Week 6- The Creative Team

[StevenForbes]

Happy Tuesday!

We've done a lot of talking about comics creation, basically from a writer's point of view. We've laid a lot of groundwork, talking about story and pitching and such, before we got into scripting- not even mentioning the Kirkman interlude. I figure it's now time to look at the other parts of a creative team, and what you should expect from every part of it.

We're going to get to the Bolts & Nuts of what it takes to make a comic book, and the ride begins now!

A creative team will generally consist of six parts. (Yes, I added an extra part, and we'll talk about why in a little while.) At the base is the writer and artist. Without these two, comics don't get done. (There are discussions all over the web as to which is most important, but in truth, BOTH are important. Neither is above the other, no matter what a party wishes. Comics need both words and art, and it is that synthesis that makes them so special. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Besides, everyone knows that writers are the most important... That was a joke, people! No lynch mobs, please!) Next is the inker and letterer. The colorist is next to last, because they're actually optional. (Depending on what you want to do and how tight the pencils are, the inker can be optional, too.) Bringing up the rear but is actually part of the base (and my own addition) is the editor.

Writer, artist, inker, letterer, colorist, editor. Six parts that are needed to make a quality comic book. Let's look at them in all of their parts.

Writers, we're a dime a dozen. We can trip over each other, and because of that, it can often seem that we're interchangeable. Our work is needed, but it takes the longest to review. That should be evident from the amount of time I've spent in preparing you to begin scriptwriting. Editors have to read a script, and they are looking for everything I've been going over. There is no way to take a quick look at a script and tell if it's good, but it's extremely easy to look at one and tell if it's bad. A run-on sentence, misspelling, or missed punctuation mark is all that's needed to cast you in a negative light in an editor's eyes, and getting out of that light can be difficult.

Very often in independent companies, it is the writers who are the prime movers. They're the ones with the stories to tell, and as such, they go looking for a creative team to bring their opus to life. Occasionally an artist will look for a writer, but more often it's the other way around.

The writer's job is simple and difficult- tell a story. Writers are responsible for the script, which includes character descriptions, the actual story, and dialogue. Within that (full) script, you are responsible for everything the rest of the creative team will need to tell the story. No pressure.

Pencilers are also called artists. These two are basically interchangeable when it comes to comics. You say penciler to someone, and they know you're talking about an artist. You say artist, they know you're talking about a penciler. A good penciler is in extremely high demand, and writers generally understand this. New writers, however, don't understand what they're asking for when they ask for an artist to do Pen-Man for little to no money. To put it in terms of cars, they want a Bentley on a hooptie budget. It doesn't work that way.

A good artist will generally spend a day on a single page of art. A day. Writers, you spend maybe twenty-minutes (a LONG twenty-minutes) typing a single page of script. A day versus twenty-minutes. See the disparity in time? And you want to pay this artist something along the lines of $5/page? Imagine offering Jim Lee five bucks a page to draw Pen-Man. Finished laughing? So are most artists. Admittedly, their level of craft can vary wildly, but remember that you get what you pay for.

Artists are responsible for laying the initial pencils on the page. They take the panel descriptions that you provide and translate it into a picture, trying to get as accurate as they can to what you put down. Their knowledge base has to run the gamut from anatomy to perspective to imagination when creating monsters or spaceships or what-have-you. The pencils can run from very tight to very loose. Today's artists generally use pretty tight pencils, but they don't have to. Generally, you can count on a page a day from an artist. Some artists are fast, like Mark Bagley or John Romita, Jr. Artists such as these can handle two books a month. (This used to be closer to the norm, but as comics got more intricate, it started to take longer. This is why you can now count on a page a day.)

Inkers are also known as finishers. The term “finisher” was used when the pencils were loose. The inker would then come behind the penciler and then “finish” the page. Nowadays, like I said, the trend is for very tight pencils. This turns the inker into a glorified tracer. (Chasing Amy, anyone?) What the inker does is takes the pencils and goes over the lines in ink, making the temporary pencil lines into permanent ink lines. They then erase the underlying pencils. However, don't misunderstand me- inkers are artists in their own right. They are responsible for fixing any problems in the inks, and varying the line weights in order to push objects into the fore-, middle- and backgrounds.

In a perfect world, the artist should choose their inker. Why? Because inkers also come in varying skill levels, as well as approaches and styles. You don't want a gritty inker on a book that's supposed to look slick. It's not as simple as it sounds. Just as pencilers interpret the script, inkers interpret the pencils. If it were as simple as slinging ink on a page, we'd all be doing it.

It is generally at this point that the art gets scanned. Generally. From here, everything else will be done by computer. The resulting files can be split among the next two pieces of the creative team puzzle.

