A question for the action savvy: How do you plan out your fight scenes?

[monotone_ink]

I myself am making an action-type manga. I plan my fight scenes by describing every movement in excruciating detail on my script (it's especially difficult too, considering how acrobatic they're going to be).
How do you do it?
I want to see the many ways that this could be done so I can learn from you all.

This is a little inspiration of what I'm aiming for in my battle scenes.

[Stellamari]

I start by drawing the silhoutte and try to make it as natural and less stiff as possible. Then after that, I attend to the details.

[AnnaLandin]

I break the action down into page by page descriptions. Like, "page 1: character A meets enemies. Swords are drawn. Page 2: character A swings sword, enemy ducks to avoid it." and so on and so forth. I do this so that I know what happens, when it happens, and how many pages I'm spreading the action scene out across.

Then I thumbnail it all out, to see how the action flows across the page - how to lay out the panels, how to keep the action clear and easily read, and to keep the reader's eyes moving across the page correctly. I do my very best to keep track of where my characters are in relation to one another, so that they don't turn to the left when their enemy is really on their right - and so on.

Here, for example: even if, in the bottom panel, the bandits are spread out across the panel, rather than on the right side, the main character is still turned towards the right, so that it is clear he hasn't turned around. If you don't keep track of where everyone is in relation to everyone else, it's easy to mess up and make it look as though people are teleporting from one place to the other without moving in between them, and it gets confusing.

Action-scenes still give me trouble, but I think I'm getting better each time I draw one. Practise makes perfect!

[SeraphicMayin]

I've got the action scenes of my Faerie Phase comic blocked out, so I wanna preface this by saying though It's the first dynamic posing I've done for comics, I've done plenty of art with action-y posing so I'll be talking less about the sequential movement and more on perspective and posing. Hope it helps ; u ; and this is just what I think about when I draw so, take what you need and leave the rest as you like~ ^^

First things first is knowing intimately how the body is shaped and how it can bend. Action scenes also require knowing how to visualize a body in a given pose from any angle.
And to make things more complicated, when you construct the shots for an action scene, there's always the most dynamic viewing angle to consider xD. Most of the time it's just me sitting there trying to imagine a given action shot from three or four directions before I start sketching.

The page that you showed, imo is a good example of action. I think, so long as it's clear what's happening, and you just keep drawing; you'll get a sense of your own personal style of action.

Sneek peek/Example for my comic upcoming: I'm still learning timing and pacing for comics xD; so forgive if it seems claustrophobic in it's paneling.

[ZelEnkora]

i draw as action manga too. When i write the script of my series Broken Chains, i draw the fight scenes in stick figures and number 'em... And i write the number of the fight scene in the script....

[allenthomas]

For Shadosassins, I try to storyboard the pages to see how they flow together. I sketch everything out and make sure that the reader does not get lost trying to figure out what's happening in my story. I usually keep the script near either on screen or on my phone when I'm planning to see where everything is going.

[kazukitakamura126]

I draw stick figures of the action poses so I don't have to worry about the camera, I use my own body as a reference so I can position certain body parts. However, if 'it's something I can't do like the splits I just draw it can move one to the next action. Then I draw rough pages in a notebook that establishes the camera angle and I can use it as a reference when I am making the finalized version. I do this with all other types of pages. The ones that don't have fighting I don't use stick figures to position their bodies.