BEAUTY

The 3-panel layout appears at the end of this post:

BEAUTY is 3DOM No. 7, a short-short comic containing one complete story in three panels.

As a young comics fan, Frank Miller was one of the first artists whose work I closely analyzed and imitated. His drawing style was top-notch, but his creative use of page design to tell stories was excellent and ultimately made his work unique.

Miller’s use of vertical panels might be my favorite of his signature techniques. These added more negative space to the overall page design, which introduced fascinating new storytelling options, especially for changing narrative pace:

As I continue to experiment with digital comics, I think vertical (taller than they are wide) panels offer similar options when viewed on a screen. For example, Rachel Smythe uses long vertical panels as powerful storytelling devices in her fantastic Lore Olympus webcomic. When a viewer scrolls along the length of a long panel, they become an active participant in the story’s pace and flow.

Therefore BEAUTY seems like an early experiment with this device, because I plan to continue working with it in EXIT CITY and other future comics.  

I continue to share daily Batober posts on Instagram and TikTok during October. 🦇 Check out those channels if you’d like to follow my progress.

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