This is a four page sequence completed before starting the course.

These four pages are in introduction in comics form to my graphic novel about Vermeer. 

My comments on these:
I'm pleased with some of the images, but not others. This painted style is new for me. I feel traditional comics lettering and solid white balloons wouldn't work here: not sure this is 100% though. I think it works okay for the curator. I tried to use a more of tabloid font for the American officer - but it doesn't work as I have it: maybe the American could have standard comic balloons...? The fourth page is a selection of details of a Vermeer painting (that I have recreated in vector layers) zoomed in to reflect the text of each panel as far as possible.

These are taken from a completed sequence.

It seems recognised that death scenes are hard to write well - to avoid trivialisation or mawkishness -and I had to put one in the first chapter! I hope I've managed it okay, but feedback appreciated.

I searched for advice on writing death scenes, and based on that have worked in the following:

• emphasise close relationships with other characters
• emphasis dying character's good qualities - his painting, and nurturing of the younger Vermeer
• connection to a previous death - Vermeer's father
• have the dying character leave a legacy - Vermeer has to live up to him surviving.
• remind of better, past times - flashback to looking at Fab's goldfinch.
• show survivor traumatised by the loss

In subsequent chapters I'll further develop some of this, and work in:

• rituals putting the dead to rest
• effect on the survivors
• more of fab's back story

Attached are some updated breakdowns with more legible text.

Colour-coded scenes
I have added colour tints to each panel, which distinguish the different scenes: e.g.

• 'the present' (the evening following the explosion) when we see Jan with Catharina discussing the earlier events there is an evening blue tint;
• before the explosion - the flashback scenes with Antonie are a yellow intended to evoke daylight;
• the immediate aftermath of the explosion scenes (mostly with the Captain) are orange;
• a couple of flashbacks to Fabricius before his death have a green/brown tint evocative of some of his most famous paintings.

​The tints will overlay the final colouring.

Here is a draft script and breakdowns/thumbnails of the first six (of twelve) pages.

I am now thinking the first panel on page 2 would be better replaced with an image of vermeer and his wife at home (original idea sketched here is V at Antonie's looking through microscope.

In page 3 I want to put in a panel of catharina saying Antonie's ideas are blasphemous.

page 5 - the first two rows are meant to be read as a single scene, with the second row being different moments in that scene.

Florence - early Renaissance. Paolo Uccello is obsessed with the emerging techniques of perspective drawing. Pressurised by his wife to get a commission, he promises an ambitious suite of paintings of a victorious battle to local ‘godfather' Leonardo Salimbini.

Salimbini is excited about the paintings - and boasting to his friend Cosimo Medici. Uccello, - and Salimbini’s major demo, Rocco - soon realises he’s out of his depth. He seeks help from his old master, but he’s jealous and won’t oblige. Salimbini and Rocco visit and are disappointed with progress, but Uccello buys some time, while Salibini is on honeymoon. 

They come back weeks later to find still nothing on the walls. Salimbini ‘suggests’ Uccello not leave until they have satisfactory progress, and leaves Rocco to ponder what would be ‘satisfactory progress’. After implicit threats, Rocco finds a way to put the tentative and theoretical Uccello ‘into the battle’ and leaves him adrenalised to paint the scene. This pays off, everyone is happy and Uccello feels unburdened.

Making use of the model for scene construction in John Truby's Anatomy of a Story I have planned out the first chapter (proposed 1st semester project). This is a complicated one, as it involves a story recounted by the protagonist making up four scenes that nest in each other as follows: 1, 2 ,3, 4, 3, 2, 1.

​My planning for the is detailed in the attached file.