Grinding It Out

And Then One Day #9: Page 3 (Elephant Eater): Panel 1: Yeah! I love these big world building shots. In my perception, it seems like Ryan is using more and more of these shots in his recent work, where he pulls the camera way back to reveal the environment around the characters. It really provides a sense of context that typical “talking heads” shots might otherwise lack. The panel is framed from a beautiful bird’s eye view perspective, which allows Ryan to capture the skyline all the way down to small campus details which we’ve already seen up close. The palm tree in the right foreground and opposing building to the left of the visual field provide a very nice sense of depth. You’ll also notice how the line weight varies dramatically from foreground to background, thicker up front, with heavier inks, to thin and very “pencil-y” afar. Compare the palm tree to the tower in the back left and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Panel 2: It’s interesting to me that the Charles Hatfield passage Ryan is quoting is essentially about creating context for your characters so that they’ll connect emotionally with a reading audience. In the preceding panel, Ryan has just pulled the camera out to provide an environmental context, all while the two characters discuss providing a context for autobiographical creations. It’s a brilliant little tonal match, where the art is in perfect sync with the intent of the dialogue. It’s the kind of synchronicity that you see writer/artist duos like, say, Frank Miller, Paul Pope, or Craig Thompson, do regularly, and when writers work with different artists, they strive to achieve this bliss of parity together. That top panel is probably my favorite panel so far, it’s beautiful artistically as a standalone panel, but when taken in context itself, it functions quite smartly as a singular component of the whole.