How To Protray Characters Having Visions in Comics

[GFalconDX]

Here's an interesting question: how do you portray characters having visions in comics? I'm trying to tackle this, but not sure how to approach this.

[joannekwan]

Close up shot of the character's face/eyes. Then in the ensuing panels I would either switch the gutters to the opposite color, use more vibrant/psychedelic colors, apply some sort of effect to the panels depicting the vision, or a combination of the three.

[Tobirone]

There are several ways you could approach this.

Normally panels in comics (no matter if webtoon or normal format) are in squares. You could make bubbles.
If you normally add colour you could show the visions themselves in greyscale as well. Or contrast it like Joanne.
You could also kind of "fade in" the pictures like make them seem lighter compared to the "now"-pictures (if you get what I mean).
Letting the character react to what s/he saw also might be key.

[Kittosaurus]

It depends... I would have an easily recognizable effect or color change to make it evident when it's happening.

I actually have two different incidences of characters having visions in my own comic.

1.)Character viewing past events - One of my characters has the ability to weave through time using her hair as a kind of dream catcher for memories. Which you can see in the second portion of this episode. I use this motif throughout so it is clear when she is looking at past or future events.

The Librarian Arachnid Slayer :: CHP 4.2 The Web Dweller | Tapas

2.) A character prophesying events:

I transitioned from the speaker (the grandma) to her vision by having her hair frame the scenes.

The Librarian Arachnid Slayer :: CHP 7 The Prophecy | Tapas

[spadesart]

(forgive the pic, theres no scans of this page) i really like how the adventure zone graphic novel portrayed it

[Chrispykreme]

I think it largely depends on what kind of feeling you want to evoke when the character is having the vision, and what kind of vision it's supposed to be. The more chaotic a vision is supposed to be, the less clear the visuals should be (lots of colour, movement, images merging into one another). On the flipside, the clearer the vision is, the clearer your depiction needs to be - close-ups of eyes, clear drawings, clear text, etc. A good way of doing it is a colour change from the rest of the comic.

[Strontium]

I agree the the advice of making the vision visually distinct from the rest of the comic's art style. Putting it in a particular color scheme is an easy way to do this. Another choice is rendering the lines with a different brush so that they have a different feel.

In my own comic, when my character Cyrus experiences memories from his past, I draw the backgrounds more loosely, I use a special color palette, and Cyrus himself has some visual changes - including blue eyes where they are usually brown. I also put on a Photoshop filter that creates an effect similar to some of the dream sequences used on the cartoon Clarence.