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Sep 2019

For me, that's kinda normal. My comic scripts are generally narrative summaries rather than panel by panel descriptions. I kinda do this so that I leave room to add ideas or to change up the ways I want to create the panel sketches.

As far as thumbnails go, I sometimes make those and then do a second sketch for the comic, depending on how much I liked the first ones. Sometimes, I even add or drop panels if I give them another re-read. I think it can be the nature of the beast sometimes, especially if you have someone else go back and beta read your stuff.

It can be super annoying, especially if you really want your script to go a certain way, but I also say that it helps me experiment a bit with panel flow and dialogue :blush:

That's my secret: i don't have a script.

I only write dialogue for 1 or 2 pages and that's it. Then i draw the first thing.

I'm facing a similar problem currently: I had been following my storyboard pretty much to a T for most of my comic, but since it's a one-shot and I was aiming for 50ish pages for the total length, when I got to the end of the storyboard and was exceeding 60 pages, I started rushing things to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

Now that I'm at the end of the story, I'm looking back and the storyboard and thinking like "wow there's no reason to arbitrarily rush the ending after coming this far" so as a result I've been having to come up with a lot of the content on the fly,,, designing a few chars that didn't exist at all in the storyboard, coming up with several pages worth of dialogue that wasn't there, etc.

For scope, I basically took what was two panels in the storyboard and converted it into 3 pages LOL and then there's 3 pages after those in the storyboard... which will probably end up being expanded up into 5-6 pages. Very uncomfortable creative process for me, I like having the storyboard to lean on :joy:

Yeah.... I'm forever adding panels or dialogue...I would be weirded out if the final product matched the script//thumbnails.

This always happens to me; it's a part of the process. There have been times where I thought my thumbnails were fine but in the middle of making pages I had to change the panel format. Anything to make what's happening in the scene more clear the make the dialogue more believable and entertaining.

I thumbnail a whole sequence at once without worrying where the episode breaks are going to come, so in order to make the episode feel like a complete moment, I'll often add extra frames unscripted. Have to be flexible.

I always add lib as i sort the pages even add a few pages here and there, thats the good thing about only doing digital and not printed you can edit as you wish

I don't really have a script. I have written down what needs to happen and when it needs to happen and I'll write down ideas for dialogues, but the details are usually made up as I go.

Yep, i was thinking of that scene when i wrote that. Now i don't turn into a green monster, i just make a weird comic.

I have a script, but i adjust it.........a lot.

sometimes midway i figure a better way to deliver a scene or a dialogue, so, for me is a natural part of the process.

I'm always adjusting the script right up until the page is done. I use it mostly to make sure I don't get lost among paneling options since it's both dialogue and rough camera ideas, but if the dialogue is too verbose or if I'm missing a natural sounding quip in the middle, I can add it just fine. Just gotta remember to put it on the script later in case I need someone else to look at it...

Scripts take way too long man lol I just have dialogue and then I jump right into drawing of the story. You can spend hours and weeks adjusting a script only to end up drawing something different. Lol :joy::joy::joy:and that’s y I don’t do it.

Sometimes I'll change the words I have in my sketch to match the art/expressions of my characters once they're done. On this page I took out an entire speech bubble because I found the statement wasn't even necessary. Sometimes the comic just has a mind of its own.

I recently painted 15 panels based on my script, and then realized I illustrated the upload for 4 weeks from now and not the panels for next week. I'd made a last minute script change and didn't realize all the ramifications.

@katbirdcomics Exactly. I try not to let myself get too locked in to a script just because I don't want the extra work. FYI: our comics are kind of similar in theme.

That's... all the time!
I think I will not try to have a full script anymore, at least not for the kind of project I'm doing right now with my comic (long-form, lots of subplots).

First I thought that BECAUSE it was complex, I had to have a strong script to avoid plot holes.
But finally, I'm changing so much things on the way that the script becomes a burden.

The most extreme case, but many other cases happened: recently, I decided to remove two chapters to make a sort of spinoff with them. But I want to have them reintroduced into the main story when this is all finished. Which means
- having the side comic stand properly by itself
- having the main story not suffer from the (temporary) loss of two chapters
- having the main story with chapters reintroduced not have too many redundancies:
-> script entirely reworked!

Now I only do mindmaps. They are great for avoiding plot holes and giving you enough freedom.

This is my life. I always end up tweaking dialogue up until the very last minute because my script dialogue never seems like 'natural' conversation. It's only once I have everything drawn out and can SEE what's going on is when I can figure out what I need the characters to say.