Protagonist Character Development

Protagonist Mood Board

Based on this mood board, the protagonist has had various depictions in each version. He has been depicted wearing a naval uniform. Other variations depict him with a worn shirt, braces and trousers.

Character Iterations 

To reflect the short story, I looked at how he began as a merchant officer. Therefore I looked at merchant officer for the 1910s. this was helpful as it allowed for me to include additional detail to the final design. 

Head Iterations

I went through a series of head iterations. I planned to have the protagonist beginning in as a sophisticated naval officer. However, over the course of the story, his spirit and appearance begins to deteriorate. This was conveyed through the character worn out attire and  growth of facial hair.

Before and After Incident

This mock up of a model sheet depict the character with his various facial expressions and attire.

The three attires the protagonist wears throughout the the story

Colour Choice

Colour was also used to highlight the character’s personalities. The protagonist’s red shirt was affiliated with warmth and comfort as it suggests attachment to his past. The blue trousers suggests a sense of loss and detachment (Pardew 2008) which was demonstrated through his troubled times. It was decided that the protagonist would be incorporated in the page’s chosen visual style whereas the antagonist emits a green/blue glow and is not restricted to the page’s established colouring style. Maintaining the original story was a key motivation for this project. This was challenging as some ideas were hard to convey visually. Also as it had a historical setting, this restricted the level of creativity. The artefact’s characters reflected the story’s setting and wore appropriate outfits to reflect their roles.

Final Model Sheet of Character

The consistency of the protagonist’s appearance was challenging and various character designs could have benefitted from revision and reiteration as their figures and colour scheme did not stand out as expected. This was the result of focusing on the comic pages rather than the preproduction documentation.

Week 13 Summary

Monday - I used today to make some alterations to my project. I wanted to fix some inconsistencies with the frames. I spent a majority of today working on my dissertation, taking out irrelevant information.

Page 2

Page 7

Page 10

Modified Front Cover

I also took the time to work on modifying the front cover by applying highlights on the hand as well as adding sun rays to generate implied lines which direct the reader's eye up to the boat.

I received some feedback about my poster and front cover for my comic. My relatives and peers suggested that: 

• The hand on the front cover replaced the hand on the poster. 
• The poster featured a Lovecraftian vibe through the use of darker colours.

Tuesday ,Wednesday and Thursday involved me overlooking my dissertation and having it proof read by peers. This was a long process. 

Friday - I am still unhappy with the layout I have established for my case studies. I am finding it difficult to summarise these comics as they continue to vary in every page. I do not understand how to analyse an entire comic, .I would have spoken to my supervisor about this but he was unavailable.

However I do have a series of case studies which analyse my understanding of colour, backgrounds, body language and word and picture combinations.

Revisited Model Sheets: Father Dagon

I made some changes to my original Dagon designs so I had to modify the model to reflect these changes.

Before 

After

To provide a reference to the uncanny valley, I decided to add the two eyes at both sides with the addition of a gill at the front in the shape of a mouth. This would help with the idea of symmetry but it also shows the deception of this creature. It could be argued that people who saw this creature mistook it's front gill as a mouth . The funnels on its shoulders can be used as a defense mechanism where it can blind its prey, or pride additional means to gain acceleration when swimming. However I think I will need to modify the front view's head a bi to make it look like it is looking straight. The front profile of Father Dagon did not look straight on so I decided to fix that.

Revised Model sheet

Comic Page Production Process

Each comic artist follows their own ways to make comics. While some go for the digital approach, some still use the traditional means when producing comic pages. It can also depend on the chosen style of what materials will be used. Here is my pipeline I have chosen to follow.

Stage 1: Sketches and Thumbnails

I usually begin with sketching out a brief layout of the comic page. Sometimes it is good to work on the smallest scale so that you can determine if it is can be read visually from a distance. Once a preliminary sketch has been made. I would revisit it later to apply further detail to it.
For the environments, I used screenshots of low poly 3D models created in Maya to suggest a three dimensional space. However I drew over these to make it look as if it it were drawn traditionally.

