I've been having fun working with a new process for creating book three. Instead of handling the book one page at a time, start to finish, I have been working through the whole book all at once in phases: layout, sketches, pencils, inks. It's sort of like being a one-man assembly line. Using this method I have already completed the first draft of writing and layout for this issue and am about half way though the sketching.

This has been exciting on a number of levels (and I will probably go into more detail in subsequent posts) but the number one thing that this has done for me so far is it has allowed me to see the writing process unfold very quickly through a series of iterations. I got started by breaking down the events of the narrative into a page-by-page sequence and then divided that up into simple panel layouts and basic dialog. At this point I can take a first simple read-through of the story, sans images but with a rough idea of pacing.

Following this step I proceeded to measure out all the panel divisions for all twenty-eight pages of the issue. I enjoy doing this because it allows me to trace off the exact size and proportion of each panel in the book when I sit down to do my sketch-layouts of the content. Before I proceed to sketch layouts themselves. The result is a series of large, pre-pencil, sketch-compositions from which I lightbox when I start penciling.

While I have used this sketch method in the past, this is the first time that I have done large segments of a story in sketch form before proceeding to finish work. By doing it this way I am already getting a preview of how the story will actually read before I commit to development that will be too costly (in terms of time) to fix. I expect that in a couple of weeks I will have finished this next phase of development and will be in a position to read through another iteration of the story and begin making serious edits as necessary.

I'll have more pictures as I complete the sketches and move into the penciling phase of the project (one of my secret hopes is that the new process will force me to take my pencils more seriously as preparatory work for finished inks).

Checkout the scrapbook for pics of pages in development or go to www.ewlynchcomics.com/index/show_post/35 for more!