TWCL

[ringatoa]

Hi first post by me XD

I was just wondering what the way of writing out a story for an artists use is? In terms of giving an artist the easiest time in illustrating a webcomic

[Casual Notice]

It depends on the artist, but in most cases, you're generally best off delivering a fairly detailed script and letting the artist know that they have fulll artistic license. In any case, you must include the following bits of information:

• A Summary of the Page—this is the best way for the artist to know what you want. Even if you go with generalized panel descriptions, s/he can refer bacl to your summary to get a sense of context.
  
• Descriptions of every major character and a general description of background character types—"Major character" in this sense means "important to this page". Any character with a line is a major character on a page by page basis.
  
• A Description of the setting—even if it's the exact same setting as the previous page, the artist needs to know that.
  
• The dialog, clearly divided and assigned to characters—remember that comic panels have limited space for dialog.

Your best bet is to start out writing a film-style script and adapting it to the particular needs of comic writing.
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What I lack in sincerity, I make up for in sarcasm.
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[Spencey]

Dang! Casual Notice responded while I was writing up a reply - so I'm just going to go ahead and post mine anyway, even though there is some overlap with his guide!

Firstly, welcome to the forums.

As a bare minimum your script must include every detail that's important for the story. For each scene you should specify:

- Background
- Characters present
- Props, clothing or objects

It is important that these are specified before the artist begins work otherwise they may draw an entire scene only to discover at the end a line that says "Jeff, watching from the side, puts up his umbrella and walks though the archway". If the artist wasn't aware Jeff, his umbrella or the archway were going to appear, they will have a lot of editing to do, to incorporate these features.

Elements such as the panel layout, action sequences, position of characters, lighting, etc. may be important to a particular scene. Again, where important, specify it.

Other than that, I'd imagine it can vary from team to team. If you have a very specific view of what a character, scene or prop needs to look like, you need to specify it in detail or it will not look as you expected. If you are happy to let the artist have free-reign over these matters, you don't have to specify them at all and can enjoy the surprise! As a general rule of thumb you might find if you are not paying an artist, giving them more flexibility will keep them interested longer (although of course all artists are different and some may prefer a detailed brief).

Also, before you enter into an arrangement with an artist, you should talk about your expectations, particularly to do with money. You may want to sign a contract to be clear about ownership and the distribution of profits. You also need to make sure you agree realistic timescales.

Make it clear if you are presenting the artist with a draft or a final script. If it is a final script as a minimum, it should have been checked for spelling and grammar.

If you are new to writing scripts: avoid large chunks of text, show what's going on rather than having the characters describe it and be aware that the work involved in scripting can be very different to drawing - even small action sequences may need multiple panels to illustrate (ie "The window opens slowy" is four words, but may take several drawn panels to demonstrate the length of time the window is taking to open).

Good luck!
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[ringatoa]

Thanks for such quick replies this information was really helpful and hopefully I will be able to write my scripts well with this advice.

Thanks Casual Notice & Spency

[Zoe Robinson]

Although Spencey and Casual Notice have already given you a lot of good information here, I just want to toss my hat into the ring as well.

I wrote an article about scripting comics on The Webcomic Builder last year. It is based on my own scripting method which is, in turn, based on how Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore script their comics. That's not to say it's the only way to do it (because it's not) but it works for me.
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