Last month, I attended a comics workshop in Walthamstow (where I now want to live) taught by the very talented Emily Haworth-Booth. It was a great day and I left feeling incredibly inspired, although not particularly by my own work.
What most stuck with me, is the way Emily taught us to storyboard. I don't usually do longer comics, but whenever I've tried, I started out by writing a script. These scripts would turn out lengthy, too wordy, and I'd have trouble adding images to the text. Emily, instead, had us start out with a picture, think of a story, and just randomly start drawing scenes on frame-sized bits of paper. We could then add text where needed and tweak the order of the story. As I am a very visual thinker, this felt much more natural and a lot less stressful to me! Lightbulb moment!
My story ended up being about my younger brother Rutger (because I miss him) and although I'm not sure it works as a story per se, I decided to follow through and ink and color it nonetheless.
Thanks, Emily, for the great workshop!
If you're interested in taking a class from Emily, there's a section for that on her website right here.
