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Bryan Lee O’Malley and Scott Pilgrim Page Flow

Over on his Flickr account, Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley shares an interesting look at how the flow of panels his comics has improved from earlier volumes.

Take this page from Book 3:

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And compare to one from Book 5:

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  • http://mumblier.com Andrew

    I had seen the first one on his flickr and thought it wasn't _so_ bad, but now that I've seen how much better that second example is I can see what he's talking about.

  • Josepedrosmith

    By making the flow better you can make the reading too comfortable, the ziggzaging on the first example articulates the text with the next image and then text, and the second example makes it more of an effort to look at the details of the images, so it's not as much as better as it is the kind o rythm he likes to have on his comics. I prefer the first though

  • http://www.GoComics.com/lumped-in Kevin Jackson

    I love looking at my past cartoons. If for no other reason then to point and laugh.
    The evolution of a comic is fascinating and of course Mr. Pilgrim is no exception.

  • Yiako

    I believe that thinking that visual flow goes from a balloon STRAIGHT to next balloon is inaccurate. The eye -hopefully- also takes a detour to see the drawings, so that visual paths are wrong.

    Also, I don't think that more clean and comfortable is always positive. Is more important the tempo (Do you want the reader to see the expression of a character BEFORE what he says, or vice versa?) and the mood. A good example would be the 4th panel in the first page. The ballons are between the two characters, almost dividing them in a discussion.

  • Emily

    wow

  • foggie32

    Yeah, I kind of agree that easy balloon flow may not be the 'best' for comics. Why do you have the illustrations if you're bypassing most of them to read the balloons? Why not write prose with occasional pictures, if that's what you want? I WOULD say that his PAGE layout has improved though. The earlier pages panel sizes seemed too arbitrary.

    gary

  • ZS

    The line is cleverly disguised in the second example to seem simpler. check out how in the first example the line wonders out of the text area and involves drawings. yeah, we look at drawings too, not only text. so in the second example I'd have the line include the girls' boobs for example, and you'd see quite a different, much longer, curvier, and more ornated path :P