While studying the art of Hiromu Arakawa for my Style Challenge, there were two things regarding to paneling that I noticed and liked.

1. When doing long/wide shots, the sum of the parts is more important than any detail. 

I noticed that Arakawa doesn’t worry about making any detail look totally crisp and rendered. Rather, she focuses on conveying message. If that massage gets across, then it doesn’t mater if every single tiny figure is as detailed as those shown in close-up shots.

Here are some images that I scanned in from the first three volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist

If you look relly close, it’s amazing how simle she leaves the forms of these characters. Look at little-itty-bitty Armstrong?

And yet, the scene still speaks to me, and conveys the right message. Armstrong’s lack of rendering doesn’t matter to me. If I followed Arakawa’s example, then I would save a lot of time.This is easier when you are not working digital. When I have the option to zoom in and render every detail, i usually do it. When my comic page s finished and re-sized, can I see all those details? No, but I spent the time on them anyway.

This is something I want to do for long shots from now on. Focus more on the composition and the overall feel rather than every little detail.

2. If showing something in a panel isn’t giving us any new information, then why show it at all?

This is something I noticed Arakawa do early on in volume 1. There are times, usually when characters are conversing, that there may not be a lot of changes in characters face or posture. You really don’t want to show them with the same expression twice, so what do you do? This is one answer.

Instead of trying to cram all the text into one panel, you can place it int another panel and then focus on something other than the characters’ faces! This might mean showing their body language, like clenched fists, or nervously tapping feet. Or it could mean focusing on their surroundings, as Arakawa did above. If she had given us more of those same expressions, we wouldn’t have learned anything new. However, by focusing on a detail of the surroundings, we gain new insight about Cornello and his opulent lifestyle.

One of my favorite anime shows, Steins;Gate, did this frequently. As a sci-fi, there were often a lot of technical things to be discussed. Instead of constantly focusing on the characters’ faces, it would frequently focus on details of their surroundings while they talked. This helped us to get to know their world better. It gave the show a sense of emotion and real-ness that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

These are just 2 of the things I’ve learned from Hiromu Arakawa! More to come!