Phillip Sevy, artista visual con experiencia en el comic independiente, ofreció en su cuenta de Twitter una serie de consejos muy útiles para quienes desean adentrarse de manera profesional en la narrativa gráfica.

Las verdades dentro de “5 Rules for Drawing Comics” podrían parecer algo que se da por hecho, pero es indispensable que antes de crear cualquier composición secuencial se tengan éstas siempre a la mano y se confirme una y otra vez el que se hayan cumplido.

Obviarlas es algo innegociable. Son sinónimo de disciplina y mejora paulatina de nuestras habilidades como ilustradores.

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I get to work with a lot of young professional artists as they are honing their craft and trying to break in, and I’ve come up with 5 basic rules beyond the basics (perspective, anatomy, etc) that will improve your storytelling.

1. ESTABLISHING SHOTS—once per page establish the environment we are in—show us who is in the scene and how they relate to each other.

2. FULL BODIES—once per page give us a panel where we can see the full bodies of the characters in the scene. This will allow us to (re)orient ourselves with the spatial relationships of the characters in the scene.

3. VARY YOUR SHOTS—on every page, see how much variety you can add to your shots. That’s long shot, medium shot, close up, extreme close up, downshot, upshot, birds eye, worms eye, etc.

4. CLARITY—I see this happen ALL THE TIME in professional/published work. If the reader ever has to stop and ask “wait – what is going on?” Then you’ve failed. Clearly lead someone through a scene—whether it’s talking or fighting—CLARITY of action.

5. STORYTELLING TRUMPS STYLE—who cares what “style” your art is if I can’t understand the story you’re telling. You can develop a style but you have to learn to tell a story.

And that’s just the surface, but a good set of rules to get started.

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