For my first graphic novel app, I’m designing all my panels as a scrolling comic, similar to the format used by Korean webtoon artists. Like Twitter or Instagram, the idea is to scroll through the panels with your finger on your phone screen.
The biggest decision I made was rather then study what other master webtoon artists have done in the past I wanted to start from a place of experimentation and intuition to guide me. Rather then worry what I was doing right and wrong in terms of what a webtoon was supposed to look like, I wanted to force myself to be present in the process and try things out and see how I felt about it. I dunno if anyone else agrees but I tend to enjoy the whole thing a lot more if it’s from a place of lightness and curiosity rather then a fear of mistakes… Is consistency really that important?
A memory of my Calarts teacher, Mr Petroc, hit me when I decided to do this. Mr Petroc taught me an insightful piece of advice on timing drawings for animation. He would use a stopwatch and sound effects to project the movement and performance inside his head. Each movement could be simplified to an actual sound with his mouth- he would repeat the sound ten times and record it with a stopwatch- then subdivide the whole timing by ten to get the actual frames for that one “sound”.
This insight hit me years later what this technique was teaching me. Visual movement could be described audibly.. What types of sounds felt like what types of movements? Could one lose the literal names of certain sounds and certain objects.. and connect them in metaphorical ways that “felt right”?
Does one have to limit movement to just literal movement over time or can a static shape have a movement? What sounds do those make? What about a contour of a shape? A line?
Can one go a step further from visuals.. to audio.. and possibly tactile? Could certain shapes be described as hard? Soft? Could you compose something musically.. and visually.. and in a tactile way?
As you can see there’s a rabbit hole of fun questions and experiments but it was also nice that there were other artists asking similar questions..
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of the teachers of the Bauhaus movement, was also doing similar experiments with the students on tactilism. Using different textures, they constructed long pieces of varying types of textures and machinations that one would touch while moving to one end to the other. They would test them on a blind audience and record their reactions. It was interesting to read that the audience described the experience as being in a symphony or on a roller coaster ride.
Taking my cues from Laszlo, I’ve been experimenting with the same ideas. Figuring out panel lengths and the spaces between them could be thought more musically or in a more tactical way like those Bauhaus experiments. How long should a panel be on a scroll? How much space between panels? On a macro level.. how does it feel musically and rhythmically? Can you just draw empty panels and arrange them musically first before understanding what story they need to say? On a macro level.. how much texture from panel to panel? Does the contrast between the panels give you more or less impact of the individual?
So many questions and so much to experiment and play with.. To me, it’s been fun looking at the same graphic novel from the varying prism of music, touch and visuals!
Hoping to give you guys an example of some of this crazy stuff from my comic! Stay tuned*