Blast from the Past #311: Thumbnail layouts for TMNT Volume 1 #15

Some more stuff from that sketchbook -- these are my very rough thumbnail layouts (and some of them are, literally, about the size of a large thumbnail) for issue #15 of the original TMNT comic series.

It's interesting to look back at these and see just how much -- or how little -- I felt I needed to draw to get across to myself the idea of what was meant to be on each page.

I'm not sure when or why Jim Lawson drew his "Orson" character from "Bade Biker and Orson" on my layouts, but it's kind of funny to see him there. -- PL















P.S. -- Apropos of some of the personal stuff I've been blogging about lately, as I was looking over these pages of thumbnails, specifically the penultimate page, my eye was caught by the dialogue I wrote for "Steve "Stainless" Steel's in his words to "Battling Bernice's daughter, Ananda:

"You're wise for your age, Ananda… I wish I had been as wise. But you need a few more years… to realize that it's never too late to change... as long as you're alive, there's hope…"

Not having the printed issue #15 here in front of me, I can't say how much of that made it into the final form of the comic, but I seem to recall I did have Steve saying something like that. -- PL

P.P.S. I also note that, according to these roughs, at one pint I had considered calling the Justice Force "The Superior Six". I have no recollection of why I didn't.

Blast from the Past #276: "Fugitoid" pencil layouts

I stumbled over these when I was looking in my files for some art to hang on the walls in our house. They are my rough pencil layouts for several chapters of the original "Fugitoid" comic book. I was a little surprised to see these, as I had forgotten that I had done layouts for that project. The group of layouts that I found does not represent the entire book, so it's possible that Kevin did some or all of the first and/or second chapters... but it's also possible that I did all the layouts. At this point in time, I can't recall.

Back when I did these, Kevin and I were still planning to release "Fugitoid" in individual five-page chapters. The idea was to print these on one sheet of 17 by 22 inch paper, so that when folded you would have four pages at 8.5 by 11 inches, then the last one would be a huge "poster size" page visible when you unfolded the sheet (we got this format idea from some "poster magazines" which were popular at the time).

Of course, we never published it in that form. A couple of years later, when we decided to blend the story of the 'Toid into the TMNT universe, we added a few more pages to the tale and published it as a regular (though somewhat oddly-sized) comic book which led into issue five of the TMNT comic.

I didn't find any layout pages for Chapter 1, and only this one page which I think is from Chapter 2, when Honeycutt first realizes what has happened to him...



Here are some page layouts from Chapter 3...

Page 2



Page 3



Page 4



Here are the first two pages from Chapter 4...

Page 1




Page 2



Here are all five pages to Chapter 5...

Page 1



Page 2



Page 3



Page 4




Page 5



And finally, the five pages of Chapter 6...

Page 1



Page 2



Page 3



Page 4



Page 5



You may have noticed that some of these pages were drawn on paper with alternating white and green bands. This is another good example of "using what is at hand". This paper was stuff left over from my word processing experiments at the Dover, NH Public Library -- the library had installed a computer with a dot-matrix printer and it was freely accessible to anyone who patronised the library. It was the first time I'd ever used a computer, and I loved it. The printer printed on the classic green and white "computer paper", and I saved any blank pages it might print and used them for various purposes... including, in this case, drawing pencil layouts for a comic book story! -- PL

Blast from the Past #81 repost: Raphael's shower

Going through files a few years ago, I came across some stuff I had forgotten about. The most surprising thing was a stack of penciled layouts that I did for the DONATELLO Micro-Series. What was surprising to me was how detailed the layouts were -- it was (and still is) very unusual for me to do more than really rough, sketchy drawings for my layouts, but these were almost complete, tight pencils. I think we could have just inked these layouts. But we didn't, instead following our typical practice of enlarging the layouts on a photocopier and light-tabling them onto the Graphix Duo-Shade board for final penciling, inking and toning.

Also interesting were two preliminary drawings of the first page -- I really don't know why I did them, as I did not do anything like this for any of the other pages.

Here's the first preliminary drawing:



And this is the second preliminary drawing:



Here's the final layout drawing:



And this is the way the finished inked and toned page appeared:



While I like the two preliminary drawings, I think the final layout works better. -- PL

Blast from the Past #80 repost: TMNT #5 -- Anatomy of two pages

While going through some old files, I came across some photocopies of a few pages from our preliminary work for the original Mirage TMNT comic #5, in which we took the Turtles into outer space and had them meet the Fugitoid. It's a pretty good example of how Kevin and I used to collaborate on the creation of those original comics. (I've picked two pages -- 34 and 35 -- and reproduced first Kevin's thumbnail layouts, second my dialogue polish, and third the final inked and lettered versions of those two pages.)

First we would get together and talk out the plot, trying to construct a story which held together and covered all of the points we wanted to get across in that issue. Once we were satisfied with the plot, Kevin would do rough layout drawings, breaking down each page and roughing in dialogue.



Second, I would take Kevin's layouts and do finished dialogue.



(At both the layout and finished dialogue stages, we would confer on what we had each done and address any problems either of us had with the choices we'd made.)

Third, we would pencil the full-size pages, based on Kevin's layouts, on pieces of Graphix Duo-Shade board. After the lettering had been done on the penciled pages (in this case, I believe it was Steve Lavigne who did the lettering), we'd do the final inking, and after that the toning. -- PL