OUT OF TIME - PAGE 6

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The Making Of

Script

These are the words Andrea had to work with. I always find it a miraculous process when Andrea, or any artist for that matter, takes these simple words and puts them into visuals.

PAGE 6

Panel 1
The 2 stand alone in silence, not facing each other, but looking at the nothingness before them, bowing their heads in defeat.

Panel 2
Martia challenges Benoid again, he is agitated with what he perceives to be her stubborn stupidity.

MARTIA SVENSON (agitated)
Did we really save our children?

BENOID SYC
Don’t talk like that.

Panel 3
Martia ramps up her frustration, vindictive after the fact, looking for someone to blame. Benoid, while still frustrated, realizes the danger Martia exposes herself to and turns to her, pleading her to stop.

MARTIA SVENSON (pleading)
Maybe we should have told him.

BENOID SYC
Martia, please.

Panel 4
A death ray disintegrates Martia.

BENOID SYC
No!

Panel 5
The room darkens and becomes a hollowed out shell. It looks like the room they were just in, but as if a bomb had hit and tore away the walls and roof. Beyond the city is still there, but now it shows in ruins, completely destroyed.

Layouts

I try to give artists maximum freedom to tell the story as they see fit. I see the script as a guideline, not the final story and when I get the art back, I then write the final story on top of the art. But once in a while, I ask for layouts to be changed to keep the psychology of the characters consistent, or where I feel the layout contributes to possible continuity mistakes.

Here is the layout Andrea provided, and the changes I requested from him:

Page 6 - panel 1 Benoid and Martia are distant here. They should not yet face each other. Their postures should be slouching, they are defeated. They have just sent their last hope of rescue away to save their children. Their emotions are mixed, defeatist. Please make sure that their positions in the room remain consistent with that of the two panels below.

Panel 3, The turn of Benoid's face is awkward here. Perhaps we should have his face more in profile, as he is sneering at Marta over his shoulder.

Roughs

Andrea's rough and my note:

Page 6, panel 2, the male face looks too 2d. Needs more 3d feel. I think is the eye.

Pencils

Inks

Colors

Veteran colorist Ylenia Di Napoli and Andrea worked together to put this story into beautiful technicolor!

Letters

I thought it appropriate to add a sound effect to further help the audience understand that something awful was happening to Martia.

The VZAP sound was created in Photoshop, with Blambot's deathrattlebb font. I added a stroke, some texture (a noise filter) and distressed the lettering by adding a wind filter.

In order to make sense of the final image, I added some dialog that might help the reader understand what they were seeing, since I didn't want to ask Andrea to change the panel and thus further challenging our deadline:

And that's how the page got done.

The adventure concludes tomorrow when we come to understand what is really happening in our world 500 years from now!

If you are curious about any other aspects of the comic book creation process, please use the comments below to ask your question. Or just tell us what you thought of the page, we'd love to hear your comments!

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