Week 8 Progress

Although I have been able to make progress with my coursework and comic project. I have been having trouble with a few things which has has halted  my productive efficiency.
The reasons for this are that I am undergoing side projects such as producing art prints for local conventions. The problem is that my time management is not as strong as I hoped it would be and I have been able to make start with my presentation.
I managed to speak to Brian for a few minutes on Tuesday to discuss the structure of my presentation for Thursday. Fortunately, I managed to complete this task before the deadline. In this website, there is discussion about the ending to Batman: The Killing Joke which I think will be valuable findings in response to the ways of how clarity is conveyed in comic storytelling.

https://www.quora.com/The-Killing-Joke/Did-Batman-kill-the-Joker-at-the-end

http://www.idrawdigital.com/2009/11/tutorial-composition-and-page-layout/

https://www.masshist.org/imhs/cms/assets/cms1/two_sophias1.jpg

On the Wednesday, I took some time to work on my additional comic pages. I also made some  progress on an addition page to clarify the Protagonist's current whereabouts and how the German sea raiders first arrive at his ship. In this page, I'll establish that he is merchant officer who works on a ship. My intended idea for this page is a fellow comrade of the protagonists who communicates to him that a ship is approaching, pointing towards a round ship window. I took into consideration the use of hidden lines to help direct the readers eyes to points of interest. The next panel shows the protagonist being directed to the ship deck and witnessing the approach of the German ship. A German naval flag for the 1910 era will be displayed to help further indicate the flashback's setting. I took reference from an old 1910 map of the Pacific Ocean.

https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/ward_1912.html

To indicate the exact location, I decided to have a pin with a symbol of a ship to help indicate visually where they are located in the ocean.

Sketch

Second Sketch

Refined Sketch

I decided to enhance the outlines of the characters to make them look closer than the ship. This page will be revisited next week and will have flat colouring applied to it.

Batman:The New 52 Analysis

In the first volume where Batman encounters the Court of Owls, there is a technique which I noticed while reading. There is a series of pages where the panels are altered 90 degrees per page until they return to their original state. I found this to be quite effective as Fey (2012) says that this was the author and writer's way to illustrate Batman's sense of disorientation as well as reflect his distorted mind as he travels through their lair.
I would like to apply this at an important scene in the story where the protagonist encounters Father Dagon and it's monolith. My idea is to begin with the scene were the protagonist encounters the monolith which will be orientated in the correct position at 0 degrees.The next page will be at a landscape orientation at 90 degrees. The page with the appearance of Father Dagon will be positioned upside down at 180 degrees and then the next page after that,will be another landscape picture, This time it will be at 270 degrees.
Finally the scene where the monster spots the hero and as he runs away, the orientation will come full circle as a way to reflect the hero's disorientated mind and to further enhance the line for the story;

"I think I went mad then." (Lovecraft,1919, pp.23-29)

Here is a test of what to expect.

First Page

Second Page

Third Page

Fourth Page

References
Fey, E. 2012. Batman: Court of Owls (New 52) Volume 1 (2/2). [Blog] Era Fey Gossips. Available at: http://erafeygossips.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/batman-court-of-owls-new-52-volume-1-22.html [Accessed 27 Jan. 2016].

Lovecraft, H.P. 1919. Dagon. The Vagrant. (11): pp.23–29.

Week 7 Progress

The meeting with Brain went well this week. I showed him some examples of my current progress. I spoke about a few people that I knew from the comic industry who I was thinking about inviting to the showcase. He was kind enough to show us an example of an introduction for a dissertation. He liked my poster design a lot and suggested that I should consider having a similar style or design when I'm implementing my new business card design for the showcase.

Business Card Iterations

Minimalist Poster Design

He continued to add further criticism for my current first page such as how there were a few inconsistency here and there. What I'm needing to work on is my Presentation. I spent Tuesday helping a friend put together a poster for her presidency run. It was good use of small practice for poster design. However she ended up using only a few small elements in her final design.