The first is color. Colorists are responsible for putting color over the inks. Sounds simple, but coloring can be as simple as writing. By now, you should know how complicated writing is, so just imagine coloring. Coloring goes in layers, and if you get a new colorist on Pen-Man, which is a superhero action comic, you're going to have all kinds of lens flares and unneeded special effects all over the place. It can get really bad. Really bad.

Anyway, the initial layers of colors are called “flats”. The flats are then built up so that they build a medley of color on a page. This is vastly different in execution from the color guides that used to rule the industry. Each color had a code, and those codes would be different for every aspect of everything you'd see on the page. If you had a red ball that was half in the light and half in shadow, as well as casting a shadow, you'd have codes all over that red ball: one for the highlight, one for the real color of the ball, one for the light shadow, one for the deep shadow, and one for the shadow that the ball cast. All of these would be on a copy of the artwork itself, and it was called the color guide. The advent of computer coloring replaced color guides.

When it comes to colors, the colorist not only has to know about color theory, complimentary and contrasting colors and stuff like that, they also need to know about light and shadow, light sources, and myriad other things.

Colorists also need to know how to grayscale. Grayscale is for black and white comics, and while not necessary, it's often a good thing to do. Comics don't need color, and they don't need to be grayscaled. However, grayscaling helps to break up the starkness of simple black and white by offering the half-tones of gray.

The second place the files go to are letters. Letterers are responsible for every word you read in a comic. Dialogue and special effects are one thing, and easy to identify for the role of letterer. The not so easy to identify is signage. Signage can be anything from a store sign to a sign on the side of a truck to the numbers in a clock. If the artist didn't draw it and it incorporates letters and/or numbers, the letterer is responsible for it.

Letterers are also responsible for logos and such things like titles and different types of captions and word balloons, not to mention the font of the dialogue and sound effects. Those lovely scrolls and such that you find in comics? Those aren't done by the artist. Those are done by the letterer.

Lettering is more than just putting the copy (text) on the page. It can be an artform itself, laced with intricate planning on how to cram the five billion words the artist wrote for the page into something that is legible, pleasing to the eye, and can be read with no problem. This can be challenging, because new writers tend to run off at the keyboard.

Back in the day, comics used to be lettered by hand. Imagine the discipline it took to not only write neatly, but to try to form your letters the exact same way, time after time. Not to mention still being responsible for sound effects and different fonts and signs and captions with scrolls and everything else. Not only that, but letterers were also responsible for inking panel borders. As if they didn't have enough to do! Aren't you happy you're in modern times now?

Last, but definitely not least, is the editor. The editor that does the best job is the one who isn't seen. Their work is transparent. The true role of the editor is to make the rest of the team look like a bunch of geniuses, and get no credit themselves. The job of the editor is manifold, and often thankless.

Before we get into the jobs of an editor, let me first say that there are two kinds of editors. The first kind is the one who is self-sacrificial, willing to teach, and goes over changes with the creative team, pulling rank only when needed for the good of the book. This editor's primary goal is to help the creative team produce the greatest story they can.

The other kind of editor is one that's drunk with their own power. They'll make arbitrary changes just so they can say they edited the book, or worse, is a frustrated writer themselves and will rewrite the book to something the original writer no longer recognizes. They are fast to take credit for something the writer did, and really gets in the way more than they're helping the creation of the book.

Luckily, you generally won't find the latter type of editor too often outside of Marvel/DC. Oh, they're out there, but if you're going to run into one, you have a greater chance of doing it at one of the big boys.

There will be times when an editor will put together a project, but that doesn't happen all that much outside of Marvel/DC anymore. I can think of one that got a lot of attention that was put together by an editor, and that was Postcards by Jason Rodriguez. Like I said, doesn't happen often anymore.

When a writer puts together a creative team, it is my fervent (almost rabid) belief that they should also get an editor. Lots of writers dream of putting together a team and submitting Pen-Man to Image. So they go and get an artist and inker, possibly think about color, get a letterer, and then when the book is finished, they submit it to Image, where it gets rejected. What went wrong?

Well, from the amount of submissions that editors generally get, I'm going to say it's a safe bet to say the submission was crap, pure and unmitigated. Crap is kind of harsh, but if you hold up your submission and put it next to an issue of anything produced by the company you're submitting to, and you find ANYTHING wrong with it, then you're not ready. It's really that simple. How can you get more ready?

Hire an editor.

