Holiday Wars: Words to Lines

Some of you have expressed some interest in the process of how the Holiday Wars webcomic gets made overall and specifically this particular scene involving The Fool going up against a pretty nasty beast from another dimension.  So here is a little look behind the scenes showing the script and raw inked uncolored and unlettered pages giving you a peek at "how the sausage gets made".

If you would like to compare these with the final colored and lettered pages you will find the finished pages here:

Page 196
Top Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…
Bottom Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…

Page 197
Top Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…
Bottom Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…

Page 198
Top Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…
Bottom Episode: www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…

Page 199
www.holiday-wars.com/blog/2014…

We start off with the script from Holiday Wars writer Scott King. I have all of the script pages from this sequence posted to the left of the art board for that page. I don't scan the pencils so those are not included here.  You may notice that the page numbers on the script don't correspond with the page numbers from the art boards, when working on a story of this length little things like that can happen.  Also for those of you that have not seen the printed book for the first Holiday Wars story you will notice that two episodes are drawn on each page one on top of the other. The art is drawn on 9 x 12 bristol boards.

On the first page you will notice that the top episode has four panels instead of the three that are called for in the script. I added panel 4 to the top episode in order to have the bottom episode be one single image so that it would be larger and have more impact since it was the big reveal of the monster whose tentacles had been menacing our heroes for the past few pages. It also makes for cleaner storytelling in that the first episode now has a more complete feeling of a finished sequence. The action of The Fool being pulled through the portal ends clean with the episode break with the bottom episode now starting fresh with a new sequence.

The monster design was done right on the page.  For things that are integral elements to the story I will do separate design work but generally I do not like to stop work on story pages to design. I work on story pages in order and that builds a certain feeling of forward momentum that comes to a halt when stopping to work on designs. I gave the creature the qualities Scott had asked for in the script, the height, tentacles the large mouth and also added in multiple sets of horns and mandibles and loads of hands. Monsters can often be interesting to create because of the design freedom that their nature allows. I did not want to throw in a bunch of elements just because I could though. The things I added on are all things which can later be used to help give the creature a sense of personality through the positioning and posing of the hands and mandibles and horns and their interactions with one another.

The second page is a good showcase of that monster personality that I was just talking about.  The second page is a six panel sequence showing the monster finish off it's snack and then have a little trouble getting said snack to work it's way down the esophagus. Notice how the hands and mandibles come into play to help give the monster a growing sense of satisfaction at finishing it's snack across the top three panels culminating with the final panel of the top episode having our monster hold one of it's mandibles and use it as a toothpick while the other hands rub it's stomach and pull the bits of flesh hanging from it's chin. One of the hands even slips into some fold on the monsters body as if it were doing the Al Bundy hand down the pants routine.  All of that coupled with the monsters narrowing eyes make it look as if the beast has caught itself a case of the "itis".  Compare those satisfied hand positions and the dull expression with the wide eyed look with open mandible and waving hands from panel four and it now looks as if the monsters is in a full panic at the reluctance of the snack to allow itself to be digested.

To the right of the art board for page 197 you will see 9 panels that are drawn on copy paper and all contain background and foreground elements for the panels on page 197.  Page 197 contains two sets of fixed shots. The panels in the top episode are all from one single vantage point and the panels in the bottom episode are all from another vantage point, one that is slightly farther away than the one from the top episode.  What I like to do for these types of repeated shots is to work on the individual elements of the shot separately since some elements will move and change and some will not.  The creature itself will be moving throughout the shots but the landscape around it should remain consistent seeing as how each shot for the episode is from the same vantage point. By doing the elements separately the things that should remain consistent can be drawn and colored once and then pasted into every shot so that it will always look the same. In the case of this page the shot of the mountain range is the consistent element for the first episode. For the second episode another more zoomed out shot of the mountain range as well as the cliff that is in front of the monster are the consistent elements.  For the bottom episode the mountain range and the cliff, although they both will be consistent through all the panels must be drawn separately as the mountains have to be placed behind the creature while the cliff had to be placed in front of it. As a matter of personal taste I like to try to include a few different changing elements in these types of shots in an attempt to give the sequence as much of a feeling of movement and passing time as I can. Here I've done a different shot of the clouds to be inserted into the background of every panel to give the sense that these dark clouds are constantly roiling. You may notice that the mountain range backgrounds were not used in the final finished page...oh well.

Page three of the sequence is probably the page with the most changes from the initial script to the final drawn page.  I've basically switched out the top episode with the bottom. Having The Fool fall right into the horde of monsters would allow him to know what kind of bad situation he was about to be in. It would give him an opportunity to prepare himself.  If The Fool gets eaten by the monster while at the top of the cliff he doesn't really know what is going on past the cliff. The way the sequence works now is that when The Fool claws his way out of the monster's belly he has no idea of what type of situation he is coming into. Although this may seem to be a big change it really is only a slight one. The elements of the sequence that are included in the script remain they are just reordered in a way that adds more impact from a storytelling standpoint as our hero and audience are both introduced to the next perilous challenge on the upcoming splash page instead of  through a series of small shots of The Fool falling into the horde of monsters.

To the right of the art board for page 198 you will once again see a series of panels that contain background elements for the top episode of page 198. A single mountain range to be inserted into both panels and a shot of roiling clouds for each of the two panels.

The last page of the sequence is one big splash taking up the space of two regular episodes. You will notice that there are two versions of this page. I wanted the slew of monsters to have a really intricate and overlapping feel. Almost like the pile of monsters was one big puzzle. Other than on the edges of the page there are not any random arms, legs or any other type of monster body parts stuck in, all of the monsters are full overlapping figures. In order to get that type of an overlapping flow I had to draw the entire image. The inset panels were drawn on a separate sheet of bristol and inserted digitally.  The script calls for two inset panels with each being more successively zoomed out.  I took the opposite direction and using four panels instead of two did a slower paced zoom in.  I wanted to emphasize a sense of claustrophobia with the monsters continually closing in and enveloping more of The Fool.  Ending with a close up also gives the viewer a more personal sense of The Fool's death than a zoomed out shot would.

Hope you enjoyed that little look a how a few pages of Holiday Wars gets made. If you've never read Holiday Wars before then stop by and check out our New Readers Page at: www.deviantart.com/users/outgo…