SHORT STORY/ONE-SHOT/ONE CHAPTER/COMICS 101 CRASH COURSE RAPIDPUNCHES’ STYLE
I’m NOT an expert but I have some working experience I can share. You need experience to become great. Here is my set of instructions, tips, and notes towards making a 12-page comic.
My method is to work backwards. Personally I work “backwards” because the end is the only wholly necessary page or set of panels in the story. Everything in between is open to editing and hacking as the most important moments are emphasized and chosen.
I even plan/draw the end page first. The end is the last page a reader sees- so spend your freshest energies on making it as epic, memorable, poignant, and beautiful as #$%^&.
If you draw the pages from 1 to 12 sequentially you run the risk of fresh to burnt out- an uneven distribution of drawing skill. (treat the first page and the 2-page splash as you would the last).
Roughly… the steps to making your comic is
WRITE
PLAN THUMBNAILS
DRAW
…BEGIN THE WRITING (DO NOT SKIP NO MATTER WHAT) like this, in this order:
How does it end?
Does the protag succeed or fail?
What is the turning point of their story?
What the protag do that led them there?
Where does it start?
Who is this protag?
EXAMPLE:
Guy gets mauled by a bear.
This is a fail on the guy’s half.
The bear must eat something or he’ll starve to death.
It’s the guy’s fault the bear can’t find other food. He caused the avalanche that buried all the cabins.
The guy is yodeling in an avalanche zone.
The guy is some guy.
CREATING “THE BEAT SHEET” Take the above stuff and reorder it to make sense.
This guy yodels.
Echoes roll.
Snow slides down.
Avalanche buries the mountain.
Cabins are engulfed.
This bear has no access to cabin food and garbage.
Bear eats this guy.
Expand. Blow up important beats for emphasis. Keep less important beats brief.
This guy is hiking in the snowy mountains.
He comes across an avalanche warning sign.
There is nobody around but him.
A dumb expression forms over his face and he yodels.
Echoes roll but nothing nearby is moved.
At the top of the mountain the snow drifts twitch.
Guy, satisfied, hikes away from there still yodeling.
Frozen snow cracks.
Snow puffs billow and great slabs of ice crash down the mountain side.
Guy sees this and hightails it to safer ground.
Animals, people, are all panicking and getting pushed over by the rushing snow.
Cabins are destroyed.
The guy takes cover by an outcropping of rocks, fastens himself securely to the rock face, and waits for the avalanche to die down.
Avalanche dies down.
A lone bear shambles over from the other side of the mountain.
The bear goes to where a cabin used to be (only roof tiles are left). Bear sniffs a dish satellite.
Bear forlornly eats a food wrapper.
Bear tries to dig.
Guy comes down from the rocks he as climbing and sees bear.
Bear stops digging and sees him.
Guy runs.
Bear chases him down.
Bear eats the guy.
BEAT SHEET COMPLETED!!!
After the beat sheet, write up all the sound effects and speech bubbles and conversation/dialogue you want to be in your comic.
Since comics are a visual medium, highest priority is given to the beats. If a story can’t be told with the art without the dialogue– you messed up and it’s time to rethink your life choices.
Try to keep all your text chunks as short as a tweet. Professionally you don’t want more than 25 words per speech bubble and no more than 250 words per page.
Next is translating the beats to pages…
STRUCTURE OVERVIEW:
[1] point of entry, in media res, hero intro
[2][3] conflict. establish conflict, setting, and mood by the third page. [4][5] rising action/false resolution to conflict/investigation
[6][7] turning point/plot twist/epiphany (this one epic image, to page spread is pivotal, spend a lot of effort into creating this)
[8][9] aftermath/“darkness before dawn”/struggle [10][11] recovery/“rise and conquer”/“fall”
[12] resolution/final end/cliffhanger
[front cover][interior] [interior][back cover]
——————–
My maximum per page is nine panels but I’ve seen pages that have way more. I like to have about 3 to 4 panels per row or less but I’ve seen the “rules” broken before. Advanced comic book artists manipulate time with the number of panels and the size of each panel.
remember, DIAGONALS!!! open up an issue of batman, superman, spider man, deadpool or whatever youre reading theyre everywhere.
———-
…DRAW IN THIS ORDER:
Page 12,
Page 6 and 7 (this is typically one large image that takes up the space of two pages),
Page 1,
and then the rest.
ONLY “DEVIATION” ALLOWED:
Page 12 and 1*
Page 6 and 7,
and then the rest.
*Draw the first and last page as a spread in situations where the beginning of the story mirrors the end of the story.
Cover is dead last.
———-
(If at the very end you find out you need more pages and it’s absolutely unavoidable and totally necessary you have to add them in fours. Try to stick to 12 pages for this crash course.)
