Self initiated comic: Page draughts

This isn't a simple process, a lot of planning needs to go in to this stage, roughs after roughs to ensure that you are using an optimal amount of pages and panels. I always find myself doing quite detailed initial draughts, then gradually, through repeated outcomes, resorting to simple shapes that I can hopefully read later when comparing earlier and newer designs. This is an example of the more detailed initial draughts, looking at character, environment  and text placement. This draught lands me around 40 pages.. a lot of published comics find their self at this number for their first book, but I feel I can get the idea accross with half that, stripping down and streamlining what I already have. In fact, that will be my goal for the next post, to have a draught that halves the page count telling the same story.