I have to say the weekend was very fruitful. I finished thumbnailing Bolt: 6:59 on Saturday morning (yes, all 48 pages of it—my longest project to date). (I also added some new info to the website’s sidebar (a new bio, for example)). I’m considering this the completion of the first draft of the story. I do have to go back and re-draw a few pages of thumbnails so that the right panels are on the right pages, and then type out a script in a separate text document. (I did the thumbnails in what I’m calling “Lutes style,” which means the thumbnails have numerals inside the word balloons rather than words, and the words are enumerated on a separate sheet.) This shouldn’t take long.

The next step will be to show it to some cartoonists who understand good story structure and know how to talk about comics for a nice, substantive critique. I’ve got some in mind, and I’ll let you know once they’re officially on board.

Next step after that is to read it over and over and over again for flow, pacing, and clarity—with an eye toward improving characterization, if necessary. In other words, the next step is to write a second draft. I’m trying to look at it this way: “look how much I’ve done!” rather than the more discouraging “look how much I have yet to do!”

Someone asked me if I was going to post another set of thumbnails. I said I wasn’t sure, because I don’t really know how people feel about them. What do you think, dear Reader? Would you like to see more thumbnails? Are they too hard to read? Too hard to decipher?

Here’s a quick list of past posts with thumbnails in them, for ease of reading:

• Bolt: 6:59, Pages 1–8
• Bolt: 6:59, Pages 9–12

Let me know what you think.

More thumbnaily goodness:

More thumbnails! So many thumbnails!