TM Thumbnail Preview/ shoptalk

I don't even know how many times I've written and rewritten this chapter... I'm looking forward to sharing the PDF of the original version so you can see how much it has changed!

Here is the sort of stuff I think about when I'm doing my thumbnails (a subject I will never shut up about since it is the most important part of the process)

• paneling is tied to pacing: the faster your eyes read through panels, the faster the pacing will feel. This is also impacted by the amount of text and the amount of visual information/ directions to parse within the panel. But generally, the greater relative amount of panels you have, the faster the action will feel.
• make sure the camera makes sense: Don't just do some boring headshots or fall back on over-the-shoulders. If it's a tense scene, give it an angle. If there's action building, do cuts. If there's a calm scene, use horizontals or balanced compositions where there is no feeling of tension building. This is the sort of thing you have to keep noticing while watching films, reading other comics, etc... you can enjoy a comic even if it's only headshots, but imo you will start to feel a bit fatigued over time with the monotony. I'd rather not put my audience in that position if I can avoid it.
• don't be an asshole: Don't introduce objects that aren't going to be used later. Don't let objects fall out of the scene, don't forget trees, don't change the carpet pattern, make sure the cigarette burns down over time, don't switch the earring to the wrong ear, etc. All that tiny stuff can drive you nuts while you're making a comic, but as a close reader I get sooo annoyed when someone is drinking a cup of coffee and then in the next panel, the cup is missing. If I can see there's something that I need to keep in mind I will make a note to myself as to it's position.... in case you want to guilt me for my hypocrisy, I was/am an asshole about one thing in MI: Mike is supposed to have an American flag on the left arm of his suit. When I started Chapter 2 I was in the middle of an insane deadline and it slipped my mind; by the time I remembered it was too time-intensive to fix on a dozen pages so it's on my to-do edit list. None of my otherwise very anal readers has bothered to bug me about it yet so I've been guiltily under the radar for months, haha. But I am uncomfortably aware of my mistake.
  
• NO TANGENTS. My #1 peeve forever for all comics is when the borders between panels artificially align between sets of pages. I do everything in my power to avoid this. I think of the hundreds of pages I've made in the past, I've only come close to tangents 2-3x, and thankfully the content of those pages was clear enough where your eye wouldn't think to skip to the wrong part. All of this is kind of ironic because the major payoff is in the physical format, which is what I keep dragging my heels on creating, but whatever~ this is the difference in planning and detail between a for-fun project and an attempt at a professional product.
  

Anyways, in an ideal world all of these pages are getting done this month, but in our unideal reality I think I need to update MI once or twice because my readers are getting antsy and I don't blame them! My little bout of health issues earlier this month messed me up so I am naturally battling with an impacted months' end, but to be honest I love the challenge... lets see how many of these pages I will actually get through >:]