Stage 2: Lined Artwork

Here I  go over the refined sketches in cleaner lines. During this stage, I import the lined work over to Adobe Illustrator and basically, further refining it by "live tracing" the illustration. This approach makes the lines appear more smooth with cleaner edges.

Stage 3: Flat Colouring

Once the lines have been established, I would then apply colour to the illustration. I start off with flat colours to act as a base and then add extra layers to colour certain parts of the figure.To reduce the file size of my PSD files I would often merge these coloured layers into one. When it come to colouring characters, I usually give each one their own base layer so that I can colour the characters and backgrounds separately.

Stage 4: Lighting and Additional effects

Here I added an opaque layer and have it overlaying the main flat colour layer. Here I erased spots on the layer to suggest where the light is hitting.

Stage 5: Visual Style

Here I could include a  series of additional effects such as opaque layers of white colour to suggest atmospheric perspective. I decided to apply unique visual styles to the comic to suggest the past, present and future as shown below.

Past Flashback

I used a paper texture to suggest that these panels are being told in the protagonist's written account. In additional, I applied the panel borders with a cloudy bright brush to suggest that these panels are fragments of the protagonist's memories. 

Present

In this one, I have used cool and warm colours to establish a clear but atmospheric environment

Vision of the Future

I used hellish colours such as a red overlay to suggest what horrific events could happen in the future.

Problems

Pixelated Line Work

I have encountered a few issues when importing line work. Sometimes I would need to resize the line work to fit into the page .This can result in pixelated line work. Fortunately, this can be fixed by going over those points or by bringing the lines back into Adobe Illustrator and then reimporting it into Adobe Photoshop but keep it in its imported state without rasterizing the layer. This can lead to an iterative process.

Week 10 Progress and Meeting

I spent this week modifying comic pages based on my feedback. This week, I have been thinking about how I can add additional panels to help clearly explain how the protagonist climbs down the hummock and returns to his boat. In existing adaptations, this scene has been represented of him waking away from the hummock whereas others such as her adaptation has a starry background with the protagonist's silhouettes to suggest that he running across the empty plane. That was my original attempt but with the inclusion of storm clouds to build up to the point where it begins to rain. The significance of this in the story is to help cover up the location of the mysterious location. That would explain why the captain knew nothing out his black mire as it was flooded by the time that the got there. However it does feel a bit strange how rain could flood volcanic upheaval. On the other hand, it could be that the land began to sink underneath the ocean just as the storm erupts around the protagonists. I revised my older pages to make sure that the characters had a consistence colour scheme.

What I have so far for the page where the hero returns to the boat is the following:

Panel 1: the protagonist is making his decent down the the hummock and he makes one last glance at the drop , just to be sure that he is not being followed by the creature.
Panel 2: He is running along a familiar landmark from page 8,which in this case is the giant skeleton of a long dead sea creature.
Panel 3: he runs along a flat plane running underneath the moon slowly being engulfed by stormy clouds.
Panel 4: He pushes the boat onto its underbelly and packs all the essentials into it.
Panel 5: The shelters underneath the boat cover as the environment around him begins to flood.
Panel 6: It is a clear night sky the boat is out at sea and is spotted by a boat with a spotlight.

Rough Thumbnail of Page

I also took the opportunity to work on my dissertation. So this Saturday I spent my time working on it. I took Brian's suggestion on how to improve my introduction. So I included a paragraph discussing the problems and issue of my project and what I will need to include in order to to convey a story visually. With his help, I managed to reduce the amount of words for my introduction.

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.

Monolith Development

Creating the monolith was a challenge. Many previous iterations of the obelisk took on a column form. I however wanted to make the monolith look artificial out show a off world architectural style.

Monolith Mood Board

Location Sketches

The above image shows my thoughts about the placement of the monolith as well a rough floor plan of one of the environment I have planned for the comic.

Monolith Sketch

I was eager to avoid the generic round stone or Pyramid top square shaped column approach that were made. However  wanted to integrate curved and angled elements to my final design. I liked the idea of Dead Space's Marker and I even considered making it look a bit like that. I designed the monolith before for a previous project but that version resemble more of the dark portal from Warcraft instead of an obelisk.

