The Enchanted Dagger

Page number 1!  of Issue #7!  picking up right where the cover left off.  One thing that I noticed from my recent comic prints was that a full bleed page 1 – art going to the edge of the paper – made the visual of the inside front cover/page 1 spread a little dense…harder on the eyes than a page one with a proper white panel border going around.  That’s something I’ll adjust on issue 4-6 when it comes time for an official print.  I recently saw  a video by marvel chief CB Cebulski.  His advice to young artists was to stay in the panel borders which I found a bit ironic as I’m sure i’ve seen characters expand from the panels in stylistic flourishes in plenty of Marvel comics…but looking thru some old issues it was less back in day, perhaps.  Generally I agree.  Nice clean panels are nice and clean.  I have used the opportunity of creating a 9 issue comic series to experiment with full bleeds and trans border composition…mostly to depict dynamic action or otherworldly happenings, like in issue 4.  The ease that the computer allows you to adjust the size of an image has helped the compositions on a few pages, I think…tho looking back at these issues I wish I had thought to pare it back a bit.  I didn’t realize how much I was using it going page to page as one does.  Cebulski also recommended not filling in the white panel boundaries with black… have to admit he’s right there, I didn’t like how the pages where I blacked out the white borders looked once they were printed.. looks better on the tablet maybe?   I think a shade of grey would probably work….

I feel so-so on these first couple pages as I mentioned before…I didn’t exactly nail them….but again, the message gets across, yes?