Advice needed from writers, illustrators and everyone ! :)

[young-dash]

hi hope everyone's having a good day.

to make a long story short im making this post so i can get some advice on something i have been thinking to do for a while.
it all started when one writer on a very old forum posted this....



she described the above as combining the art of great and detailed third person storytelling with the great artwork which is mostly found in graphic novels to give the story that extra boost of imagination to bring it to life.
i remember she said the reason she wanted to this was because she loved graphic novels and the way the panel art would pop out but she felt her writing was restricted when trying to write a graphic novel so she wanted to combine the two and avoid having to use speech bubbles.


the way i see it is some pages could have more art than writing while some could have more writing than art.
there could even be one whole page of writing followed by one all page of panel like artwork pieces to bring that writing to life.
there could be times when the layouts are different also.

i accept that there is a chance the above is a bad example but i just wanted peoples thoughts on what they thought of a book like this which combined the descriptive storytelling which graphic novel type panel artwork just minus the speech bubbles and the possible disadvantages and advantages of doing it.

hope to hear some opinions on this and thanks for reading.
have a nice day and sorry if i am poor at explaining anything tiredness levels are at a all time high

[Inkthinker]

It's been done, and done well... one noteable example of which I was very fond was the series Thieves & Kings, where the creator Mark Oakley would alternate between pages of illuminated prose (so basically a page of written word with illustrations in the margins or breaks between paragraphs) and then full-on sequential art, usually for scenes of dramatic character interaction or full action scenes.

It's also something I'd like to see done more often for graphic novels adapted from written works... where the original work is visually suited to it, use traditional sequentials, and where there's long paragraphs that don't adapt well to a comics narrative, just print the text and illuminate it.

What I would suggest for your sample above is that it's important that the artwork not be so dramatically bright and different from the rest of the book that it stands separately rather than integrating. One of the things that worked well for Oakley was that he worked in B&W, and his transition from prose to sequentials was always quite smooth.

[Smitty]

rant, rant... Graphic shmaphic, they're comics. Comics #1 rule? Show don't tell. ...rant, rant.


Check out Prince Valiant or Steranko's Chandler.

[young-dash]

thanks for giving me an example inkthinker
ill be sure to check out thieves and kings asap also thanks for the advice i also see the fact the images stand out so much as the
main issue.

smitty lol thanks for oyur examples as well ill be sure to look into them

[CyberLord]

...and Alfredo Alacala!
I am not familiar with "Thieves and Kings". I will have to check that out.

"Prince Valiant" and "Chandler: Red Tide" are really good examples of combining text and graphics, but "Chandler: Red Tide" has more in common with Big-Little Books*. "Son of Sherlock Holmes: The Woman in Red" is really experimental. Whole pages that look like comic books. Whole page of text. Combinations of both. All used as best befits the story.
"Son of Sherlock Holmes: The Woman in Red" might be hard to find. It was first published in 1977 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. It was the fourth volume in their Fiction Illustrated line which also first published Jim Steranko's "Chandler: Red Tide".

*Big-Little Books had text on one page and an illustration on the facing page throughout the book. No word balloons or captions from the ones I saw.
"Chandler: Red Tide" is similar in that you get two panels with a block of descriptive text below each panel on each page. A few pages have a few lines of dialogue above a panel showing what the character depicted is saying. Fewer pages still will have the far left panel omitted to show the date and time. Other than that, it is pretty regular to suggest the passing of time like the ticking hands of a clock.
This is not a criticism of "Chandler: Red Tide", just a note as to the process used.

[young-dash]

wow thanks so much for your examples ill be sure to check them all out asap
love this place hah

[Inkthinker]

I don't have a lot of Prince Valiant ref, but what I do have suggests it was a bit of a weird duck. Set up in single-page installments (though we're talking mid-20th century Sunday pages, so that's pretty dang big) where it was what... 8-12 panels? Each panel being a pretty luxuriant illustration with a giant panel of text that included dialogue as well as description. I don't think they ever did word bubbles or moment-to-moment sequentials. It was almost like an illustrated novel where the ratio of illustration to text was backwards from the norm.

Oakley's website seems mostly dedicated to his current webcomic series, but found a couple examples of his "illuminated" pages:





which he would then combine with much more traditional sequentials when they suited the action best, like so:







Is pretty good stuff, a little raw but honestly one of the best examples of combining comics and illustrated text that I can think of.

[young-dash]

i mean ive added writing to a few pages and messed around with a few layouts and tbh i think they come out quite well although i could just be an idiot hah

anyways what do you think guys ( all credit of art goes to artist )

[Inkthinker]

What your pages remind me of a bit are the pages for Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which got turned into the movie Hugo. He would have pages of prose interspersed with full-page illustrations that broke up time into small moments of narrative. Not comics per se, but a cut above normal illustration work.

It also let him make a 100-page kids story into a 526-page brick, which was good for sales I suppose.

[young-dash]

What your pages remind me of a bit are the pages for Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which got turned into the movie Hugo. He would have pages of prose interspersed with full-page illustrations that broke up time into small moments of narrative. Not comics per se, but a cut above normal illustration work.

It also let him make a 100-page kids story into a 526-page brick, which was good for sales I suppose.

Yeah I've just had a look at that and they are pretty similar
Although I spose the thing is

Would this concept work in the layout I have shown
Without t being classed a kids book with pictures I.e could it
Be sold to adults or young adults /teens
And Would I be able to convince comic /graphic novel fans they will enjoy this and convince literature readers that they might also enjoy this although as people have mentioned the concept I more comic then book so I spose I would be trying to sell this idea to comic readers more