How Tiny Thumbnail Drawings Transformed My Graphic Novel Process

On working loose, early planning, and better storytelling

When I first started making graphic novels 15 years ago, I leapt straight into creating finished art of each page because that’s the type of art I saw in the graphic novels that I read.

However, I ended up having to throw away many of those early graphic novel pages—and all that work—as the plot evolved, or because of clarity or pacing issues.

All that changed when I took a weeklong graphic novel course with cartoonist Paul Karasik at The Center for Cartoon Studies, and he introduced me to the concept of making thumbnail drawings—tiny drawings of each page. It’s such a simple process, but it was mind-blowing since it helped give clarity and structure to my graphic novels and it’s become one of my favorite parts of the graphic novel process.

Here I am in Paul Karasik’s class (front row, second from the left)

The point of thumbnails is to plan in a non-precious and loose way in the beginning in order to figure out what works and what doesn’t, saving you time later on. That will look different depending on how your brain works and what medium you’re working in whether writing, illustration, design, film, or comics.

I’m going to jump into explaining how I make my thumbnails, which is a bit different from how I was taught. So much of learning to make graphic novels (or any kind of art) is figuring out what part of the process works for you and what doesn’t. So if making thumbnails the way I do—or at this size—doesn’t feel good to you, take what’s useful from this post and leave the rest.

What are thumbnail drawings?

Thumbnail drawings are simply tiny sketches of what happens on each page of a graphic novel. Thumbnails help to plan and write before getting too attached to the art. Because of their tiny size, they encourage experimentation and iteration, which is how I’ve learned I work best. And it saves you time by fixing problems early in the process rather than later on when it would take a lot more time to make those changes.

This is an example of a thumbnail sketch from the start of my Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel:

I write text underneath the drawings stating the major action and subactions on those specific pages. This helps ensure you’re not trying to cram too much onto a page as is often the case when people start out making graphic novels.

My thumbnail drawings are usually about 1.5 inches tall and are created very quickly—usually within a few minutes. Sometimes I’ll make multiple versions on a piece of scrap paper before settling on one I like best.

I always work in page spreads—seeing both the left and right page at the same time— since that’s how my work will appear in a final book. The composition and pacing of a graphic novel is very dependent on if the art is on the right or left page. If you’re interested in learning more about that, read my post about page turns.

In the above thumbnail example, I’ve written “Excitement” and “Annoyance” on the top of each page. These are the emotions I want to convey and I write them there as a reminder to myself since there are many ways I can enhance those emotions through my comics whether with shot type, perspective, color, body language, etc.

I lay out all the thumbnails for each chapter on a 17” x 11” sheet of paper since I like to be able to see the arc of a full chapter at one time:

Once I have thumbnails of all the chapters done, I have a blueprint of the whole book:

When do thumbnail drawings get made in the graphic novel process?

I start thumbnailing after I have a sense of the overall story—usually once I have a detailed synopsis or outline. I work on it concurrent with my script. As I’m visualizing the scene for my thumbnails, I try to capture that in my script where I add in any details I might not have room for in the thumbnails or might forget later on.

In my thumbnails, I always draw in the speech bubble ovals, since those take up a lot of room on the graphic novel page. As I do that, I’m writing the specific dialogue in my script document. Each page of my thumbnail matches a page of the script which means page 46 of my thumbnails is page 46 of my script and also page 46 of the finished graphic novel. This makes organization a lot easier.

Eventually, the thumbnail above became pencil sketches, then lined art, then watercolored by hand, and scanned back in to be this page spread in the finished book:

Read more about my overall process making watercolor graphic novels here.

How do you create thumbnail drawings?

As with much of my process, I like to switch between digital and analogue as I work. I start in Adobe Illustrator, making side-by-side rectangles which represent page spreads. My chapters are usually around 16-24 pages so I add or subtract pages depending on how long the chapter needs to be for the story.

This is how my thumbnail pages look at first in Illustrator for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation:

You could easily create these rectangles in another drawing program, or just draw them out by hand on a piece of paper. There’s absolutely no need to go out and purchase Adobe Illustrator for this!

Next, underneath the rectangles, I digitally write in the major actions and subactions that will take place on that page. I call this stage my “written thumbnails” since I spend a while moving around the text before I even start drawing. I change text to red when I’m uncertain whether it will work or not.

Once I’m generally happy with the actions happening on each page, I print them out and draw in the thumbnail sketches using a mechanical pencil. I like to use a real pencil here since it prevents me from getting too detailed as I would be apt to do digitally when I could zoom in indefinitely. The purpose of thumbnails isn’t beautiful art, but figuring out the story.

By drawing the story out, I’m able to see what needs more or less space or needs to be moved around. Sometimes I actually cut them out and paste them elsewhere.

When working on The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, thumbnailing made me realize my story had to be a whopping 40 pages longer than I’d originally planned. Thumbnailing worked so well that my editors only had one pacing change in the whole 228 page graphic.

Thumbnails are applicable to many forms of creativity, including writing. If I’d taken my own advice when writing this post and created a rough outline first (the writing equivalent of thumbnails), I would have gotten it done much sooner and with less struggle. Instead I ended up spending much more time cleaning up and rearranging the document than I would have if I’d just started with a bit of plan.

But I find I have to keep learning the same lessons again and again in various ways of my creative life. It’s all part of the process. Maybe next week I’ll thumbnail first!

Let me know in the comments: How do you like to plan (or not) for your creative projects?

If you’re interested in finding guidance and direction with your comics or graphic novel projects, there are a few ways I work with creators:

1. One-on-One Coaching: Get constructive feedback, publishing guidance and accountability with my comics and graphic novel coaching. Learn more here.

2. Mentoring Group: Every other week I lead a small supportive mentoring group on Zoom through Sequential Artist Workshop. Learn more here.

Leif love

Take care and keep creating!

—Katharine