How to go from 2 panels to 4 to the New York Times

From 2 panels to 4 panels to 13 pages to 60 pages to 200 pages to 300 pages: Sarah Glidden's story

Today I want to share the story of Sarah Glidden, a good friend and I guess you could say, student of mine at one point (informally).

Sarah was a painter and photographer who wanted instead to do comics. She decided she would teach herself comics by doing daily diary strips. Usually a single half-page-looking thing, something easy to read on a computer screen. Sometimes 4 panels, sometimes 6, sometimes 1 or 2. 

Here are the first two as examples:

Not super sophisticated, but communicating clearly and certainly fun. 

And then a few more. More playfulness with page layout now...

And variations in style, tools and technique…

Note the playfulness with wordlessness in these two: 

Anyway, she did this for 9 months and stopped. I think she thought she got everything she could out of it… I think this was the last one she did…

You can see that she is much more sophisticated now. Four different shots with better, more advanced perspective, confident shading and contrast. Yay, Sarah!

In Part 2, we’ll see how she turned this momentum into a single-story mini-comic, and then multiple mini-comics and then a full-color hardcover graphic novel and then ANOTHER full-color hardcover graphic novel featured in the New York Times, NPR, The Guardian and more.

Thanks Sarah for letting us share your story!

Cheers

Tom Hart at SAW

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