Hello, everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. Moving away from the workshop format this week, and returning to the more solo-assessments of panels and comics. This week, we have a panel pulled from Marco Rossi's comic [i[Killer Ape Theory.

The panel in question can be found on the page titled “Reiki 4.” Here is the panel in question.



This panel is a solid panel, but it leads me to think about scale. Namely, how big is this space sship, and how do we know? Further, how might we establish a sense of scale?

We are dealing with something that is certainly sizeable, if it is a cargo ship it needs to have room for materials. Probably a lot of material given it is traveling vast distances between worlds. But visually speaking, just from this panel, do we get a sense of just how big it is compared to say, a person?

What we have here at best is an object floating in a void. An object with windows, sure, but do we know what size these windows are? Are they the size of windows one might have on a house, or are we looking at significantly larger portals for observation?

The trick, here, I think, is to establish a sense of scale in the panel. That is something that can be accomplished by little additions. For example, a planet in the background, or meteors - does the relative scale of those celestial bodies dwarf this station? Perhaps showing someone on a spacewalk on the surface. There are several ways to accomplish the scaling here.

I also checked the following pages to see if I could get a sense of the size of those windows, but I had a hard time finding those windows present in any panels. Rather, I found a panel on a later page establishing a space station that does a great job of setting scale. Here we go with an example of what I mean:



Quite a difference here, don't you think?

But, that leads me to a question; there are many ways to establish scale in that first panel we used as an example. So let me ask you, in your position, how might you accomplish that? Let me know in the comments.

If you want to find earlier editions of Panel By Panel, click here.
____________

Don’t forget you can now advertise on DrunkDuck for just $2 in whichever ad spot you like! The money goes straight into running the site. Want to know more? Click this link here! Or, if you want to help us keep the lights on you can sponsor us on Patreon. Every bit helps us!

Special thanks to our patrons!!










Justnopoint - Banes - RMccool - Abt_Nihil - Gunwallace - PaulEberhardt - Emma_Clare - FunctionCreep - SinJinsoku - Smkinoshita - jerrie - Chickfighter - Andreas_Helixfinger - Tantz_Aerine - Genejoke - Davey Do - Gullas - Roma - NanoCritters - Teh Andeh - Peipei - Digital_Genesis - Hushicho - Palouka - cheeko - Paneltastic - L.C.Stein - dpat57 - Bravo1102 - The Jagged - LoliGen - OrcGirl - Miss Judged - Fallopiancrusader - arborcides - ChipperChartreuse - Mogtrost - InkyMoondrop - Jgib99 - Hirokari - Orgivemedeath Ind - Mks Monsters - GregJ - Soushiyo - JohnCelestri - TottyComics - Casscade - Salexander - Willed - Sketchydrawer - Niccea