The Early Bird

How I made a short comic about a Robin

I’ve been interested in exploring storytelling and comic/graphic novel style art for quite a while. After watching an American Robin going about his daily routine, I got the idea to create a short comic telling the story of the Robin’s day.

I started by making a few notes about the story and what the panels might show. I drew a few thumbnails but mostly I made the story up as I went along.

On page one, I started out with a wide view and then zoomed in on the Robin. Robins spend a lot of their time wandering over grassy areas looking for bugs.

For the second page, I did a full bleed drawing of the foraging bird getting closer to the viewer — I used both size and increasing value to (hopefully) communicate that this was the same bird moving toward the viewer over some period of time.

I realize that I broke one of the rules of comic art on page 3 with the very tall vertical panel but it doesn’t really matter what order the panels are viewed in. Also this page has one of my favorite drawings on it: the “worm’s eye view” (middle panel, left), which in this case is straight up at the underside of the Robin’s head.

The photo reference used for closeup image of the worm with its mouth open was an electron microscope image. I liked the idea that it was opening its mouth in shock as the bird’s bill approaches from above. Then the struggle ensues! Earthworms are surprisingly muscular and can put up quite a fight. But the Robin almost always triumphs.

Once our hero has his tasty worm, he takes off and flies away with it. I tried to communicate the distance over which he might travel before arriving at his nest on the next page.

On the last page, I showed the Robin back in a grassy meadow, looking for another worm to feed his kids.

Now that I know a bit more about making comics, I can see a lot of things I’d do differently but for a first try, I am really happy about how it turned out. You can see the whole story fully assembled here.