Cinematic Storytelling and Compositional Pitfalls

last time we discussed the basics of composition the rule of thirds and simple shape language to design our panels David Fincher and welcome back to my course on creating the comic book page as the artist we want to visualize the story unfolding from panel to panel in the most compelling and engaging way possible composing each panel the way cinematographer might plan shots for a movie using different lenses in varying camera placement to more effectively tell the story and how we position the camera for the reader's point of view can have a major impact on the way the reader experiences the story if you want to follow along with me as we design our own comic page head on over to proco.com comic page and sign up for the course we'll have more lessons and go much further in depth into what we learned here we'll be posting premium episodes regularly so I hope to see you there all right let's get started I've sketched in three panels and in the first panel I'm going to use my rule of thirds and I'm going to draw a figure pretty small on my panel my upper third just to kind of fill it out I'll draw some trees and some background there's a very simple representation of the panel and this is what we would call an establishing shot or a long shot and in this panel we can see the figure we can see the whole background around the figure it slows our pacing a little bit and it serves to showcase our figure but also the background around the figure so we really get a sense of the environment that that figure exists in but we don't get anywhere near as much a sense of what that figure is about whether thinking or what they're feeling and what they're doing so from here we're going to move into a medium close-up and in this shot we can see much more of our figure but we can still see some background and in a medium close-up we can see not only the face and much more of the expression that our character has but we can also see what they're doing with their hands and while it showcases some of our background it does a much better job of showcasing our figure in our last example we're going to move into a close-up of our figure's head we can move into a close-up or really an extreme close-up extreme close-up close-up lean to an eye or it can be a hand or whatever it is that you want to showcase and using close-ups really allows us to focus in on our character and see subtlety that we really can't see from a greater distance and these three shots working in conjunction with each other give you a sense of your environment in a long shot then move in on the characters for action and so we can see a better sense of what our characters are doing and then in extreme close-ups we really get a strong sense of exactly what our characters are thinking and get a much better sense of what they're all about and you'll notice if you read comic books or watch movies that you'll always see a shot whether it's at the beginning of a scene the end of the scene or the middle of the scene where we really pull out so we can see the environment that our characters exist within then we move in on the characters and then we move even closer so we get a real sense of the emotion behind the scene finally we need to talk about point of view in my first panel I'm going to be looking up at my figure and so I'm going to see the figure from below which means that I've got a horizon line that's well below my panel and that would represent my eye line my viewer is actually looking up at the figure when you choose a low angle and you look up at a figure or a building or an object it makes that building object or figure large and imposing and even looming and for a powerful hero or for a villain it's a very effective technique to make them look Larger than Life in my next panel we're going to do the exact opposite and we're going to be well above our figure and we're going to be looking down at them and it's essentially the same figure just drawn from a different angle and it makes them look diminished and a little smaller and it's a way to make a figure look maybe even oppressed or sad and it's something that psychologically can have an impact even if they don't understand that you're using these techniques to Garner that reaction our last example is a profile and it's a straight on shot and it gives us a very stoic solid Wyatt kind of a panel not only is it important to know that you can create a different emotional impact using different angles but it also helps to vary your storytelling so you don't have the same shot from panel to panel to panel which can become very boring hi David's course is currently 20 off for the Black Friday sale go to proco.com comic page and use the code black20 to get the discount and so an example of a page done that way what I have here is a perfectly serviceable page it works the storytelling can flow but it is outrageously boring and so let's do that same page again and I'm going to start with the same panel that I did in the first version It's a medium shot of my figure and now in my second panel I'm going to show my other figure and I'm going to zoom in much closer so I get a much bigger shot of his face and see subtlety that we really can't see from a greater distance and now in my third panel I'm going to show both figures I'm going to show them from above figure's got his arms crossed my other figure is looking at him gesturing very quickly drawn just to establish my figures on the page and so for this one I've pulled out it's a much longer shot and I can see my background around them whatever it happens to be and now in my last panel I'm going to come in behind this character's head maybe I'll even silhouette it and we'll see our first character and so we get a two shot like this and you can see that in this example I've changed up my sizing quite a bit more I have just a medium shot here and then I've closed in much more with a larger head and now I've zoomed out much more here and moved my camera so you're looking at the scene from above and it gives you a different perspective and just changes things up and then in the last panel I've silhouetted a head in the foreground and included both figures in the scene while focusing on my original first figure and it just makes it a lot more visually interesting and you really want to think in terms of this for all of your pages you want to move the camera around zoom in zoom out you want to have bigger shots smaller shots and juxtapose those with each other to keep things more visually interesting and now there's one other major Pitfall that's very easy to run into with your storytelling if you're not aware of it going in and that is the 180 Rule and all that is from overhead I'm going to draw a line and I'm going to draw an arc around that line just about like this and what this line represents is the limit of where I can put my camera now I can put this line anywhere but generally speaking you want to keep it to one side of whatever it is that you're showing and so that means that I can put the camera here and look at the scene this way I can put it here anywhere along here and really it's not just a line you can call it like a half a sphere here's my figure and so I could visualize My Scene all the way from the ground all the way from the top what I want to avoid though is putting the camera over here and so let's take a look at how that works by drawing a couple of panels and so in panel one I've got my two figures I'm looking at it from about this level and I'm looking directly into the scene and I could have chosen for this first panel any Viewpoint I wanted I could have went directly from the top all the way to the floor it really doesn't matter but the point is that I've picked an angle once I've drawn my first panel and to make this easier I'm going to make one character light and another character dark just so we can track the characters as they go into the next panel now in my next panel I'm going to draw my same two figures again and now this character is dark this character is light so what's happened from above I was viewing the scene from this side this Arc and what I did is I just moved the camera over here and so visually what you see is a flipping of your characters it looks like characters have just instantly moved in the scene as opposed to just moving the camera yeah if you want more lessons from David check out his course at proco.com comicpage where he teaches a whole lot of stuff about comic book penciling shading inking and composition it's a master class on comic making from start to finish hope to see you there [Music]

Channel: Proko

Views: 194,722

Keywords: how to draw, comic book artist, composition, cinematic storytelling, camera angles, David Finch, drawing tutorial, learn to draw, video tutorial, art school, marvel comics, dc comics, independent comics

Id: b7BZNwI1DnI

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022