Sketchy Details - Planning your Cartoon

Intro

My usual method of creating a cartoon tends to follow this process:-

1. Have great idea.
2. Write down dialogue and review.
3. Draw pencil sketch or thumbnails.
4. Draw each frame on the tablet.
5. Import into ComicLife and compose.
6. Finalise and resize to 850px wide.

Step 3 often looks like it's been missed, that's because I rough it out on the tablet, or I create empty planning frames (with dilogue) in ComicLife. More often than not, I just plan it in my head, but there's always some sort of plan, there has to be.

The last X-Fails had quite a detailed sketch, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Sketch Plan

You'll notice there's some quite extreme camera angles in this cartoon. We start off with a high level of perspective viewed from below, using the vanishing point method to scale the policeman's body. But you have to be brave and really draw those boots big if you want him to appear close up. The next three shots are simple close-ups showing the dialogue and that pistol action. They were chosen to focus the readers attention to try and increase the level of misdirection. Finally we have a standard frame to fill the page width with the big reveal. (Five's a difficult number to arrange otherwise)

Here's the link to the finished cartoon, often things get changed along the way, but this time it came out quite close:

http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/74/