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New Comic Layout Experiment
As I was working out the panels for the Little Piggies comic, I started to get a feeling I've had before where the story beats are super intense in my head, but when they get translated into panels and dialogue, they start to lose some of the heat and emotional intensity that comes across often in good erotic stories.
As an example, an intense description of a women being driven to a reluctant orgasm against her will often has a much stronger emotional impact than a speech bubble saying "Oh god I'm gonna cum", even when it's paired with a sexy image.
So I started thinking if there might be a way to bridge that gap and get the best of both worlds. I think my experiment with Dirty Priest went too far in the other direction, there wasn't enough art to have the story flow even with more descriptive text. But as I thought about it more, I realized maybe a little bit of text with each panel could to deliver that extra emotional impact without distracting from the art and story flow.
I came up with a few initial rules for this style:
- No change in the number of panels, still 2-5 and averaging 3-4.
- Important speech bubbles and sound fx are still included.
- Thought bubbles are mostly removed, important thoughts are moved into the descriptions of the characters emotions. Some might still be used sparingly for plot reasons.
- A lot of filler text bubbles and sound effects can be removed if they aren't key moments.
- Reduced page gutter width so there is more space for art/text.
- Remove a lot of filler panels in favor of scene transition descriptions so the focus can be more on key moments and adding more and longer scenes.
- Less angles in panel layouts. I've been using less angles anyway recently, but panels will be mostly be kept rectangular except for specific situations. I might experiment more with this aspect specifically.
Regarding filler panels, in the previous style, many times panels were added to show step by step action. For example, in the scene below, in the original page Lucas pulls out the vibrator, tells her to open her mouth, then puts the vibrator in her mouth across 3 panels. In the new one, he pulls it out, and puts in her mouth in 2 panels, and the text describes how she was so overwhelmed that she willingly starting sucking it. This allows pages to focus on more hero moments and fit longer and more scenes into the comic.
I think this could be a really good way to improve the comics and especially to introduce a lot more lurid detail about the characters and their emotions and actions, which is especially important for the story in Little Piggies. For Little Piggies specifically it might mean being able to add several more scenes and many more contraptions and torments.
BUT I don't want to just launch a new format like this with a story that people voted for if people don't end up liking it as much. So the examples below will helpfully give a good demonstration of what I'll be trying to do, and please let me know your feedback. If you think it looks promising and you'd be excited about it, or if it would make you rethink buying the comic because you would rather see the old style.
If you skipped all the boring text, vote for how you feel about the revised pages below from Blackmailed Teacher 1 with the black text boxes vs the original versions.
As an example, an intense description of a women being driven to a reluctant orgasm against her will often has a much stronger emotional impact than a speech bubble saying "Oh god I'm gonna cum", even when it's paired with a sexy image.
So I started thinking if there might be a way to bridge that gap and get the best of both worlds. I think my experiment with Dirty Priest went too far in the other direction, there wasn't enough art to have the story flow even with more descriptive text. But as I thought about it more, I realized maybe a little bit of text with each panel could to deliver that extra emotional impact without distracting from the art and story flow.
I came up with a few initial rules for this style:
- No change in the number of panels, still 2-5 and averaging 3-4.
- Important speech bubbles and sound fx are still included.
- Thought bubbles are mostly removed, important thoughts are moved into the descriptions of the characters emotions. Some might still be used sparingly for plot reasons.
- A lot of filler text bubbles and sound effects can be removed if they aren't key moments.
- Reduced page gutter width so there is more space for art/text.
- Remove a lot of filler panels in favor of scene transition descriptions so the focus can be more on key moments and adding more and longer scenes.
- Less angles in panel layouts. I've been using less angles anyway recently, but panels will be mostly be kept rectangular except for specific situations. I might experiment more with this aspect specifically.
Regarding filler panels, in the previous style, many times panels were added to show step by step action. For example, in the scene below, in the original page Lucas pulls out the vibrator, tells her to open her mouth, then puts the vibrator in her mouth across 3 panels. In the new one, he pulls it out, and puts in her mouth in 2 panels, and the text describes how she was so overwhelmed that she willingly starting sucking it. This allows pages to focus on more hero moments and fit longer and more scenes into the comic.
