Give it Your Best Shot

Ironically, no picture this time…and it's a Newspost about pitchers!


Beyond writing our stories and characters, figuring out our plots and dialogue and character design, and all the other stuff that goes into creating a comic, we have to choose our shots. Our camera angles.

Very much like a movie, our frames must be worked out. But when do we use what?

A WIDE SHOT
Can fit when we want to show a specific location, like in an establishing shot, or a grand vista or crowd scene, or a sense of scale between something huge and something small.

A MEDIUM SHOT
Is common, espeially in dialogue-based stories or gag strips. It's handy for showing one, two, or more characters and objects in the same frame, and allows room for dialogue. A lot of us use this a LOT. It's useful!

A CLOSE-UP
Is for focusing more on a specific character or object. If an object or small action is important, this is a good way to indicate that! Also handy for showing emotion on an individual character's face.

An EXTREME CLOSE-UP
can be good for intensified drama or showing tiny detail, like one word on a book, business card, or whatever.

I have to admit, a lot of the time I stick with a medium shot or talking head, and stick it around the word bubbles. Beyond that, I go by intuition, and I think I could make more purposeful choices!

So how do you decide what shots to use in your comic?



Have a good one!

-Banes