16 Comments

1. rsjr  •  Dec 22, 2009 @1:39 am

   Stay away from the brown snow piles! :3

2. mattious  •  Dec 22, 2009 @3:35 am

   Oh my GOD do I love that frog prince.

3. fayeyong  •  Dec 22, 2009 @5:25 am

   Awesome to see tht you have settled in well in NY, and are having fun. Is the children's comic for a pitch, or is it a commission? Looking good either way.

   Hopefully one day soon I can make it over to the NY comic con, would love to meet you in person! :)

4. Anonymous  •  Dec 22, 2009 @9:47 am

   I also think to a certain extent people read in the vertical. Sure words are laid out horizontally for a while, but then zoot! you are on to the next line. I think this scanning tendency while reading is why newspaper columns and blogs (though not livejournal) are laid out vertically even though the computer screen is horizontal.

5. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @9:50 am

   Heehee. Yeah, I've been getting some nice comments on his design; he's quirky and gots huge eyes and mouth and lanky limbs, so I get to have a lot of fun with expressions and body language being human but imitating an actual frog.

6. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @9:54 am

   It's for a completed project I'll be pitching to agents and publishers as both a comic and a children's book … but I'll be selling them as self-published in the meantime. :)

   You know, if you ever visit, you are welcome to stay over here. We have two futons and an air mattress, and we're three blocks away from the F train which'll take you straight to Manhattan and the G which'll take you to Queens. Just send me an email saying, “Hey Rivkah! I'm comin' over!”

7. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @9:59 am

   In typography and layout, you learn to avoid making lines longer than 120 characters (though the ideal falls more around 80) because the eye has difficulty finding the next line and will often repeat or skip lines once it goes past a certain point. The marker the edge of our eye keeps at the front of the line fades when it moves too much into our peripheral.

   I've always personally laid out my pages with that in mind: laying out text so that it's easy to read while utilizing our motion/peripheral vision to put elements to the side. You notice the side elements as you're scrolling down the same way you would notice a car or a bike moving towards you while crossing the street, but you don't focus on them until you choose to.

8. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @9:59 am

   I will! >_<

9. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @10:12 am

   Laid out my web pages, that is. Writing a comic, I expect people to look directly at most everything. :)

10. nervousystem  •  Dec 22, 2009 @12:30 pm

    I am of a divided mind on this issue; so much so that I've attempted my own comic horizontally and vertically. Currently, I've rested on the vertical format and it is indeed a much much smoother reading experience online, but I do feel slightly irked looking at my stuff on the web. The horizontal-oriented iteration of the comic felt more comfortable to view online, but honestly, my page design was terrible.

    It's the issue of human body design that really sealed the deal for me. I was ending up with awkward “T” designed panels. With the words horizontal across a wide panel, but the figures standing like spires in the middle. My designs were getting cramped and felt like I was composing little umbrellas. Again, entirely my own fault for poor panel design, but these challenges reduced and practically vanished when I went vertical.

    I have seen it done horizontally very well on Octopus Pie and on several Zuda Comics series. I dunno. Great food for thought though!

11. Anonymous  •  Dec 22, 2009 @1:37 pm

    One could conceivably make tall panels that read across a horizontal page too. Or something.

    Comics are hard!

    I can't wait to see that comic. But seriously, mid January? I am hoping to finish a colored 6 page comic by mid January. You must be a speed demon. Though I am an especially slow demon so the grading curve is all effed.

12. Anonymous  •  Dec 22, 2009 @2:03 pm

    The person looking up at the viewer in the second pic is a bit scary in his/her enthusiasm. Pencils looking really nice, by the way, and that snow, as long as you don't have to go anywhere far, looks lovely. I want snow. T_T

    “It's for a completed project I'll be pitching to agents and publishers as both a comic and a children's book … but I'll be selling them as self-published in the meantime. :)”

    Can you give away some of the plot or back of the cover blurb? You've sparked my curiosity.

13. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @2:53 pm

    I've done a couple tutorial comics that were in a horizontal format and found I was wasting a lot of space in my compositions. Any panels I wanted to stretch entirely across the page would have ended up having too much white space and any panels stretched vertical, top to bottom, felt over elongated. I found a couple layouts that works, but it was a limited pallet, unfortunately.

    I've also noticed that the Zuda comics are in a horizontal format, but they keep it a short horizontal, and honestly, I think it works well for them, too, especially since they're being viewed on a monitor, not print. It does seem to constrain the layouts a bit, however, having an almost square page. There's something about an elongated page (whether vertical or horizontal) that adds a flair for the dramatic.

    I also think horizontal works better for strips and gag panels, as well. The focus is usually on the dialog, not panning shots of action scenes. So in that context, I think it works well. :)

14. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @2:56 pm

    I get up. I eat. I shower. I work. I eat. I work. I eat. I dance/workout. I work. I sleep.

    Repeat until done. :D

    Funny, I can work fast when I put my mind to it and really go at it. I haven't worked well these last three years trying to juggle a job with work and the whole back-and-forth. I never finish anything that way. But rent is paid for this and next month. If I don't finish, I starve. It's good incentive. :)

15. lilrivkah  •  Dec 22, 2009 @2:57 pm

    :D When I start in on the inks, I'll tell more about it. I know if I talk too much about it in the penciling stage, however, I'll loose steam to the talking instead of the doing.

    But I promise you'll be seeing more soon enough!

16. queeniechan  •  Dec 22, 2009 @8:52 pm

    I agree with you about humans seeing horizontally but focusing vertically. I mean, the human body is vertical, is it not? It's not just pictures, it's books too. Why is it that we read DOWN the page… certainly we read horizontally too, but we read horizontally THEN down. Books are longer going down than going across. Must be some reason for that.

    It looks like you're having a grand time in New York. Good luck with the children's book too. I wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New year!

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