Illustration & Visual Narrative

October 02, 2020

Illustration & Visual Narrative | Project 3

14/10/2020 - 25/11/2020 (Week 8 - Week 14)
Naim Zuki, (0346615) | Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Project 3

LECTURES

Lecture 8 | Introduction to Graphic Novel

Ms Anis introduced to us our final project of the semester, titled Graphic Novel. Our task is to produce a motion graphic novel based on the given theme. Ms Anis was playful to let us guess the theme with some clues in the lecture, suggesting it has some correlation to 'accidental travel', to which I instantly knew she was talking about isekai, the famous genre in the world of anime and manga. The class blew up in the excitement and there were loads of talks and banter of different isekai shows.

INSTRUCTIONS

Module Information Booklet

PROJECT 3 | GRAPHIC NOVEL

PROPOSAL

IVN Project 3: Graphic Novel Proposal

IDEA EXPLORATION

On one gloomy day, while I sat at my table staring off into the view outside my window, I pondered on what I want to write for this project. Earlier this year I had taken a creative writing course and during that time I had already written most things that I've wanted to write. So I went through my collection of short stories, scripts, and journals trying to find something that I can possibly develop. I had stumbled upon this 55-word short story I came up during an exercise in class and thought that the ominous feeling and the mystery that surrounds the story is enough of a start for me to work on. The story goes:

“Wine’s pretty good, huh?” Jack was careful not to spill and stain the carpet. “It’s been a crazy year, hasn’t it?” Jack smiled back at himself and nodded, his teeth red.

Jack hung the rope in front of the mirror, then looked forward to Jack again, “you know, I’ve always hated you.”

The wine spilt.

I tried to think of any comics I know of that has the same feeling which I can use as a reference for the developed storyline. I settled with Emily Carroll's His Face All Red short story and used ProZD's reading as my main reference for the motion comic. I knew my process for developing the story and art style will take a long time and I suck at time management so I had to settle with a motion comic style that doesn't require too much time to make. For the next week, I spent my time trying to develop the story more originally, making sure that I come up with a way to implement isekai into the storyline. I drafted some notes to keep track of my progress and draw out the storyline act by act.

My rationale for the storyline is that lately around this time of the year, I've been having nightmares after nightmares where I would be chased down by anything that I find scary in real life. I don't know what's causing these but I know that I've been feeling very restless from these nightmare attacks. So what's the best thing I did in reaction to this? I started to write about it and voila came the idea of a horror-isekai where the main character is transported into random places every night, being haunted down by a supernatural being that inevitably kills him no matter how hard he tries to run away from it.

Scrap Document Used for Idea Generation

I've been sitting on my butt trying to develop the story more on this doc and it got a bit too frustrating for me to continue. I haven't even developed the art style and the pressure was getting onto me. So I stopped midway with this document and started right away with how I imagined my first page to look. I drew things pretty roughly and settled with whatever I could come up with. I focused more on storyboarding rather than creating a proper art style so it's a bit messy, but it worked and I got a groove going. After the first page, I drew the last page straight away while the idea was still fresh in my mind. After that was done, I drew everything in between.

Fig. 1.0, Collection of Storyboard and Early Development Sketches, 06/11/2020 - 22/11/2020

Fig. 1.1, Collection of Discarded Sketches, 07/11/2020 - 07/12/2020

While doing the storyboard for this project, I had my hands full doing the Visual Analysis project for Design Principles so I had to put a pause on the colouring and finalising of the panels so I could come up with an art style of my own. During this time I was experimenting a lot with shading, studying different artists' art styles, studying shadows, and gathering Photoshop brushes that fit the style that I was going for. I realised that for comics, creating complex shadow values takes a lot of time from the development process, then it struck me that manga artists use simple values for shadows because they needed to save time to meet their weekly/monthly deadlines. So I settled with the same concept and used only one darker value for my shadows. I also realised that I can utilise close-up frames to make up for my lack of ability in drawing accurate body poses. So you can see why I almost never include body shots in my comic. The photoshop brushes I've gathered are from Yun Ling and Jordan Grimmer. Finally, I stole the colouring style of this YouTuber because I could not colour manga for the life of me and this was the only helpful tutorial I can find on youtube.

