Providing Location Clues

Introduction

This week's comic is based on the notion of mistake, or a couple of them to be more exact. But in order to make the joke work, I needed to make one or two things clear, ideally without having to write it into the dialogue. I'm a firm believer that people are turned off by cartoons with lots of text, so I try to minimise it as much as I can.

If you've not seen the cartoon yet then read it here first:

http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/65/

I'll show the artwork for each of the frames and explain my use of location clues.

Frame 1

The opening shot needs to set the scene and capture the audience. I needed the LGM's to be somewhere in the vicinity of earth so that a telescope would be feasible, or the joke wouldn't work. I chose Mars and made it as red as I dared.

Location Clue #1: I added the Curiosity Rover, because it's highly recognisable and commonly known to be on Mars. I could have used a sign saying "Welcome to Mars" instead, but it feels like a cop-out. It's better to infer it some way.

A Zoom with a View - Frame 1

After drawing the martian rover I wondered about why it hadn't spotted my Aliens and then decided that perhaps it had been de-activated. So I had it clamped.

Finally to give it that "Grand Day Out" feel, I added the deck chair and tartan thermos. I think there's something very English about those things, despite the fact it might sound a bit Scottish.

Frame 2

This very simple frame delivers the punch-line, but the joke's not obvious until you see the last frame. 

A Zoom with a View - Frame 2

Early plans had the zoom settings indicating scale:

• Ultra - 1m
• High - 10m
• Med - 0.1km
• Low - 1km

I discarded that idea, realising it would be too confusing. (KISS - keep it simple stupid!) I decided to devise a visual way of showing sizes in the last frame.

There's not much else to say about it really, other than I thought a background was unnecessary.

Frame 3

This one gave me a few problems because everyone knows that ants are tiny. If you draw them too small then it's not obvious what they are. Yet if you draw them large they look like monsters and the joke doesn't work. (Plus, I really didnt want to re-use the word 'ant' in the dialogue.)

A Zoom with a View - Frame3

The answer was to draw them both ways,.. small ants in the background appearing like cars on a highway, and a huge ant in the foreground for recognition purposes, so I put it on the branch of a tree.

Location Clue #2: I chose to add a matchbox to the scene because it was the right size (in comparison to ants), it's a recognisable discarded object and a common brand. It serves two purposes here; it confirms the location as Earth and sets the scale for the background insects dimensions.

But there's still a danger that the branch could look like it was on the ground with a huge ant upon it, so I used ground shading. It's subtle, but seems to work well.

Location Clue#3: It's not shown here, but I added a circular mask to the final frame to make it appear as a view through the telescope.