Tutorial 2 Creating a comic strip What you need Photoshop, downloaded RotR comics, database, an idea! 1.

1. Choosing a Story There are plenty of gaps in the RotR timeline; most seasons only include around 10 matches, when Rovers would often have to play over 50. But the challenge is trying to think of a story that is entertaining and true to RotR style. Things to remember: Dont duplicate matches, if the match is documented then it shouldnt be done over. Stay somewhat within the storyline of the era you are in; e.g. if doing a match for 1980/81 the season Rovers were relegated, it is best not to have them romping home 6-0 against Melboro in the Derby! Try to be historically accurate (I have made Division 1 lists from 76/77 until 84/85 that are 95% accurate). This goes for Cup matches too! Get your Melchester team correct! Dont invent teams or player surnames! Use a database or refer to the comics if you are going to name opposition players. I have a database compiled from the downloaded comics that includes over 500 players. People seem to like stories that allow the reader to learn a bit more about the opposition teams, but avoid having players from the wrong era, e.g. Newton Oates shouldnt play for Burndean in 1977, he would have been 12! Most importantly your story must be possible to create from the frames/scenes available to you, e.g. I wanted a scene where Duncan McKay punches Johnny Dexter in the players bar, but couldnt find any fight scenes (I will try to make this scene later, and document it in Tutorial 3 Advanced Edits).

Its probably best to do a Melchester match as your first comic as you then only have to edit one set of kits, it saves a lot of time! So what story shall we create in this tutorial? To keep it relatively simple, lets try a Division 1 match between Melchester Rovers and Carford City, in the 1977/78 season. This season focuses on Rovers European Cup run so few league matches are covered. Also nothing is known of Rovers final league position. Therefore we have the freedom to make anything happen in our match. The focus of this story will be the emergence of a young midfielder for the opposition, Carl Hunt, who plays well enough for Roy to rate him as someone to keep an eye on. Well have Rovers win 2-1 with a typical late goal, but we can change this as we go along. 2. The Players/Line-ups I like to include at least the Rovers line-up, I think it makes the reader feel more connected to the story. If it is possible I also like to mention or name drop a few of the opposition players (although only where appropriate). 2.1 Melchester Players - Melchesters normal line-up for 1977/78 reads: Carter, Baxter, McKay, Giles, Slade, Peak, Wallace, Gray, Race, Holloway, Eliot, Dixon. For simplicity well use this line-up.

2.2 Opposition Players - In my database I have 23 Carford City players, but they range across the entire series. Its important to select players that fit the 1977/78 season, e.g. Kurt Gruber should not be included as he joined Carford in 1983/84, although we can assume that Mike Gladwin (named as captain in 83/84) had been playing for Carford since 77/78, even if that isnt confirmed in the comics. From the 1978/79 season, we know that Richie Davis is Carford captain, so well refer to him and in the 1979/80 season they have a forward called Henderson who scores against Rovers. I like to have a name for the goalie too. In an album a story refers to Norman Jackson as a Carford goalie from the 70s who Roy could never score against, having Jackson as our goalie adds another dimension to our story. We now know that Roy cannot score! So we have chosen five Carford players: Norman Jackson (goalie, 1), Mike Gladwin (defence, 5), Richie Davis (Captain, 6) and Carl Hunt (midfield, 4) and Henderson (forward, 9). Five should be enough for our readers to connect with Carford City. To cheat a little, I like to drop the names of the players into scenes where the players are too small to recognise. This avoids having to cut and paste lots of heads. Although adding correct heads really brings the story to life. 3. Decisions to make later Some decisions just have to be left until you start selecting scenes. A story needs to be flexible, as some scenes as just not possible to make. 3.1 Home or Away? - For our story Rovers can be the home or away side as no match against Carford is recorded for 1977/78. We shall leave this decision until after we have picked some scenes. If a lot of the scenes we want are from Rovers away matches its best to make Carford the home side, as Mel Park is quite a unique looking stadium. 3.2 Day or night? Again we will decide this depending on the scenes we are using. It might not be a majority decision here though, it could be down to what scenes are easiest to edit, e.g. lit floodlights are one of the hardest features to replicate and make consistent. 3.3 Goalscorers It might seem strange not to decide who we will have score, but you find the match develops as you pick scenes rather than in your planning. For example, you have an idea to have Vernon Eliot score the first goal, but the scene you like for the final pass includes Eliot in a position where he couldnt possibly end up as the scorer. So you either rethink or give the first Eliot a new identity/head/paste grass over him! 4. Preparing the Comic 4.1 Frames You need to get the correct frame and heading from the correct season. You can cut out your own or use mine. Mine are altered so that the frames are right-angular and straight. The scans are all a varying angles as is the print so having a consistent frame is best and saves lots of time. 4.2 Organisation In a folder called CARFORD, save the front page frame as CARFORD1.psd and the second page as CARFORD2.psd. Keep both of these files open for now.