After all that information gathering, I began the colouring process. I incorporated two different painting styles for the reader to easily differentiate when the MC was in his dream state or in his awake state. I purposely painted the first page in the dream style because the first page can also be interpreted as the MC reminiscing back to his past from further down in the storyline, insinuating that there is a sequel to this story. If you notice, everything I painted in the dream state is in low opacity, to mirror how dreams can be unfathomable and cryptical. Finally, I wanted to tie the two styles together on the last page, where I integrated both painting styles in the last panel, showing that the MC's nightmare has finally come alive to haunt him in the real world. Thus finally, I've finally finalised my Graphic Novel for this project.

Fig. 1.2, Project 3: Graphic Novel Final Submission, 07/12/2020

Fig. 1.3, Project 3: Motion Graphic Final Submission, 07/12/2020

FEEDBACK

For this project, I didn't really attend the consultation sessions with Ms Anis and Mr Fauzi because the weight of all the projects at the moment was a bit too much to bear and I mostly used the time on Wednesday mornings to catch my breath and work on the comic at my own pace. Since I only worked on this project every Wednesday morning - afternoon, I didn't really have much to offer to the lecturers anyway (sorry ms Anis and Mr Fauzi ). So I don't have much to record for Feedback except for at the start of the project where I showed my character and environment concept to Ms Anis.

Week 9

I showed Ms Anis my first concept for the art style that I was initially heading into (refer to the character study and environment study slides) along with a starting story idea. She said that she likes the art style but commented that I need to work on the story. She also emphasized that I make the isekai device clear in the story prompt.

REFLECTION

Experience

At the start of the semester when this project was being introduced, I was very intimidated at the scale and expectations this project had. My teeth were chattering and my feet were ice cold when I realised that I have to actually draw and paint for a project this semester. My only prior drawing experience was when I was obsessed with pencil art in 2015 and when I tried to practise facial study early this year in August. So throughout this semester, I tried my best to get used to digital art. I bought a drawing tablet and started practising slowly from brush strokes to painting studies in my free time. Even so, by the time this project came, I was still doubting my abilities. So in reaction to that, I put every other project first before this one so that I can spend enough mental energy that this project needs. To my surprise, the process of actually constructing the comic was a lot smoother than expected. But I still submitted 7 hours late and did minimal effort for the motion comic so I hope I'll be able to fix my time management for future semesters.

Observation

The one thing that I struggled the most when doing this project was translating my story from text to graphical elements. Though in the process of getting past this obstacle, I learned a lot about storyboarding and different techniques of manga and comic artists that allow them to save time. I also learned how relatively simple shading becomes when I got some simple light physics concepts down. However, the one thing that I did thoroughly enjoy in this project was the colouring process. I've always been insecure about my abilities to construct a colour palette. Doing the experiments in this project helped me understand relationships and nuances between colours better and I'm happy about that.

Finding

Finishing this project, I realised how much more I have to learn and practise about illustration and visual storytelling. There is so much more behind how certain scenes are composed such as the subtle social cues, the relationship between story and colour palettes, the painstaking process of revisiting every panel to ensure that the story flows well, and so much more. The entire process of creating this graphic novel humbled me while at the same time motivated me to learn more about digital art.

FURTHER READING

Improve Your Art with Better Shadows by Sinix Designs https://youtu.be/ZJkIaMECW6c

Anatomy Quick Tips: Hands by Sinix Designs https://youtu.be/hzl3eaxAJpo

Clean Line Art! Digital Inking Tips by BaM Animation https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

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Naim Zuki

Illustration & Visual Narrative | Project 3

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