Blue Moon Blog

I’m delighted that we’re beginning our second year doing comics stories for the outstanding Tzivos Hashem Kids magazine. Over 300,000 copies of each issue (in English) are distributed world-wide, and tens of thousands more in a variety of additional languages are sold. This strip is one of our favorite regular projects. I’m so pleased that clients like Tzivos Hashem are choosing to use comics to communicate their important messages, in this case to interest kids (ages 8-13) in their Jewish heritage and religion, teach them about their background and where they come from, in a manner that is fun, informative and that will speak to them.

Comics are an effective and entertaining medium. Not only do comics stand out and grab attention due to their visual nature, but because they combine words with pictures it’s easier to convey sometimes complex actions and concepts to readers of all ages and backgrounds.

Today I’m working on layouts for the next installment, and though I can’t share those yet, I can show some art from a previous issue.

I begin work on each issue with a rough layout, breaking down the plot or adapting the story into comic book pages. These breakdowns are a few inches tall, kept small so I don’t focus on detail yet, but rather on panel and page composition and storytelling. It may be difficult to tell anything from my chickenscratch, but trust me, I know what’s going on there, which may become more clear to others when compared side-by-side with the completed page.

I then proceed to larger layouts, working at print size. The  lower portion of the page was of particular interest to me, as I needed to show the hero, Joey, chasing a bunch of ice cream trucks through the city streets. Breaking these actions into a series of smaller panels, especially when followed by the larger title image, I found a fun and interesting juxtaposition. Instead of showing the whole city, which is suggested in snippets, we focus on the drama of Joey’s chase.

Between this layout stage, through the pencils and the final art stage, I changed the last panel to show better Joey’s reaction, as well as the the men beginning to unload the boxes from the trucks. This also builds suspense, as one has to turn the page to discover their destination.

The final pencils and inks are done at an enlarged size (124-140% depending on the project). Sometimes we have to finish these comics quickly on a tight deadline, and I’m feeding finished inked pages or sections to Mary, so she can scan and prepare them digitally to get started on coloring, while I pencil and ink more. Read all of the comics we’ve done so far for the magazine, and we’ll let you know here when the one on which I’m working now is available.