Jack and the Beanstalk

Breakdown and first pass

After I chose the fairytale, I started off with full enthusiasm, breaking down the story. This turned out to be a challenge in itself, since this fairytale is quite complex with many twists and turns. The first pass could contain 10 panels, no more.

Start out rough

When I showed this first pass to John, one of his first observations was that the beats needed a bit more clarification. Also, he advised me to draw the panels in a rougher way, and to explore the options more; what is the best visual way to convey this story point?

Getting into this rough, exploratory thumbnail phase, rather than trying to come up with the ‘best’ idea immediately, gave me a lot of freedom to just try. Working small and rough gave me less pressure to focus on making the best drawings, but more on exploring options. With John’s notes and advice, I started making the second pass of thumbnails.

Adding, removing and tweaking

With now a lot of different options to tell the Jack and the Beanstalk story, it was time to make a selection; removing panels that were not necessary, and at the same time, adding new panels to tell the story visually clear. I also kept reminding myself that it’s about finding the best way, not to create the most beautiful pictures (yet).

A couple of more passes went by, which slowly turned into the phase of adding final touches to the story drawings. Things as lighting, contrast, rescaling and adding cinematic elements (i.e. blurs) really helped to give the beatboards their extra shine.