The first job of the editor is to make sure the script is up to snuff. This is first and foremost, because the script is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Everything that I've been going over when it comes to scriptwriting (and stuff I haven't gone into yet) will be looked for by the editor. This is more than just proofreading, although that's a part of it. Format, character development, dialogue, pacing, story, company standards, and more- all of this is looked at by the editor. A good editor will go over the script with you for making the suggested changes, basically teaching you how they edit and what they're looking for, so you shouldn't make the same mistakes again. Proofreading for spelling and grammar are the easiest things you as the writer can do for yourself. If you're reading this, you have a computer, and if you have a computer, I'm willing to bet you have some sort of word processing program. That word processing program has a spell check to it. That spell check is your friend. However, it's not foolproof. It's not going to tell the difference between follow and fellow in a sentence if both are spelled correctly. That's why it's always a good idea to have someone else look over the script, if possible. (This is if you're handing it in cold, trying to get a job through an editor.) Anyway, part of the editorial job is to make sure the script is ready to go to the rest of the team.

The second job of the editor is to look at the art the penciler has produced. In a perfect world, it'll be thumbnails first, and then finished art. In the thumbnails, the editor looks to see that the script is being followed, and that the artist is able to tell the story with pictures. In the finished art, the editor is looking for anatomy, perspective, light sources, and clear storytelling. Basically, has the artist done their job? If so, then the artwork goes to inks. If not, the editor goes over with the artist the issues that need to be straightened out, and then once those tweaks are made to everyone's satisfaction, the art goes to inks.

The third job of the editor is to make sure the inker has done their job: have the line weights been varied? Are the light sources consistent? Are there any corrections that need to be made?

The fourth job is to make sure the colors/grayscale is correct. Is it night when it should be day? Are the colors consistent from panel to panel, page to page? You'd be surprised how things can change from one page to the next, or how light sources can change.

Next is letters. You'd think that just cutting and pasting is simple, but you'd be surprised at the liberties some letterers take. Some are good- they'll fix your fellow to follow- but others are obnoxious and uncalled for- rearranging your words, or leaving out some dialogue altogether.

And that's just looking at the pages themselves. That doesn't even include making sure the production schedule is adhered to, kicking creators into gear, managing the entire project, dealing with personal problems of creators and things extremely too numerous to mention. And that's only for freelance editors or independent companies. If the editor works for Marvel/DC, heap on meetings, payroll, phone-calls (both making and receiving), e-mails (sending and receiving), looking for new talent, and dealing with the upstarts from the slush pile (don't forget interviews and traveling to conventions).

And that's the creative team, with my own addition. In my world, when a writer gets a story, they'll think about who they want to edit them before they think about getting an artist. You have no idea how many times I go to the Digital Webbing Help Wanted sections and see writers putting up ads for artists, and they have misspellings or grammatical errors in them. There's one young writer that stands out in my head in particular who really needs to hone their craft, but is trying to promise the world. (Which is funny when you're still a minor, y'know?)

Now, I know I said I was going to get into scripting this week, and I promise to get there. I felt this aside was necessary now so that when you actually do start scripting, you'll hopefully keep some of this in mind. I haven't even spoken about money yet. I think I'll save it, and talk about money with contracts. I like to group things together.

Your homework is easy. Remember to always always always get an editor as part of your creative team. It doesn't get much easier than that. Always. An editor will save your life.

That's it for this week. Next week we'll have the contract/money talk, and then get back to scriptwriting. How's that sound? (Or maybe just dive right into scriptwriting. I haven't decided yet. I know- why don't you tell me!)

See you next week!
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Any specific questions, ask them in this thread, and I'll answer them. If it's something of a more delicate nature, e-mail me. I check my e-mail constantly, and will do my best to get back to you within twenty-four hours, depending on the number of you who decide to flood my inbox. No attachments, please. They'll be deleted without being opened. (I know, I know, but blame the virus-makers.)

[SebastianPiccione]

I STILL don't have a full creative team....but the first thing I did was get myself an editor. My friend Vinnie Bartilucci does my editing. He's awesome, he does all the things you said a good editor should.

And, no, not the Vinnie bartilucci you know from all the forums....although, I know that guy too. Can you believe there are two Vinnie P. Bartilucci's in the world, unrelated, yet both are comic fans from Long island, and I know them both?

Weird.

Anyway...another very good article there, Forby!

I am so gonna have to ask you to take a look at some pages at some point!

[StevenForbes]

Thanks, Sebastian. I appreciate it.

And if the first thing you do when you get a creative team is get an editor, I'm going to say that you're ahead of the game. Congrats!

And when you're ready for me to look, send them on. You know my addy.

[vofortvonkermit]

I feel so naive for believing that I could find a quality artist, who would work for free, because they read my script and loved it. Pay good money and get a good artist. D'uh!

I guess I need to find myself an editor.

If you happen to see my script sample on the Digital Webbing forum, I would love a comment.

Great set of articles you have here.

[StevenForbes]

Thanks. I appreciate it.

I'll be on the lookout for any script you put up over on DW, and go over it as much as I can. And if you're looking for an editor, you know where I can be found. Reasonable rates, and generally a 24 hour turnaround time- but usually a lot less. It doesn't get faster than that.