I think this could be a really good way to improve the comics and especially to introduce a lot more lurid detail about the characters and their emotions and actions, which is especially important for the story in Little Piggies. For Little Piggies specifically it might mean being able to add several more scenes and many more contraptions and torments.
BUT I don't want to just launch a new format like this with a story that people voted for if people don't end up liking it as much. So the examples below will helpfully give a good demonstration of what I'll be trying to do, and please let me know your feedback. If you think it looks promising and you'd be excited about it, or if it would make you rethink buying the comic because you would rather see the old style.
If you skipped all the boring text, vote for how you feel about the revised pages below from Blackmailed Teacher 1 with the black text boxes vs the original versions.
I also find the black boxes unneccessary and even distracting.
They hide to much from the artwork IMHO. Maybe at least the background of the additional text could be transparent?
I did try that, but I felt it made things too noisy and hard to read. I think the best way to address this issue would be designing the panels around where the boxes would be from the start so they never feel like they are covering up anything important.
I like the idea of the additional text I agree that the black and white is a little strong and takes away from the visual effect of the comic. Maybe had more text and using the semi transparent green boxes with black text would be the way to use this as it would maintain the older style while incorporating more text. It just seems less “harsh”. If it can lead ways to more actions scenes and less build up scenes.
Maybe just a bit less text overall would also help in this regard. I do think the green boxes work for small amounts of text, but once it gets to larger blocks of text the comic font isn't as readable as I would like. What I did like about the black boxes is they could be blended into the frame borders without causing too many issues with the panel layout.
I don't know about this new format. The descriptions feel too dry despite the subject matter, but I might know a way to fix it. I know you're a fan of Fernando's work. Please direct your attention towards their "Total Control" series. In it, Fernando also use these narration text boxes, but they filled it with the protagonist's (Kate) point of view narration as if she was describing the situation at a later time. The best parts about it include being able to add depth to Kate's state of mind. It can even paper over transitions between panels.
Also, I agree with the other commentors about the color of these narration text boxes, although I suspect this was never going to be the final look anyways. I once again bring up "Total Control", because Fernando makes them the same color as dialog boxes, but he differentiates by using italics and making the boxes rectangles with sharp corners versus the dialog bubbles with rounded corners. I can instantly tell one over the other despite being the same color this way.
While we're talking about format, can I also convince you to use dialog bubbles for non speaking sounds like "ah" or "mmph" instead of those sound effect... uhm... sticker things. I always had trouble differentiating between the two when I'm looking at a page. For example, the "Shlup!" and "MMPH" in the first set makes me think that "MMPH" is just a physical sound of it getting shoved into her mouth that is no different than the sound of a door closing instead of the sound of a woman reacting to it by unconsciously making a sound, but because it was muffled comes out as "MMPH". What I'm trying to say, with great difficulty, is that any sound a person makes out of their mouth, regardless of coherence, has more weight than sounds made out of physical reasons. Dialog boxes represents intent of the person, and seeing that intent be reduced to "MMPH" and "ah" is very powerful.
In the second set, the "Shlup!" is kept in a dialog bubble without the spike. In this situation, the sound effect feels a bit flat. The sound effect sticker from the first set gives the sound a shape and feel that a dialog bubble just can't express.
I've never really been fully happy with how I've done sound effects, so I'll continue to experiment with that as well. Total Control is a good reference to mention, it does have similar text descriptions, and it's usually limited to a few per page rather than every panel, so it might make sense to follow that example in terms of text density. It does feel like Total Control has too much text still, but I think it's mostly the lengthy speech bubbles rather than the descriptions that make me feel that way.
I like the additional text, it gets a bit more intense. And as you said yourself, we get a better understanding for their actions and emotions. I always like a bit of reading with these kid of actions, it is more deep. However, the black and white design is too much. Keep the old design but ad the text.
bad idea if you ask me. the black boxes interfere with reading, immersion and space in the image. it is no longer the text which sticks where it wants to the image to develop it but the image which must be built around the formatting of the text. moreover it takes away from (the interpretation) of the scene.
As the adage goes, “a good picture is worth 1000 words”.