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Jan 2017

One of the challenges of making comics is expressing non-visual things - like music and sound, in a visual way, and in a way that matches the tone and atmosphere of your comic. I think music is especially difficult to show as it really is a language of its own that can't be written (except, you know.. as musical notation, which most people can't just read and automatically hear!) and thus we have to create an image through which the reader can imagine the sounds for themselves.

Have you needed to express music in your comic-making process, and how did you do it? Show us your pages!
Do you carefully research to get the musical notations/sheet music right, or just throw up some fun music notes? Have you written lyrics with a specific melody in mind and tried to express that emotion through the art? Do you use sound effects or let the art do all the talking?

Also post examples of other comics that you thought were especially effective or creative in this area! As comic artists, it's always great to see what other people are doing and be inspired.

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    Jan '17
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    Jan '17
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Hmm... Well, given my comic, POW! Right in the Nostalgia focuses on all things of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, I do have comics where music comes up from time to time...I tend to do comics showing the lyrics going across the screen with musical notes a lot... Which I think is something most comics tend to do a lot of the time.

Here's one example...

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Usually when I do these kind of comics though, I also generally include a link to the song over on YouTube with it to help people understand things a bit more.

Another example from my comic...

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Some of the characters in my comic are in a band (not a very good band, but a band) so I've had to draw them playing a few times.

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This one I actually have a melody for, but I don't think it's important for people reading to know it necessarily. So long as they can tell there's music, I don't want them to get caught up reading notation or anything.