ASS3 - Project 3 - Sequential illustration
Project: Sequential illustration
Research point
For this research I have picked a film called Spirit the Stallion
Can you boil the story down to its most basic elements?
The story is about a horse who wants to be free.
What’s driving this narrative and how is it resolved at the end?
The horse gets captured by some bad people, gets free and then gets captured a few more times. The narrative aim for the horse is to be free in the wild with his heard. Hes a beautiful stallion which makes him so popular to the people who want to capture him and own hi for themselves to ride. The drive is that the horse is constantly fighting for his freedom yet faces obstacles in his way and is constantly followed by a sheriff who also want to capture him. It is resolved at the end by the people accepting he should live freely and than no one can own him - He is a free spirit.
What genre is it or is it an amalgam of more than one? (Star Wars, for example, is basically a classic cowboy film set in space).
Its an Amalgam is genres are Western, adventure, drama, animated and family - Itold you it had everything!
My Thoughts/notes
It is interesting to realise that a story can have many genres and that by breaking a story down you get to see the fundamentals and the heart of the story. Stripping it down helps to keep focused on the main story. This can help to change the character, theme where they are places and story plot. It's a really great way to help authors and illustrators look at stories and by using the main elements can then create their own ideas for a story.
Research point
There’s a wealth of comic book, cartoon and graphic novel artists out there. Pick some examples of work that you find interesting.
Some great graphic Novels here
https://www.illustrationweb.com/artists/grayjolliffe/view
In cartoon above the narrative and style of drawing is balanced - they both are simple and work alongside each other to showcase a story. The narrative is of a pet and its owner but the drawings show that the owner is far away from the dog - so far that they are not even in the cartoon but how the speech bubble is drawn tells you they are off to the left of the scene. If there was no wording you would not know why the dog was making certain gestures. The drawings need the text in this comic strip in order for the viewer to make sense of what is going on. Therefore both together helps the viewer to make sense then if they were either just the writing or just the drawings.
Which is most important in making the story work?
The answer to this question is also a bout what I was talking about above - The wording and the illustrations are both as important they need to be in each box so the viewer can make sense of the illustration. With out each other the writing to the viewer makes no sense and like wise if it was just the drawings.
In this comic the narrative gives the illustrations sound - It is there for movements within the illustrations such as the bus door opening and the voice of the lady trying to stop the bus. Where the sounds are created the illustrator has created motion in their work to showcase where the sounds are coming from. Also in this cartoon there is writing within the cartoon - on the bus, on a building and at the bus stop - This helps the viewer see where the character is from, whats around her and also provides clues to the viewer that she is in a town or city due to there being a library in the background. They both work well to show the hustle and bustle with in a city and highlighting one lady which must be one of the main characters.
Which is most important in making the story work?
The more important part I think is the movement made in the illustrations and then the wording on top to give that movement a sound which then the viewer can understand and relate to. With this type of style whilst reading you are imagining yourself there. From the fumes coming from the bus to the crowd it all comes together to create a visual idea of the story unfolding in front of you.
This cartoon is fun and modern, directed at children and is more vibrant then the other ones I have looked at. The narrative is a lot of the time in speech bubbles of people talking as well as people thinking to themselves. On the odd occasion There are descriptive words for sounds and words to describe beings or set up a scene.
What also is interesting is that in the writing parts some of the words are highlighted red. By reading the cartoon I have understood that these words are in red because the author wanted to show main important elements to each cartoon, whether it is a noise or to highlight something important when some one is talking. The illustrations work well and have been created digitally using a modern style. You can tell this because of the textures of each surface, colours used and the different types of characters that have been created. The illustrations work well with the wording, such as the characters mouths open so you can see who is talking. There is a lot of movement shown throughout which helps as a children's comic to fuel a child's imagination. The flow of each image is something to mention too. Same goes for the above comics too - The boxes are easy to follow the flow of the story, some are overlapped to show the path in which to follow.
Which is most important in making the story work?
Within this comic I think the most important thing to make it work has to be the illustrations created for the wording. The illustration show details that you would not understand from just the writing. They both need each other in order to give the reader an idea of the story, the atmosphere and location. The wording and the illustrations work well together to create flow and to help the viewer understand with ease.
My personal notes from research
From looking at the above comics and graphic novels I can see that in order to create a good one illustrations tend to hold more information than the wording. The illustrations show the location, the characters details, emotions and atmosphere. The wording gives the illustrations a story to understand the illustrations such as people speaking, time and the odd descriptive information. The wording is not as descriptive as in a children's book as the illustrations do more of the talking. I have also learnt ways to create sound in a comic/novel and have a balance with the illustration so you can see the movement of an object and the wording of the sound which you can relate to. The flow of the comic is also important, the viewer needs to know were to look in order to follow the story correctly. Finally the style of the illustrations helps to see the personality of the book and the atmosphere that is being created.
