↓ Transcript
1Anne: Our journey went on pretty boring.
1Anne: Nothing interesting, just a regular boat trip...
2Anne: And once we reached the coasts of Dyr... Still nothing. Then train to the capital.
2Anne: At least I had some time to think while we were getting to Urs.
1Anne: Nothing interesting, just a regular boat trip...
2Anne: And once we reached the coasts of Dyr... Still nothing. Then train to the capital.
2Anne: At least I had some time to think while we were getting to Urs.
i can see you took a lot of time making a beautiful forest, and you did a great job with that, but i’m not sure if i understand the point of the page when three out of four speech bubbles are about how boring it is. might as well start with the next page and get the ball rolling? except you really did make a beautiful page here.
if i might suggest something: shrinking the boat image so that it only takes up 25% in the top left corner, using a “diagonal break” (or simple jagged lightning diagonal break) between the two panels to add a bit of dynamic tension, and drop the first three speech bubbles. leave the last one. it’s enough to let the readers know what’s going on, and it focuses our attention on the triumph of your forest, the sunbeams (i’d probably move the sun so it was doing the same thing it is now but behind the diagonal panel break), and the steamclouds from the train.
i realize again this page is from ages ago and you’ve moved on. it’s just a suggestion if you have extra time or are planning to make this into a book.
From a very technical writing perspective I 100% agree with you. The information presented in this page is rather limited. As a matter of fact, it’s arguable that all you get is: 1, Dyr has shores (something you already knew), Dyr ha trains (something you did not know but could have reasonably guessed), There’s a non-negligible travel time between the shores of Dyr and the capital (something you did not know so far, but does it seem important? I’ll leave this up to you). Is this worth an entire page? I can clearly see why some would argue that it’s not and it is a waste of space that could have been used better. But…
There’s also something else that’s very important here. That is the mundane nature of the situation. The train is not attacked by dementors, the train is not attacked by trolls, the train is not hijacked by bandits and so on. Nothing happens that usually happens in stories. You are not torn out of the “regular” by some event that’s unusual not just for you but for the characters in the story as well. Sure… You’re reading about a world with fantastic elements to it, and you so far have no gauge to measure what insanity is “regular” when these fantastic elements are involved. There is no dark lord, no great lurking evil, no grand hero running around punching out Cthulu. There isn’t even a Cthulu to be had. At least as far as you as the reader know. What you can and do know at this point is that there is a good old regular world, albeit one that’s fused with magic mostly instead of technology, and it’s absolutely in order and works as you’d expect it to. There’s no turmoil, everything is as fine as you’d expect. The world is fine, it is in it’s absolutely normal, regular state. There’s no rush, no imminent threat. The world is as fine as it can be now.
You might say that there’s no merit in showing everything being in ordinariness, even if it is in a magical world. You might also say that showing that everything is fine is no reason to be not efficient in the technical writing of a page. And you might be right, I’m just one dude trying his ideas out in comic form, with a lot of help from Liz who does the mighty fine art for the pages.
The “regular” nature of the first pages (roughly first 600 pages, so way more than what’s drawn right now) also shows in the fact that the protagonists basically have no goal set up for them, but this is getting waaay off the topic. (none the less yes, you’re absolutely right this page could be done more efficiently)