Illustration and Visual Narrative Task 3: Graphic Novel
Evaleez Voo Lian Yun / 0350275
Illustration & Visual Narrative// Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Task 3: Graphic Novel
Index
Lectures
Week 7: Acts Structure
Central Theme
- What the story is really about.
- A story may have both a major theme and minor themes.
- Major theme:
- An idea that is intertwined and repeated throughout the whole narrative
- Minor theme:
- An idea that appears more subtly, and doesn’t necessarily repeat.
Conflict
Creates tension and builds suspense
Engages an audience
Characters
- Protagonist
The main character of a story
He or she has a clear goal to accomplish or a conflict to overcome
- Antagonist
oppose protagonists, standing between them and their ultimate goals.
can be presented in the form of any person, place, thing, or situation that represents a tremendous obstacle to the protagonist
Three Acts Structure
- Setup
- Rising Tension
- Conflict
- Resolution
Week 8: How to Create Comics
Start with An Idea!
- From experiences - what inspires the little artist in you
- Good ideas never come from browsing Google aimlessly
How to Come Up with Ideas
- Brainstorming
- Mind- mapping
- 4 Wives, 1 Husband
- What?
- Who?
- When?
- Where?
- How?
Week 9: Understanding Comics and Effective Visual Communication
Pitching Ideas
- Inspiration
- Concept (Keywords)
- Image References
- Sketches
- Have a good log line
- Avoid using character names, describe them with adjectives instead (makes audience imagine)
Fresh Stories
- Original ideas are stolen from somewhere
- How to Steal like an Artist
- Honour vs degrade
- Study vs skim
- Steal from many vs steal from one
- Creadit vs plagarize
- Transform vs imitate
- Remix vs rip-off
Instructions
Visual Research
As an avid member of comics, I decided to reread some of my favourite ones on BiliBili Comics and KuaiKan, two major publishing companies in China. (also my 'excuse' to procratinate ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)).
Note: All comic links will be added in references.
Heaven Official's Blessing
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| Fig 1.0 HOB panels (29/10/21) |
This comic is hands down one of the prettiest I have read. The storyline is amazing and the artstyle is chefs kiss. What I like about this comic is the fluidity of the panels. You won't get confused midway on what the story is trying to tell you.
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| Fig 1.1 HOB panels (29/10/21) |
The lines are also very crisp and clear and I really enjoy the vertical shaped speech bubbles and how they slice it with the shape of a tail end to signify that someone else is talking.
Idea Exploration and Description
First Drafts
Darwin's Theory
This story is inspired by Squid Game and Global Examination. In a desoalte land, a group of people were placed together to solve certain puzzled throughout their stay. It creates suspense by making one character die every time (at random) they don't finish a puzzle. As such, their need for survival heightens and unimaginable things happen because of the paranoia they have that they will be next. Because of this system, the members also start to question each other, are the deaths really random? Or is there a serial killer on the loose here?
Second Draft
Together Forever
As the saying goes, when you love someone, you will do everything, anything for them. In this case I decided to turn that dark. Obsession was a key theme in my story, the need to get what you want even though you can't have it, and you would do anything to make sure you do, even crossing the line of ethics. Backstabbing, rose tinted glasses and lies, oh so many lies.
Process
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| Fig 1.2 Process 1 Sketching (14/11/21) |
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| Fig 1.3 Sketches (15/11/21) |
After finalizing my sketches, I moved it over to Adobe Illustrator.
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| Fig 1.4 Process 2, Illustrator (24/11/21) |
I placed my sketches and some room references on the side to ease my way in creating the final product.
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| Fig 1.5 Process 3, Detailing (1/12/21) |
After finalizing most of the panels, I added some gradients to give the webtoon a bit more depth. Besides that, I also added rectagles in between panels (like the artboard in the middle ^), because my story has a timeframe, i.e a month later, some time after the doctor examines, so the rectangles were used to signify that as we had a limited amount of panels we could use. Moreover, since most of the panels have similar angles, I reused some of my assents on different panels to speed up the process.
Fun fact: I had a mental breakdown while doing this because my laptop crashed and 6 hours of work was gone. (Rookie mistake for not saving it, I know).
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| Fig 1.6 Process 4, Photoshop (3/12/21) |
I actually attempted to fix the colours in Photoshop, i.e adding highlights, shadows etc. However, I had limited time to do this so I ended up scratching the idea. The above are some panels I rendered.
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| Fig 1.7 Process 4, After Effects (4/12/21) |
When the still version of the comic was done, I moved on to create the motion comic. I first started with After Effects. While doing this, I encountered a minor problem which was regading the colour setup. i accidentally made the .ai document in CMYK so everything was washed out in AE. It took a lot of time to reimport and render my videos.
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| Fig 1.8 Process 5, Premier Pro (5/12/21) |
When everything in AE was done, I compiled all videos and audio together with Premier Pro to finalize the Motion Comic.
Note: Audio credits in YouTube Description
Final Outcome
Motion Comic:
Feedback
- Ramp up the horror conflict in the house, right now it's just intro-end.
- Second draft is okay, can proceed.
Reflection
Doing this task was very very tiring, mainly because I decided to use the Pen Tool to illustrate everything instead of the brushes in Illustrator. If you've read my process, you can also note that I had a mental breakdown because my laptop crashed and 6 hours of work just said, "Peace out".
However tiring it was, creating a comic had its own fun. In a way, I enjoy telling stories with my work, so being able to actually tell a story was great. I can 100% say that my Adobe llustrator skills have improved tremendously because of this, much more so than the two previous exercise. But boy, if I were ever to create a comic on my own, I will never use Adobe Illustrator.
I also procrastinated a lot with this assignment, mainly because I was doing the final projects of other subjects and myself, being an impulsive person who has terrible time-management. Being a comic artists has been one of my back up plans for the future and I now know that if I were to make that succeed, I have to fix my time management, cause it just ain't it right now.
Overall, this was a bittersweet experience and I can now add Adobe Illustrator as my skills on LinkedIn.
References
Bilibili Comics
- Heaven Official's Blessing: https://www.bilibilicomics.com/detail/mc55?from=manga_search
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