——————–
FURTHER NOTES:
Plan and draw the pages in spreads (the twos) since this is how it will appear in print and when you submit them to an editor for review guess what, the pages with an exception to the first and last will be reviewed as spreads.
You at most only need one establishing panel of the setting and environment (scene) per page.
Forget “true to life” perspective outside of the establishing panel). Practice diagonal composition of objects and subjects within panels. For dynamism.
You don’t have to present the text all in one go (one paragraph or bubble). You can and should break up paragraphs, sentences, and if you need to single out words– to make smaller, more easily managed bubbles to scatter through the panel.
Less important moments have smaller panels and or lesser detail. More details (or more word bubbles) slow down time. More drawn detail also creates a concentration of values (it’s darker and sometimes combines together as one shape or mass)
Know your light sources. Control the blacks. Control the values.
This is a list of all the players that HAVE to be protected by their current teams going into the expansion draft with vegas. This means they hold no move clauses or otherwise wording of their contract does not allow them to go to vegas.
These players DO count towards their limited protect player spots. There are two ways to protect players:
7 Forwards, three defensemen and 1 goaltender
OR
8 skaters and 1 goaltender.
But don’t be too worried because this is not the final list. I do not believe anybody can be added to the list however players can be taken off. For instance, the penguins would be in a tight spot because they would want to protect Murray instead of Fleury but they would HAVE to protect Fleury in this position. MAF can waive his no-move clause at any point making him draft eligible.
And another reason not to be worried about this list. All players in their rookie and sophomore years are exempt from the draft. That includes McDavid, Marner, Matthews, Nylander, Eichel, ect. I do believe Matt Murray does not count because it’s my understanding that the AHL is also considered “professional” (the specific line says first and second year professionals and does not specify NHL).
And Players who have “career ending” injuries but who are still under contract will not be eligible. This will take off players like Nathan Horton leaving the leafs with plenty of movement.
If you have any other questions i went more in depth with the expansion draft here or you can send me an ask!
Just want to add that Sportsnet mentioned that Nylander actually can be moved because his time with the Marlies puts him just over the two year professionals. 😦
YEs i forgot, he was the one that could be exposed. He just follows marner and mathews in my head. But looks like the leafs won’t have problems protecting him.
Does Panarin count as a sophomore year rookie because of his time in Russia?
Panarin is exempt. Professional is defined as AHL or NHL and a season is defined as at least ten games. So his time in russia does nto count towards his pro time.
The expansion draft is a scary but exciting time in every hockey fans life. No, but really, this is the first this generation has really experienced, at least at an age where they can really understand what is happening. So we’re all freaking out about it.
in the season 2017-18 vegas will be the 31st NHL team. But you can’t just wave your wand at a city and have a team just appear there, the players need to come from somewhere. That’s why we’re having an expansion draft. That means each team will be giving up one player to Vegas.
There are a few restrictions on this. For instance, if a player has a No Move clause he can not be picked by vegas. Players can give these up at any time. No trade clauses are similar but not as strict. Players with no trades could possibly be picked by vegas. Certain players are not allowed to have “no trades” or “no moves” because of age/years in the NHL. This was one of the problems people had with the Subban trade because his no move was supposed to kick in in a few years but they traded hm before that.
The Vegas team also has to be cap compliant, which means they need to pick up guys with big contracts to reach the floor, but they also have to be smart because they have to go under the cap. This is basically a godsend for teams who have players who are way too expensive. It’s like a free buyout to some teams.
There are even more restrictions, though, because each team can save a certain amount of players. You have two options either A. You save Seven Forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender or B. eight skaters (defensemen or forwards) and one goaltender. The reason you may want to go with option B would be if you want to protect only forwards or more than 3 defensemen. Either way you can only protect one goalie. Of all the players exposed you need one defenseman who is signed through 2017-18 and has played at least 40 NHL games and two forwards who meets the same requirements. The goaltender only has to be signed through the 2018-17 season. Players with no move are automatically considered to be saved and they count towards your seven forwards three defensemen ect.
as I said before, Vegas must select at least one player from each team for a total of 30 players, 20 of them must be under contract through the 2017-18 season and they can select more than 30 players under certain circumstances.
NHL teams need to have their save lists done by June 17th 2017 and June 20th 2017 is when Vegas needs to have made all their selections.
The entry draft will follow as normal, with Vegas given the same odds as the team with the third fewest points. The lottery will commence as normal.
Behold! The grand chart for flower language compiled by @hasty-touch & @halonic. After being introduced to it, a number of folks have taken to using bouquets, delivered within Ishgard (and perhaps without) to convey messages.
Can confirm that House Pepin delivers discretely and provides excellent service.
