The Marra Method: Traditional Comics Techniques for Visual Storytelling | 10. Write Panel Captions in the Present Tense and in the Active Voice

An on-going, evolving series collecting my thoughts on the craft of telling stories through comic books. These posts do not document rules; these are the ideas passing through my mind when I'm making comic books.

10. Write panel captions in the present tense and in the active voice 

• The reason being the action, the scene, the event, is happening as the reader reads it.

The Marra Method: Traditional Comics Techniques for Visual Storytelling | 9. Make the Words and Pictures Convey Different Information

An on-going, evolving series collecting my thoughts on the craft of telling stories through comic books. These posts do not document rules; these are the ideas passing through my mind when I'm making comic books.

From "I GUESS," by Chris Ware, (I'm not sure what year or issue of RAW), Page 1

9. Make the words and pictures convey different information

• I am not a big fan of Chip Kidd's work, but I heard him tell a good story about the essentials of design in an interview. He said in the first design class he took in college the professor drew an apple on the chalk board, then the professor wrote the word "apple" underneath it. Then the professor pointed at the board and said "Never do this."

• This cardinal sin of design applies the same exact way to comics.

• I'm not a great fan of Chris Ware's work either. When Mazzucchelli used this strip Ware did for RAW as an example of words and pictures doing separate things as an example in class it resonated for me.

• Ware's strip is an extreme example. The words and pictures convey completely different stories. The separation between the two narrative information delivery systems is rarely as opposite as this, but the point is made, words and pictures should provide separate information threads.

• This is the true power of comic books. Words and pictures synthesize to create something larger than their sum. Through the tension and interaction between words and pictures is where comics derive their magic.

New York Times Illustration

I have an illustration in the New York Times today to go along with a piece for the Draft column in the Opinionator section about how a journalist-turned-novelist came to love breaking away from his journalistic background of writing just the facts and create lies writing fiction. Here's the article.

Interview | Newsarama covers BLADES & LAZERS

I talk with Zack Smith over at Newsarama about the upcoming BLADES & LAZERS. Check it out here.

The Marra Method: Traditional Comics Techniques for Visual Storytelling | Interrupt: THE HAMA RULES

Via The Beat, Larry Hama has posted on his Facebook page his rules for creating a comic book page. They're perfect and succinct. Here they are:

These are my ten rules for drawing a comic book page, that sums up what I have learned in forty odd years in the biz. They are not universal, they are my own personal guidelines, so there is nothing to disagree about.1. Don’t have people just standing there.
2. ANY expression is better than a blank stare.
3. Avoid tangents, and any straight line that divides the panel.
4. If you use an odd angle in the shot, there has to be a reason for it.
5. If you don’t have at least one panel on each page with a full figure, your “camera” is too close.
6. Plan out your shots in “Lawrence of Arabia” mode rather than in “General Hospital” mode.
7. Don’t think of backgrounds as “things to fill up the space after the figures are drawn.”
8. If you know what something is called, and you have an Internet connection, there is no reason to draw it inaccurately.
9. If the colorist has to ask if a scene takes place at night, you haven’t done your job.
10. If you can’t extend the drawing beyond the panel borders and still have it make visual sense, you’ve cheated on the perspective

The Marra Method: Traditional Comics Techniques for Visual Storytelling | 8. Never break the panel border

An on-going, evolving series collecting my thoughts on the craft of telling stories through comic books. These posts do not document rules; these are the ideas passing through my mind when I'm making comic books.

8. Never break the panel border ...

• ... ever.

Zatoichi Illustration for Criterion

Here is the illustration I did for the Criterion Collections Blu-ray Box set of the Zatoichi series of films.