Create a sequential illustration that creatively re-tells the story of girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins the boy back, in whatever way you want. Make the re-telling entertaining. You’ll need to think about how you construct the different twists and turns of the story and decide on how you’re going to draw the characters and action, and how you’ll use your panels, speech bubbles and sound effects to make the story come alive.
This sequential illustration should be no more than one page but can be as short as a three panel cartoon if you can get the narrative to work in that format. Feel free to replace the boy with a girl or vice versa.
I started off thinking about ideas I could create for my Sequential Illustration. It says in the task information that you can use as many panels as you want but keep it to a page or try to do it in three. I immediately thought I wanted to try the challenge of doing it with just three images. Some times less is more so I think this will be a great to challenge to set myself. First I thought of some ideas and concentrated on the words Meets, Looses and wins, which is the main plot to my short story.
I started thinking about ideas and came to realise how hard it is to actually think of a story that will only need 3 images to cover the plot of the story. After thinking about if for a few hours I came up with some ideas:
As you can see there was only one I managed to get as a short story that covers three images. I really like the idea its simple yet effective:
Illustration 1 : Male clown fish meets female clownish
Illustration 2: Female swims off in to an anemone on a coral reef
Illustration 3: Male follows her in an wins the female fishes heart.
(Above sketches of fish and deciding on what type of coral fish to use)
Its a very short story and I think I am going to have lot of fun creating the images. I have also decided not to have any wording as I think the illustrations will speak for themselves.
Here above is my rough layout of the three illustrations. For this assignment its been quite hard to experiment and break out of my style. I have had a thought and I am going to take a risk here and create my illustrations by creating collages from magazines. I will perhaps also add details with a biro or marker pet to make the illustrations more detailed.
Please look at link below to show the process I did to create my illustrations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HudoBNZX5BE&feature=youtu.be
Here above are my three illustrations. As you can see from the video link I cut out from lots of magazines finding the right colours to use. once all stuck down I used a Biro to add detail. The Biro mark making idea really helped my images to pop out. I also used some double sided tabs to make ares stick out suck as the fish and some parts of the anemone I love the style I have created here its different to what I have usually been doing with paper and its another pathway for me to explore to create art work but still using paper.
I also scanned in the images and edited them in Photoshop:
Exercise: Girl meets boy
Create a sequential illustration that creatively re-tells the story of girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins the boy back, in whatever way you want. Make the re-telling entertaining. You’ll need to think about how you construct the different twists and turns of the story and decide on how you’re going to draw the characters and action, and how you’ll use your panels, speech bubbles and sound effects to make the story come alive.
This sequential illustration should be no more than one page but can be as short as a three panel cartoon if you can get the narrative to work in that format. Feel free to replace the boy with a girl or vice versa.
I started off thinking about ideas I could create for my Sequential Illustration. It says in the task information that you can use as many panels as you want but keep it to a page or try to do it in three. I immediately thought I wanted to try the challenge of doing it with just three images. Some times less is more so I think this will be a great to challenge to set myself. First I thought of some ideas and concentrated on the words Meets, Looses and wins, which is the main plot to my short story.
I started thinking about ideas and came to realise how hard it is to actually think of a story that will only need 3 images to cover the plot of the story. After thinking about if for a few hours I came up with some ideas:
As you can see there was only one I managed to get as a short story that covers three images. I really like the idea its simple yet effective:
Illustration 1 : Male clown fish meets female clownish
Illustration 2: Female swims off in to an anemone on a coral reef
Illustration 3: Male follows her in an wins the female fishes heart.
Its a very short story and I think I am going to have lot of fun creating the images. I have also decided not to have any wording as I think the illustrations will speak for themselves.
Here above is my rough layout of the three illustrations. For this assignment its been quite hard to experiment and break out of my style. I have had a thought and I am going to take a risk here and create my illustrations by creating collages from magazines. I will perhaps also add details with a biro or marker pet to make the illustrations more detailed.
Please look at link below to show the process I did to create my illustrations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HudoBNZX5BE&feature=youtu.be
Here above are my three illustrations. As you can see from the video link I cut out from lots of magazines finding the right colours to use. once all stuck down I used a Biro to add detail. The Biro mark making idea really helped my images to pop out. I also used some double sided tabs to make ares stick out suck as the fish and some parts of the anemone I love the style I have created here its different to what I have usually been doing with paper and its another pathway for me to explore to create art work but still using paper.
I also scanned in the images and edited them in Photoshop:
As you can see above I created a film like image with the three illustrations on. I have done it this way as it looks like an animation real showing you parts of the story. I have really enjoyed exploring something new and it has helped me to push out of my current style to remember that even though I have a style its good to experiment as there may also be other things that I am good at. I think I have created a good Sequential illustration and I managed to complete my personal challenge of creating it using 3 illustrations.
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