:3 This is just a thing I compiled from loads of PDFs and stuff because I was going batty from flipping between 20 different browser tabs.
Since it’s publicly viewable now I may work on neatening it some over the next few weeks!
Once upon a time @hasty-touch and I somehow ended up screeching “FLORIOGRAPHY???” at one another, and then weeks later he and @halonic made this gem happen, and suddenly the sea of books and browser tabs parted, and I was at peace.
I never close this spreadsheet. It is my home. We are one.
(( Signal boosting because these are the most thorough nerds I’ve ever seen and this list is wonderful.I’ve referenced it countless times already! ))
You may have already seen my Google Docs/AO3 post, explaining how to get around the odd formatting that occurs when you copy and paste from Docs to AO3. Here’s a guide for Word!
This will help avoid the paragraph spacing becoming messed up when you copy from Microsoft Word (2007 and later) to AO3′s Rich Text editor box. Basically, you want to only hit return ONCE when typing, regardless of your line spacing (single, multiple, etc).
I’m using 2007, but these steps and commands will work in newer versions too.
First, check if you need to change your paragraph spacing.
– Press CTRL+SHIFT+8 or click this button (found in the Home ribbon):
This will show/hide the ‘formatting symbols’, which are little symbols that tell you which buttons have been pressed (space, tab, enter, etc). You can keep it turned on if you like – none of these symbols will print, or be copied when you copy and paste.
You want one ¶ symbol at the end of each paragraph.
– If you have one ¶ at the end of the paragraph, you’re fine!
– If you have two (or more) ¶ between paragraphs, see below.
.
Now, let’s sort your paragraph spacing
– Highlight everything. CTRL + A will do this nicely for you.
– Locate the ‘Paragraph’ dialogue box.
– In the box that comes up, go to the ‘Spacing’ section.
Your best bet, aesthetically, is to change the ‘After’ value, but it’s up to you! Line spacing doesn’t matter.
– Change the ‘After’ spacing to 12pt* using the up arrow. *if your font is 18pt or larger, use 18pt spacing.
– Save the spacing as default if you like.
This will save you doing this step every time!
– Delete the extra lines. This is the sucky part. Hopefully you don’t have too much to correct! Remember: you want just one ¶ at the end of each paragraph.
– Write your thing! Now, when you copy into AO3′s Rich Text editor, the paragraph spacing will play nice.
I hope this was helpful!
If you have any questions about this, or about Word or Google Docs in general, please feel free to ask! I’m always happy to help.
Hello, everyone! We saw some posts going around earlier this week talking about hockey stats and how Hockey Tumblr doesn’t care about them. We don’t think that’s true, because there are plenty of people around here who are interested, and we think that’s great! We also think it’s great if you aren’t interested in stats and choose to engage in hockey fandom in other ways – you don’t have to be a stats geek to be a Real Valid Fan.
However, if you are interested in hockey stats and just haven’t gotten the time to delve into them yet (and there’s so much, it can be really intimidating), we thought we’d help you dip a toe in the proverbial waters with a quick rundown on two of the more prevalent nontraditional stats that have been developed over the years.
***CLICK HERE*** for a presentation on Corsi and Fenwick, two words you’ll hear often in the hockey analytics community + some stats resources to get you started.
As always, our ask box is always open if you need clarification or have any questions about hockey stats (or hockey in general)!
Have you ever been listening to Rainymood and thought, “Yeah, this is good … but it would be nice if I could customize the sound more, or if there was a little more choice.
MyNoise is a customizable sounscape looper with so many options, even within each soundscape. So say, for instance, you really love rain sounds when you write or study or relax. Anything. I know I’m a big fan of rain sounds. They have a page for that.
But say you like really high, pattery rain, and LOTS of low thunder. Here’s where MyNoise really stands out: you can customize that. See those sliders with all the cute colors? That is your equalizer. You can adjust the levels based on what you want to hear more and less of. Here’s how it looks when you want high, pattery rain and low, rumbly thunder:
But say rain isn’t really your jam. Say you want something a little more ambient, a little more background noise-y. Something with people. Well, they have customizable coffee house chatter that even has the levels listed for things like “kitchen,” “babble,” and “table”:
Or say you miss the ocean.
Or say you miss your cat.
Or say you miss your spaceship.
Or say you miss the dungeon where you and your team of scalawag adventurers used to explore and face off against, say, dragons. In the dungeon.
This site is seriously so helpful, and those are just a fraction of every kind of sounscape the site has to offer. The best part is that if you want to layer it with music (for instance, I’ll layer a playlist + rain + coffee shop if the scene I’m writing takes place in a coffee shop), you can adjust the master volume, meaning all of your layers stay at their respective volumes, just louder or quieter.
Steel Phoenix Studios 