Brian's Feedback and Week 11 Summary

I showed the introduction for my dissertation to Brian. He suggested that I should include a paragraph which discusses the relationship between the themes and explain how they are relate to each other. On Thursday, we also discussed some alternative ideas for one of the comic pages that I was trying to convey. I was intending to convey the following text;

"So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply." (Lovecraft p.23–29)
However after some consideration, I decided to allow myself some creative freedom when I was  depicting this part of the story.  I have been staying true to the one of the story and have been able to include some new material without drifting away from its original intention. The meeting sessions allowed for further critique such as the praise of areas which  helped me improve the aspect of storytelling in the comic but also highlighting the flaws of these pages.
I feel that this may be changed to show that the morphine does not make the vision go away but instead make it temporary or enhances the hallucinations. I have be trying to maintain  my number of pages to allow them to be told in the way it should be presented.
I updated the background of page 18. Brian really liked how the inclusion of the doctor helped provide some further concept of the protagonist' state. However Brian was still not happy with the layout of the final panel. I did make some changes such as removing the specific title of the professor off the office door. The protagonist is speaking to. It became apparent that it would have been a lot better if it showed the protagonist walking away from the hospital and provide visual cues to suggest hat his is the beginning of his problems. I also took the opportunity to build up my portfolio including my word from second year to help highlight the experience that I have gained during three years at Abertay. I also decided to look at adding in a boarding party boat in page 2.

References

Lovecraft, H. 1919. Dagon. W. Paul Cook. p.23-29.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioXE83d9MC5uraQRDzZFlMZ7Em8TljJ1-LdIU8zM3P1UOz2NWnjP4iau5WGY_VLKRdI2G5NfHDsEuzpf-UMuSqt6PpL6kcnTWSYASzVV17FksyGBNKPPEZIzR9rm5Z9WqOQ8tmB6fH0GY/s1600/1114rnboarding.jpg

Week 9: Meeting with Brian

The Feedback from Brian was really helpful today. He took a look over my comic pages and made some suggestions to make them work better. One of these suggestions included the removal of the human character which caused some continuity confusion. Brian mistook the victim as the protagonist as they wore the same uniform. Some of the criticisms was that the layout of the printouts I brought along had a incorrect flow which was a printing error. He suggested that I improve the comic page with the dynamic dutch angle by adding some splashes to help emphasis the creature's emergence as well as remove some colour which distract teh eye for the monster.

Brian and my peer, Kemal suggested that in the comic page where the protagonist observes the monolith, alert the panels the page where the protagonist observes the monolith and conveys his fear of the depicted creatures. Brian suggested that they could be placed through the use of gestalt to resemble teeth of a mouth. At the time, I assumed that my layout with the panels being tilted an slightly out of place would be enough. However it looks like it will need to make it a bit more exaggerated, I also decided to look further into the principles of Gestalt which would be helpful when I am producing my panels and how they can help the flow of the comic.
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

The other page which I received rich feedback on was my page where the protagonist rushes back to the boat. However I only had a shot of him running across the wasteland. One suggestion could be that we include additional panels to show the protagonist, running past land marks we established in previous pages. I can also include another panel where he looks back while climbing down the hummock to make sure that he was not allowed by the creature. However the idea behind this is that the creature is still pursuing him but in a different form such as the protagonist's mind.

Week 5 Progress

I focused on the Wednesday by making some prototype pages. Here I applied the use of colour, lighting and various moods to the line work.

The following pages occur in the protagonist's mind and memory. To suggest that he is writing about these experiences on the paper, I decided to apply this paper texture as part of the visual style .

Page 3 with Visual Style Applied

Comic page with monolith's reveal

Protagonist under the Influence of Morphine

An attempt of showing the character under effects of morphine.

He spoke to me about a few things. He went through a page from Herge's story about Tintin and the Seven Krystal Balls. Here Brian went through how Herge implemented natural lines to help the reader's eye flow through the comic. He encouraged me to try and include lines in my environment to help direct the readers attention to a central focal point. I am thinking about including some knowledge about photography as it could help with the composition of a shot.

Power Centers

To visually demonstrate the ways that power centers can determine a character's personality, Brian showed me a clip from Toy Story where Woody shows different types of characters in the form of role playing. 

Brian said that that my character's power centre should be in the feet ,since he seems to be carrying a burden, awkward and tired. It could be argued that his legs or lower body would be the power centre as it could help suggest his tiredness. I can suggest this by lowing his stature to making it look like he is carry something heavy and perhaps show his legs with less instability.

Week 4 Progress and Meeting

This week has been a bit tiring. I have been finding it difficult to concentrate at university. I can understand why many people prefer to work from home. I had to spend some time on the revised ethics form in order for me to continue with my work. I have made good progress on my line artwork. I have also included extra comic pages to provide additional detail or to further enhance certain moments from the short story. I attended a brief meeting with my supervisor Brian to discuss my ethics form and why it was rejected. The reason the form was rejected was because I did not fill it out correctly. I asked about a few issues I was concerned about, such as the subject matter involving a character taking morphine and the recurring themes of horror and madness, However this was a visual storytelling project that did not involved people so I didn't  need to worry about that. I managed to submit my ethics form again and have received full approval for the project.

Here are some examples of business cards that I currently hold. I decided to scatter them across the floor so that I could capture each individual one. I wanted to focus on how they were arranged and laid out.

I plan to print off a new design of business cards or improve old ones.

For the back to help save on text I decided to see if I can test out a QR code to see if it can make my portfolio site more accessible.

