How to Create Comics from Script to Print

All images © 2006 Danny Fingeroth, Mike Manley and TwoMorrows Publishing. Thief of Time and all related materials are © 2006 by Danny Fingeroth and Mike Manley. All rights reserved.This is an excerpt from How to Create Comics from Script to Print, an upcoming TwoMorrows Publishing book by Danny Fingeroth and Mike Manley.
Danny and Mike take turns showing readers the steps involved in creating and publishing comics. Through sample drawing and writing lessons, invaluable information includes how Mike, who has penciled and inked many top comics for Marvel and DC, breaks a script into pages and panels via thumbnail sketches.
Danny, longtime Marvel writer and editor on Spider-Man gives pointers on creating conflict and developing characters. The book will debut at Comic-Con International later this month.
My Process, The Script to Print by Mike Manley
Step 1: The Thumbnail
OK, this is where it all begins for me visually — the most important step of the job and the most creative. As I read Danny’s plot, ideas start to bubble up, and visually explode in my mind like popcorn in the microwave. I start to frantically draw down these images, scene fragments, right away. My goal is to get my first impressions down fast. Once I have these thumbnails down, I start to refine them.
Sometimes I get clear ideas right away of what I want to draw, or how I want to play a scene or lay out a page. Other times I get these visual bits or panels in little “chunks” and then have to work to link them together. Through years of doing so many comics and storyboards I find that my first impressions are almost always the best. Sometimes I refine ideas, only to go back to the original.
This part of the job is liquid. Ideas or panels come and go. In fact, one should always be open to a new idea that may improve the story at any time, right up until the job is out the door to the printer.
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