Most of my panel cartoons only have captions, but occasionally I draw one that includes a voice or thought balloon. In this example, the position of the balloon seemed obvious, but what I overlooked was the positioning of the elements. The monolith and volcano were both needed in background, and they are—without fail—always arranged in a left to right layout (google Mordor, you'll see).
When I drew the initial thumbnail, I placed Frodo on the left, thinking it felt natural since he was speaking. Unfortunately, this created a problem with linking the voice balloon to him—and I didn't want to contrive an odd connector snaking underneath and around Mt. Doom. So in the final draft I swapped the characters' positions to bring order back to Middle-earth.
By the way, wouldn't you love to try that Lembas bread? I imagine it tastes like a good batch of buttery Scottish short bread with a hint of lemon. Or a lemon bar. Either way: Mmm.
No comments:
Post a Comment