Original Monolith from Spatial Constructs project

 Perspective Grid 

Grayscale Illustration of the Monolith

I wanted the final iteration for the monolith to show curved angles and they helped connect with teh organic creatures and appeared like a fish's tail. In addition, I have been slowly making changes to the monolith's design and determining which iteration is the best approach. I like the fish tail motif because it has a native and worldly appearance.

Rough illustrations of the main protagonist encountering the Monolith at the bottom of the chasm.

Here is a colour test to see if the combination of blue, yellow and green can work as a suitable colour scheme for this object.

Gray Scale Iterations

Final Iterations for the Monolith object

To fit the mood of the development work I applied the same brown crumbled up paper art style.

 I also create some hieroglyphs drawings

Early Hieroglyph Sketches

Hieroglyph Iterations

 These are iterations of these drawings are meant to appear on the monolith. I was thinking about allowing the front to show the main hieroglyphs of father Dagon killing a blue whale. I have chosen a blue whale because it helps emphases the creatures' large scale.I also found that hieroglyph drawings were quite difficult to draw with out including perspective.

Monolith Model Sheet

However I felt that there should be more space on the front for the monolith. This may lead to me extruding the model to appear wide enough for the hieroglyph markings to appear.

Revised Monolith Model sheet

Monolith Moodboard Accessed on 24/10/15

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/077/785/i02/monolith-1.jpg?1439493575
http://www.unmotivating.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/A-Sandstone-Monolith-in-the-Black-Sea.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61bIvQ8YNSL._SX425_.jpg
http://www.konbini.com/en/files/2015/08/71b816cf7dd2bebf1eed94becbe972ac-810x539.jpg
http://www.georgefox.edu/college-admissions/located/slideshow/oregon/or-haystackRock-l.jpg
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/174552/Crystal_monoliths.jpg
https://usoksglobal.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moonwatcher.jpg
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/places-you-wont-believe-actually-exist#.rybQjD13Z
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Low-Angle-View-of-a-Carved-Column-the-Monolith-Gustav-Vigeland-Sculpture-Park-Frogner-Park-Posters_i8285465_.htm
http://www.specialart.ch/galleries/monolith/monolith_2.jpg
http://tuttocartoni.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/schwarzenegger-incontra-lovecraft-dagon.html

Page 1 Development Week 2

I began work on producing the first page. To make the environments, I decided to produce minor 3D objects in Maya 2014 to help get an idea of the perspective.

3D Screenshots of the Street.

Here is how the scene was going to be played out. On the ground  there would be a newspaper which was going to be used to establish the setting.

Screenshot of line art over 3D model

I originally had an idea to begin with a screenshots for an alternate opening shot.

3D Screenshots

I eventually found a way to highlight edges in a vector style  which helps with establishing the traits for the background to help make it resemble line art.

3D Screenshots with vector lines applied 

I then took the screenshots and then painted over them in Photoshop. Here the first iteration of the first page featuring the 3D background. The bottom panel was left as an abstract element because I was not sure what it was going to be.

Rough sketch with screenshots

This was an alternate opening where the first panel starts out as a close up. In each panel after the first one, the camera pans out and we see more that the story begins in a urban environment.

Line Art of Page 1

Supervisor Meeting Week 2

I spoke to Brian in regards to what I was wanting in this comic. He told me that I should consider revising the specific architecture. I had a habit of drawing buildings with the triangular roofs whereas america buildings do not share this. He even suggested that I try and use google maps from the street view as a way to get a picture of what it could be like to be actually there. I made some further adjustments by revising American apartment buildings.

http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Artifact%20Pages/Chicago.htm
http://mycentralnewyork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/deco-delights-or-mostly-modern-chaumont.html

Modified Establish Shot

Although this is still needing further development it looks more affiliated with America architecture.

Reference

Greenway, T., Morse, S., Hargreaves, J., Perrins, C. and Tilbury, R. ed., (2011). Photoshop for 3d artists v1. 1st ed. Worcester: 3D Total Publishing, pp.157-173.