Business Card Test

Week 4 Supervisor Meeting

 This week, I presented my comic pages to Brian and Kier, who was the other student at this meeting.
The meeting with Brian this week was helpful for me. He asked me if there were any additional explanatory text. He suggests that the first few pages could be better if more panels were included. One example was that the German ship could approach the protagonist's ship and we can then see the big picture of the ship being raided,

Original Sketch of Theory illustration

The protagonist sits down and tries to figure out how the black mire came to be. My peers and my supervisor suggested that I remove this thought element as it doesn't clearly show his theory and it also does not really help progress the story. It would be more appropriate if I did not include this in the story. One strategy he told me was that I should perhaps use a segment of text to see how the panel visually communicates the idea. Instead I decided to go with the idea of taking it out of the equation.

They gave me some great feedback on my comic pages. Kier suggested that on the page where the protagonist wakes up. he said that I should perhaps remove the fourth panel and merge the characters pose with the protagonist's pose in the big picture where he's twisting his body around to see what s going on in his new surroundings.
Kier and Brian assumed that in the page where the creatures are lurking underwater, looking up at boats on the surface. they mistook the ship underbellies as arrow heads. They suggested that I can include some waves's and shadows on the ships' underbelly to make it more obvious. Nevertheless I was planning to include some atmospheric perspective when it came to the colouring segment. Brian suggested that I took a look at Miyazaki's Ponyo for some visual reference.

On the final page where the environment suggests that the protagonist jumps out of the window, Brian suggested that I include the use of light or visual hints at the window's presence in the second last panel.
He also suggested that I could make the final page as a huge panel image and make it look dynamic. In the final page of the comic, Brian liked the idea of how the broken window would be enough to conclude the story and the protagonist's fate. However I addressed that I wanted to include the last record of writing. I could still include the pages and have them fly off the table by the wind that  comes though the broken window. I wanted to include a strong use of symmetry and metaphorical meaning.
I was not sure how to visually represent the wind. While Brian suggests the use of curtains, I kept in account that the character I was penniless and would not be able to afford such thing. However it would make sense if it were make shift curtains like two rags with patches on the curtain poles above the window. Since I wanted the idea of how the candle starts out as a full candle and is used for the entire story. In the last few panels, I want the candle to burn out. This would also help conclude the with the first page where it began with the full candle.
The best way that Brian described my current position in the honours project is that I have the dagger in and now I just need to twist it.
Although I managed to get all my line artwork done for the comic, I was unhappy with a few things.
I decided to try out a disorientation effect with a few of the comic pages.While it did show some effect, Brian suggested that it could be a bit frustrating to the reader and could disengage him or her from the reading experience. Also in each of these meetings, I have been trying trying to explain a bit more of Lovecraft's work to Brain to allow to have a understanding of my subject matter.
I still want to leave the comic in an ambiguous interpretation and leave the evidence through the visuals.

Here is the sequence that I used to demonstrate this disorientated effect.

Brian also addressed that the monolith's appearance did not look right. I justified its appearance by making it into the shape of fish's tail but still showing that it was some form of structure. Therefore I explained that one of the first iteration I considered looked more Lovecraftian, an iteration that was inspired by Dead Space's Marker. Although my original design did finally resemble a fish tail , it did not clearly convey this. Therefore I took the time to reiterate  and redesign the monolith

Dead Space Maker

Wooden Fish Photos

I took some photos of a wooden fish ornament that I have at home. I liked the way the object moved in natural motion similar to a real fish. The result of this revision was this design.

I've also implemented it into the pages as well.

Adjusted monolith design is applied in final comic page.

Reference

Dead Space. 2008. [computer game]. Microsoft Xbox 360.Visceral Games

Supervisor Meeting Week 3

This week, I presented Brian with some sketches I made of father Dagon attacking people in the ocean ,attacking ships and submarines. These were ideas I had for comic pages were the protagonist visualised the future of what may happen. I had the idea of including a splash page to illustrate the words ;

"of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium." (Lovecraft,1919)

I showed him my rough pages and he gave me some further advice on the first page's environment shot. The buildings lacked the use of curves and were too clean. Although I made an improvement, they were needing some further iteration. He was kind enough to give me a loan of a book called "Tin Tin's Adventure At Sea which was a documentation of how Hurge got his inspiration for the characters and ships.

I talked about how I could portray  the passage of time in the comic. In the story, he wait for three days for the land to become enough to walk on. However, it was difficult to portray that in the two panels that I currently had. To overcome this, I may have to duplicate the scenery and make some alterations by showing a day and night montage.

The panel where the protagonist meets the ethnologist was another obstacle to cover. Brian said it was under his nose but it just wasn't spot on. Some things that Finn and Brian suggested was perhaps to portray the panel with the moment were the protagonist leaves the ethnologists office with little to no success. I suggested using some gestures and body language to show that the ethologist shows full superiority over the protagonist whose body language will be weaker and more feeble.

The last page was so rough that it gave Brian some difficulty trying to understand it properly . It was meant to show the panel of a shot of the protagonist whose back was facing the door where a hooded figure stands at the doorway. the second panel was meant to be the perspective of the monster but Brian had some difficulty understanding this. He told me that its was an example of breaking the 180 degree rule when it came to using camera angles in a scene. Many shots should not surpass 180. Unfortunately this first iteration did. To fix this, I can choose a different angle for the protagonist to appear in, one that is with 180 degrees. In addition, I also showed him artwork I was working on for a convention next month.

My next stages are:

• To look at that book Brian has given me. 
• Continue developing my comic based off the feedback.
• implement the sketchbook drawings into the comic pages
• Plan the splash page illustration is case It is needed.

Reference

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

Horeau, Y. and Farr, M. 2004. The adventures of Tintin at sea. London: John Murray.

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.