5. Selecting Base Scenes At this stage we are just building a framework. We select scenes that we can link either through the flow of the images or through text. We wont edit anything yet, not even resize or crop, just pick some images and see how they lead from one to the next. 5.1 Top of the Front Page 95% of the time the top frame is made up of one scene, not the normal two. I like to keep the one scene for the very first page of a new story at least, as it gives you room to introduce the story properly in the yellow box. This makes selecting the scene easier, as you can flick really quickly through your comics. Start with the 1977/78 season and scan along looking for a scene that looks like a good start off. TIP: Good ways to start a story are: players walking out onto the pitch, a warm-up before kick-off, a training session, team arriving in a town/country. Although you could start mid-match, I find that the reader finds it harder to connect with the story, unless the match isnt your main story, maybe some off-field issue is, then this would be fine. Im going to select a training scene, mainly because Ive already used most of the other useable large scenes in this season. A great thing about training session scenes is that they require little editing, a lot of the time you only have to change the text. Ive picked Vernon Eliot at free-kick practice, from 77-12-17a. Select the scene and paste it into CARFORD1, name the layer FREEKICK and move it under the frame, then move it until any red borders are hidden under the red frame.

5.2 Scene 2 - We now need to browse other training scenes to help end our training session. Think about what the narration and characters are going to say, maybe Roy will reveal his line-up? Jimmy Slade had been injured for a period of the 77/78 season, so maybe I can use the scene where Roy is talking to Jimmy, perhaps checking his fitness or even better briefing him on Carfords star man Carl Hunt! While this is a great idea, you will notice that the speech bubbles are coming from Giles and Gray so we need to change how the idea is presented, with Geoff saying something like, Roy must be worried that Hunt will wind up Jimmy! Hes only just back from injury too and Blackie replies, The Hunter may be a great ball winner but he does go overboard sometimes So we have two slides that only require text editing!

5.3 Scene 3 A really useful way of ending a passage in a story is to use The Roy. Early in the story The Roy can also be used to really set the scene and give a lot of depth to the tale. The Roy is this (left), a scene where there is only Roys head and a speech bubble or two. While this is a really handsome Roy we need a bigger one with more bubble to fit our space. Hows this (below)? And because he is so nice, hes also wearing the correct shirt combination!

5.4 Scene 4 The training session has ended and Roy looks enthused, therefore we should continue with the happy feeling. Perhaps we can introduce Carl Hunt soon, but how and where? I think well have Roy drive home and watch him on video! So scene 4 can be another cheat slide, so look for one where Roy is in his car. Theres only two in the 1977 collection, one has a policeman in the car and the other is a narrow, tall one of Roy getting into the car outside his house. Ill pick that one for now and paste it in, but will look for a better one later (77-10-08b). 5.5 Slide 5 On the same page as the car there is a good scene of Roy watching TV, well have that too:

While the car scene is the wrong shape, this is fixable, but it would be preferable to find a better scene. But for now, well leave this row as it is. 5.6 Scene 6 We need a scene now with Carl Hunt in it. Carl Hunt doesnt appear until 1984 with a new artist and a massively different palette, so for now just look for a nice action scene, it really doesnt matter who is featured. Firstly check some Carford matches from 1976/77 and 1978/79, this again will reduce the amount of editing you need to do! For now just think about how you want to introduce Hunt, what kind of first impression shall he give; a goal, a tackle, a foul, some skill?

TIP: While it may seem that I am cheating a lot this is only because we a busy setting up the story, in the main match itself it is far more important to edit. TIP: Be careful when including Penny and the twins. Penny changes her look a lot and you dont want the twins appearing in a story before they were born! This Penny and baby are okay as they are from the 1977 comics so fits within our timeframe. I couldnt find a nice Carford scene so have gone with a foul from the Zalmo match (77-11-12a). Its good because it has no stadium background, the blue and white can be used to suggest Roy is watching in TV, although Ill probably change this to red later. 5.7 Scene 7 As I have chosen a scene showing Hunts tough side, I should now balance it with one showing his skilful side. And there we have it! We have completed the base layer for the first page of our story!

6. Resizing Scenes Our base above has a pretty good fit already, with one obvious exception, the car! This scene needs to be wider; firstly make the image bigger. We dont need all of the car to be visible or the gap above Pennys speech bubble. Try it now. You can see that the gap is much smaller now and that even though the image is larger it doesnt look out of place (i.e. the black lines are not too thick). We can now resize the scene on the right to narrow the gap entirely. Cut sections away from the scenes to recreate the borders between them. Try to make them all a similar size.

7. Creating Groups To keep your comic page organised it is best to create sub-folders for each scene. In Photoshop these are called Groups. Click on your scene and go to Layer > New Group and create a group named after each scene. Move the scene into the correct folder as you go. It is best to now click the arrow beside each folder so that the contents are hidden. [Save] All your editing, text, border, re-colours, heads, etc. should be kept in the correct Group folder.

8. Borders Some scenes need extra borders added; use the Line Tool, #000000, Size 3. Draw each line within the correct Group. This means that by selecting the Group folder you can move everything in that Scene at the same time.

9. Editing each Scene Refer to Tutorial 1 for a guide on editing each scene. Once you have re-coloured and added the text for each scene you should have something that looks like this:

Thats it then for this tutorial. Thanks for reading and please have a go at your own comic.