John, me being some what of a lettering "anorak", I'm just curious... I see from the above pencilled page that you're offering balloon placements to the letterer on some panels, but not all. Is there a particular reason for this or am I reading too much into things?
Can I also take this opportunity to say that, as an aspiring letterer, I one day hope to grace your work with my word bubbles!
John, me being some what of a lettering "anorak", I'm just curious... I see from the above pencilled page that you're offering balloon placements to the letterer on some panels, but not all. Is there a particular reason for this or am I reading too much into things?
******That's not lettering placement -- that's dialog suggestions to Mr. C.
Can I also take this opportunity to say that, as an aspiring letterer, I one day hope to grace your work with my word bubbles!
*******Better learn to call 'em BALLOONS then, like us big kids do!
WOW! The last panel looks so much more dramatic in the pencils. It's because the eye is pulled up to read the dialogoue, instead of being pulled down in the final version. It's all about perspective, and ultimately flow. So much of that gets bungled in comics. sigh
I have to disagree with you Clint. The final balloon had to be down to draw your eye from the previous panel's balloon down through the illustration of Robotman. And to slam it down like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. If the Chief's dialog balloon had been placed down, then Cliff's would have been placed up to give that same flow.
In the pencils, your eye isn't following the dialog so you are scanning at the midpoint of each panel and there is a good, cinematic flow. Add the balloons and now your eye is moving up and down inside the panel, so you have to balance it out so that you don't skip the art while reading the words. The second panel illustrates this -
We have Rita and the Chief talking up top. We then move down through the art and land on Larry's balloon. Next our eye raises up through the art in panel three to read those balloons.
Thus we have words and picture blending together so we follow the action with the least amount of work, we just have the flow of the story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Good Judgement comes from Experience
And Experience comes from... Bad Judgement
...am I the only one who gets pissed off everytime JB posts scans of of his penciled pages and it is revealed how many liberties Ordway is taking with his work?
Sigh.
John, I know that you're not commenting on this issue. I just wanna say thanks a bunch for sharing the pencils with us so we can see what you intended when you penciled the pages, and please keep 'em coming!
The final balloon had to be down to draw your eye from the previous panel's balloon down through the illustration of Robotman. And to slam it down like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. If the Chief's dialog balloon had been placed down, then Cliff's would have been placed up to give that same flow.
I still don't agree with you. But that might be a case of "me knowing too much." As an artist and graphic designer, everything I do centers around where the eye is drawn to. I don't really like any of the word balloon placements in the finished product, as they all disrupt the flow of the eye from one point to the next. So I do admit that maybe I'm being too picky.
Having said that, the flow is completely unnatural to me, and really pulls my eye down, but only because it pulls me out of the reading experience due to bad graphic design. Part of that is becasue JB has a much better eye for balloon placement than whoever actually did it. JBs stuff not only works good when reading it, but it also works good from a design perspective.
John is still in the drivers seat. His panel layout and storytelling ability is still apparent even on frames where Ordway is more "overpowering" with inks. He got a bit heavier when it came to Superman but let's not forget how long Ordway was drawing Superman and there are some habits that you fall into and I'll gladly give him some leeway. As for some of the other pickiness about how he's "ruining", "needlessly changing" etc., whatever, let's not forget that John's setting the entire pace with both story that Claremont's spinning his own dialogue on just as Ordway's plying his own specialty better than most guys in the industry. If he "alters an eye" here or there, at least he still knows how to draw, unlike some inkers. Let's be happy here and not TOO over-protective of John. I THINK he can handle an alteration of Supes six-pack by one of the greatest inkers of our time. He's a big boy and a pro. -Rick
I respect your right to have an opinion, Rick, but I disagree with it 100%.
First off, in no way am I seeking to protect or defend John. If there is one thing we can agree upon, it is that he doesn't need me or anyone else to do that for him.
I suppose that one might have to be an illustrator, particularly a penciler, in order to understand how vexing it can be to labor over an illustration, and to hand it off to an inker only to have it come back altered in even a small way for no apparent reason other than the inker felt like redrawing something.
If John's only job was to break down the pace of the story or to set up Ordway so that Jerry could indulge in his own personal habits, then there would be no reason for John to have drawn full pencils. He could have just done layouts and let Jerry go to town on all of the details, or they could have hired another penciler. Unless there is something "off" on that eye, rib cage, profile, shadow, cape, expression, et al, then there is no reason for those details to have been arbitrarily changed. Period, IMHO.
So I'm pissed not FOR JB, but for my own experience. If Carlin/DC wanted Ordway to be the "star" of the book, then they should have hired him to pencil it.
The practice creates the impression that there was something "wrong" with the pencils, yet when I view them I don't see anything that NEEDED changing.
It's obvious that others feel differently about this issue and that's okay. I am not trying to denigrate anyone else's opinion. Let's just agree to disagree. The book does look nice, I'm glad that John did it and hope he does more, and I'm looking forward to Doom Patrol. 'Nuff said?
