After completing my first comic strip, I decided to spend more time on composition in my second comic strip, since I didn’t focus on it at all previously. To do so I have used this workspace with all these detailed toys to set up different scenes with the figures. After setting one up, I sketch a thumbnail to frame what I’m looking at in front of me, and look at where the figure stands in the image relative to other objects. In James’s classroom, he has these viewfinders that are proportional to the ground you’re working on. Similarly, I use pieces of paper I’ve cut like viewfinders to decide what I want in the image, and where I want the edges to cut off, etc. After this, I continue to change the figures, the objects, the angle I’m looking at, and create a new thumbnail.

Though in the past, I’ve learned to thumbnail quickly to get as many ideas out on paper as possible, (usually not working for more than a minute on each thumbnail) these maquettes are pretty delicate. Things get knocked over a lot. Since I set something new up in between each one, it is much more time consuming than freely thumbnailing.