Week 6 - Progress

Brian was unwell this week but I managed to make some progress with my dissertation ,starting with my vision statement and introduction. I also took the opportunity to show one of my peers, my work. He gave me some good feedback about what I should do to improve. In addition, I worked on developing the visual style for the segment of the comic which occurred in the past, present and future. I also started considering the idea of a stylish border to help reinforce the idea that these images were seen as segments of memories swirling in the main character's mind. To help suggest this, I have chosen to use a brush which gives the borders a disorderly, torn and vague effect.

This one is still needing some work on it but I do like the effect it gives.

Comic pages with modified borders

Here the monster and the monolith are the only element in the flashback segment of the comic which have colour. The reason for this is to make them appear like they work outside the established rules of the visual style. It could also suggest that the main character clearly remembers this creature so well , he recalls the creature's exact colour scheme. The blue glow is a visual sign to indicate that the monolith shares the same space in the environment.

In terms of case studies, I am not happy with my progress or my structure. I feel like I am just describing what I see page after page and I am having trouble trying to summarise it's content, I think it would be best if I could speak with Brian about this and see what he thinks my direction should be.

I have become concerned how I should answer this bullet point from the proposal.

• Analyse the translation of narrative forms from a text based medium into a visual medium. 

I could answer this through a case study of one of the interpretations of Lovecraft's work and compare it to the production process of a comic. In addition, I have applied for a job that was advertised in Glasgow for an art position. However I have not heard back from them. It was a games artist position at Team Rock. It has made me realise that I have not paid that much attention to internship opportunities that have occurred at the beginning of this course. Therefore I'm a bit worried that I may have missed all the opportunities for the summer placement. Fortunately I have updated my CV and portfolio.

Thoughts for Poster and Exposition in May

With Claire mentioning the final fourth year showcase in the recent lecture, I started thinking about what I will be putting on display for the event. Last year, I managed to take some photos of the previous fourth years' work and I found them to be quite useful for inspiration.

This showcase features the iteration of how a character would look if they become more aligned to good or bad traits in the same way of how you can choose to be bad or good in games.

Jack's work here showed a good collection of pre-production work of his animation project.

I liked Ellen Brown's strong silhouetted poster.

Photos taken from last years Graduate Showcase

Overall, the previous student's work helped give me ideas of how I can layout my work for the showcase and what documentation to put on display.

Ideally, I would like a physical copy of my comic to allow people to take a read through it. It would be beneficial for me to include a small portfolio to allow the look through my work.

One of the stall requirements is the inclusion of an A2 poster that summaries my project. During the presentation with Claire, there were a few examples of how they could look appear. Some of these were movie inspired posters and others were quite minimalist. In previous projects. I have enjoyed working on minimalist art where the shapes are simple but provide an strong impact. I liked the idea of the Jaws inspired poster where one half is the surface and the bottom half shows the monster or threat. So I took some inspiration from films that feature a deep sea threat of some kind. 

I found a comic poster for a Dr Seuss inspired Lovecraft story which had a similar layout.   

Dagon Front Cover (Ivankovic 2013)

Although I have taken elements from this poster such as the bent back posture, composition and lighting contrast, I have adjusted my piece a few times to give off a different approach. I've done this through the use of colour, scale and shapes. The key things I intended to include in this poster was the idea of how man is still small compared to the vast and enormous world that he inhabits. Other element I considered for the poster included key objects such as boat,the monolith, the black mire ,sea life and the Pacific Ocean.

Poster and Front Covers Thumbnails

Poster Iterations

This version was intended to include the monolith. However this made the sea depth look quite shallow and it did not leave a very  large impact. There for this approach will not be used in the final poster design.

I like this iteration the most because we get a strong sense of scale between Father Dagon and the human. Also it is a nice homage to the jaws poster where the figure on the surface is unaware what is coming up from the depths. It allows allows a greater sense of scale for the sea. 

Although the minimalist style is appealing, I'm worried in case it would drift away from my intended art style. I feel that it would be better if I went over these visuals with the loose line artwork I have applied in the comic pages. Therefore the front cover does not provide as false sense of advertising. I've seen in examples of comics where the front covers lack consistency when reading the main comics pages.