Making Pages

Having been converting some of these stories for the page in parallel with producing the latest on-screen episodes, I've been quite struck by the differences. Pages proper have a quite different rhythm.

Each collection of frames on a page have to add up to a kind of whole together. You have to think about whether the page "ends" or whether it sets up the next page, and how the two halves of a double page spread work together. There's also the rhythm that's set up by the number and size of frames on each page. Maybe a bit like notes in a bar in music - is the page made up of a lot of crotchets, or a single breve?

The slideshow versions on the other hand are maybe closer to anime. You can occasionally fake up a frame to seem narrower, or skewed in some way, but you're essentially stuck with the regular landscape format. The rhythm is also much more staccato, and it's much harder to alter the pace. Having more words per page is probably the most sure-fire way of slowing the reader down, I think. Or maybe having an image that's quite hard to read. Though I've not really tried that sort of thing much. Probably the Zee-without-her-glasses-on scene in the epilogue to Reaching the LEARNER is the closest I've got. The repeated frames in the epilogue to Up close.. was another attempt. Making the reader work harder to move on.

Anyway, that's about the sum of these reflections so far...