panel was perfectly fine but made a major overhaul on the other panels, by combing panels 2 and 3 I felt it made a stronger narrative and was overall more pleasing to the eye. This also allowed for a slightly larger size for panel 3. By changing from a closeup to a longshot of Lucky walking away I felt it emphasized the relative smallness of Lucky and the moodiness of the town.

Now I that I have this set, I'm basically on autopilot for the inking process. The only step inbetween these to note is that I slap a simple perspective grid over the last panel to ensure that everything looks correct. Unfortunately the building on the right, while nice compositionally didn't make a lick of sense so that had to be altered.

And a few more finishing touches. It's done.

With Green Asphalt there's a large emphasis on keeping my backgrounds looking nice. I feel that it's just as important as the characters. And I think I might share my thoughts on developing characters with my next post.