Droid PJ Holden is as helpful as he is talented (i.e. very) and has been giving valuable feedback in the sample scripts thread (for aspiring droids preparing examples to show to Tharg). The most popular script by an order of magnitude is the Judge Dredd story “Cycles of Violence” so it made sense for him to give his view on how he would approach the script:

One of the many interesting posts to be found on the 2000ad message board is this one where a number of artists are presenting their version of the Judge Dredd sample script “A Cycle Of Violence” (you can download the full script here)

If you go through that thread (and I recommend you do, if you want to learn how to draw comics, especially if you want to draw for 2000AD) you’ll find a couple of things interesting:

1) There are as MANY different ways to draw a script as there are artists to draw it.

2) None of them are really wrong.

I’ve offered up critiques of various attempts in that thread. What I’ve never done, until now, is actually read the script – my critiqs were based solely on my interpretation of the art – and believe me, if people can understand what’s going on in the art without lettering then you’ve cracked one of the big challenges of comics: communication.

So I sat down and thought I’d spend a couple of minutes drawing up a layout for page 1, and here it is. It looks unlike any of the other layouts (because, as I’ve said, 100 artists you’ll get 100 layouts) but, I think, does the job of the script.

More.