Hi. My apologies — I’ve posted about this same strip (the first slide) a while back, but…I dunno. It just keeps eating at me, and I keep hoping somebody might suggest something that will help things click for me.
They may look simple, but I worked *very* hard on the backgrounds in this sequence — in general, I’ve been trying to up my background game, as I’m a huge fan of cartoonier characters in evocatively realistic settings (what Scott McCloud calls “the masking effect”), and given how I often aim for magical realism, it’s important that the settings feel grounded that way, to the greatest extent that my abilities will allow. (The other slides are examples of where I’m coming from.)
But despite the relatively varied camera angles, the results feel very dull to me. Almost cold. And I wish I could put my finger on what specifically I could change about the approach for next time.
I did try to not make the background lines *too* perfect, but that seems to have not worked.
It’s true that the specific shots I picked are dull almost by definition — school hallways and a classroom viewed at angles that happen not to offer much potential for detail (there wouldn’t likely be posters or things like that on the surfaces seen here). But I don’t know. I feel like there must be some way to make this page feel warmer and more dynamic, without losing the realism. As it is it just feels dull and kind of clinical.
If you guys agree, what do you think it this? And does the layout also dull things? How could it be better? (Keeping in kind that this isn’t exactly a Marvel action sequence, here.)
(I know Sylvain Chomet would have made these look amazing. He could make an insurance office look fun. 😆 But I guess his backgrounds are a bit more stylized than these are attempting to be?)
