By D. Lynn Smith
As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t have an editor on issue #1 of Gates of Midnight, and I made mistakes that weren’t caught until my husband read the finished pages. We then had to go back and make corrections, which meant paying my artists for additional work. That convinced me that I needed to find an editor, and that’s how Valerie D’Orazio came to be working for Kymera Press. We’ll talk more about her credentials next week when we publish an interview with her. In the meantime, let’s talk about what an editor does.
Valerie started looking at the thumbnails (see post on penciller) of issue #2. She not only helped me find mistakes in the way scenes were set up, but she also helped me figure out how to fix the panels. She made sketches to show me and Amelia how the panel could be set up to tell the story better. This not only helped the issue in the long run, but it also was a great learning experience for Amelia and myself. We both grew, and continue to grow, as artists with Valerie’s help.
SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to use a plot point from issue #4 here as an example. If you don’t want to read it, skip down to “SAFE TO START READING HERE.”
During the inking process, I would try to describe what I wanted to show. For instance, I have a place in issue #4 where Alex casts a shadow image of himself. It got a little confusing with two of him on the page; we couldn’t tell what was happening. Valerie suggested that we lighten the lines on the “ghost Alex” and add some cloudy swirls around him. This problem persisted to the coloring stage, because it really was the colorist’s job to make this scene work. Here are some of the actual notes Valerie gave on a set of pages for issue #4 to help the colorist.
Page 1 panel 2: should the effect around the creatures be a little more “wispy” so it is clear that they are not really in the sky?
Page 1 panel 3: inside the “portal” should have a little more depth?
Some other thoughts she had on subsequent pages.
Page 3 panel 2: the stuff “grabbing“ the stone should be a little different in color or “tone,” because it looks like now that it’s a static part of the same whole.
Page 6 panel 4: again, the ambulance needs more depth. She could achieve this by playing with some of the grey tones and shading.
As you can see, as an editor Valerie was able to not only point out what was wrong, but was able to suggest solutions. Here are the before and after pages for the “ghost Alex.”
SAFE TO START READING HERE
When it comes to lettering, Valerie goes through the script and bolds words that need to be bolded. This is something I really can’t do as in all of my other writing it’s not something I would do. She makes any grammatical/punctuation changes that are required and helps me figure out where to place dialog bubbles when they need to be changed.
When it comes to editing the script, she makes sure that what I’ve written is clear for the reader and the artists. Here’s an example of notes she gave me on script #5.
Page 1: Great opening!
Page 2: Be sure to remind Amelia that Eric and Raven have just come out of the fight in the last issue, and are a little worse for wear with cuts and whatnot.
Page 3: Be more specific about Marie’s facial expression for Amelia. I assume that she is not surprised that Raven and Eric were in the fight, and yet must put up “appearances” for her guests.
Page 4: Good banter between Marie and Raven as the cut is being dressed.
Page 5, panel 6: This would be a great place to direct Amelia to make visually more dramatic. You could ask her to do a close-up, and really describe the emotion on these characters’ faces. Marie feels like Constance could be a threat to her daughter—bam! Bring out all that maternal protectiveness and fury visually.
Page 15, panel 6: a good place for Bub to be large in the foreground, zooming forward towards the reader dramatically, with Raven in the background watching.
Page 16: I’d have very subtle shading on Rain’s hurt eye. We don’t want to give it away, but also don’t want it to look like suddenly in close-up she has an eye injury.
As you can see, all of these notes were about clarity of purpose in each panel. And Valerie does the most important thing an editor can do, she tells me what is good about the script as well as what problems need to be addressed.
Finally, Valerie has also given me feedback on artists as we went through the process of hiring for Kymera Press’ next comic book series—Pet Noir. Looking at an artist’s works requires a skill that I call seeing. My husband and I are scuba divers and have spent a lot of time on Maui. He used to talk about the wind line on the water—he could see where the wind picked up and where it wasn’t blowing. I couldn’t see it. But then we moved to Maui and during that time, I learned to see the wind line! It was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes.
It’s the same with looking at a penciller’s lines, an inker’s details, a colorist’s shadows. You have to learn to see. When I was hiring my artists for Pet Noir, the inker didn’t want to commit to a price until she saw the penciller’s portfolio. The colorist didn’t want to commit to a price until she saw the penciller and the inker’s portfolios. Luckily, they were all impressed with each other!
So this is my experience of what an editor does. I subscribe to a great blog from Heather Antos, an editor at Marvel. If you’d like to read more about what an editor does, check her out on tumblr.
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