Bearrito Publishing

Okay, so the current page of Lloyd and the Bear has been proving a challenge. To explain, We’ve got Lloyd and Griff trying to break through a force field that’s popped up while Rizos (who’s back after being introduced in issue #14) appears and has to explain her reason for being there while also not slowing down the action.

Now hey, that in itself is enough to deal with but Rizos also has to be positioned right of Lloyd and Griff AND I need to deal with angles that will get all the characters in while taking in to account how much taller Rizos is from the other two!

The page was going to be split in to three panels to fit the dialogue and for the opening panel I went back to my tried and trusted method of positioning some action figures on my desk and taking a photo which I would then use as an outline.

Gosh my desk needs a good clean! Anyways, this really helped and the first panel ended up like this!

Next panel was going to be a basic one with a close up of Rizos as she talks. I ensured the speech balloons was on the left side of the panel this time for balance and the close-up was fine as I’d already set up everyones positions in the first panel.

Still, it was a pretty dull panel and I felt like I was using a larger panel than necessary what with the speech balloons being plopped in bottom left corner rather than taking up the full left of the panel.

But the real headache ended up being the third panel! With the speech balloons now being back on the right I first tried a clear shot of Griff and Rizos side by side.

So I was happy with how everything fitted into the panel but the camera angle meant that we were inside the force field which annoyed me. Also, it’s a really boring panel! I wanted something at least a little bit more dynamic!

I then tried a closer shot of Griff with Rizos off camera…

I was kinda fine with this panel but I hated the big speech balloon and I wasn’t too happy with a backshot of Rizos’ face again as it was kinda matching the first panel!

So why not a backshot of Griff?

Now, I was liking this more but the speech balloon still bugged me.

I did do a super rough sketch that was going to be two long panels, one with a close up of Rizos and her speech balloons and then the second one with Griff and his part. The thing was there was no connection between the characters so that seriously didn’t work!

I found myself going back to the close up of Griff but this made me realise I should redo the first panel – which I did! I then ended up tinkering with (all) the dialogue and having another go at the close-up panel of Rizos and this is what I came up with!

I’m really happy with the result. Everyone has their moment and we can clearly see how they’re interacting with each other plus I managed to fit in all the pesky dialogue! And hey, I got to make a throw back reference to Bulog Slugs (which we were introduced to in issue #10) so that was cool!

I really hope this post wasn’t super self-indulgent but I really just wanted to share my experience with putting this page together!

More soon! Bear hugs!