FMP-Evaluation

Over the course of this project I’ve learned a lot. The most important thing though is that I feel like I’ve finally come into a style of my own. In what feels like all of my previous projects, I was struggling to find my voice almost. I’d be pleased with the end result for about five minutes before mentally disowning it. I’d look at it and unfavourably compare it to the work of other’s doing something similar. On this project though I feel like that my work has really come into its own. This is definitely the best work I’ve produced, and while I can still point out countless flaws with it, I’m still confident in presenting it. I’m fine having my name attached to it.

Another thing I learned from this project is the importance of referencing. Before I’d half-heartedly do it because I felt like I was ‘supposed’ to do it, but this time it was out of a genuine desire to get my work done to the highest possible standard – Buildings, people, poses, clothing, I almost referenced everything. The biggest thing I noticed was that I was drawing the Reichstag from modern photos, none of which had the Bismarck memorial in front of them as Hitler had it moved in 1938. If I didn’t properly reference and research everything I would have definitely missed that little detail.

However while I am relatively pleased with how my work turned out, there are plenty of ways I could always do it better next time. The biggest issue is as always for me – time management. Before my original pitch I envisioned myself making a graphic novel with over 100 pages, which after the pitch became a more modest 60 odd pages, before finally dropping to the 24 pages I’ve settled on now to have done before the exhibition. As always I drafted out a timeline, which as always I failed to stick to. Hopefully after learning the importance of referencing in this module I can learn the importance of sticking to a tight schedule.

The only other major problem I have is the offensive content matter, which I feel might alienate me from potential publishers. While the idea of the hero saving Hitler is whacky and ‘out-there’, I feel like it might be a bit too much for some people. After further research I’m definitely considering making a quick, completely new pitch document for some of the potential publishers I feel would have a problem with the Hitler saving… or at least making a ‘safer’, less offensive version.

Dummy Book

Here are some photos from the rough dummy book I made. I added in a couple of extra pages for the storyboard which can be seen properly here:

A .pdf of the dummy book can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1HlW7jmivs6Y19aUFFya2NjQ1E/view?usp=sharing

Second scene lineart comparison

I finished the lineart for most of the second scene (pages 7 - 10) which I originally had a fair bit of trouble with back when I was storyboarding my comic:

As you can see, it's kind of hard to make out what's going on in the pictures. In my eyes they barely even look like pictures of a forest. The original lineart was ok (if hard to make out), but it was passable enough for a storyboard. I decided to shade the background though and I felt like I ruined the whole thing.

Here's the final lineart for these pages:

For these I used a brushpen instead of a fineliner and the difference is phenomenal. It's still relatively hard to make out what's going on, but with the addition of colour that problem will be negligible.

First six pages - Finished

So after deciding to hand letter all the text, I coloured the first six pages of my comic. Colour wise this is probably what the rest of the comic will look like to help tie the whole thing together, but I'll probably switch up the colours in the next chapter.

This is pretty much the final artwork, the only things that could potentially be changed is how they stand on the page in order to get better results when printing. Other than that I'm fairly pleased with the end results so I'm more than willing do the rest of the comic like this.

Research - Gabriel Bá

Another artist I looked at is Gabriel Bá, mostly for how he colours some of his work, the most prevalent example of which would be Casanova (Written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Bá for the first seven issues)

The main reason I'm looking at Bá's work is his use of a limited colour palette. In his case he uses mostly one colour to denote shadow in his work, but what I found interesting is that colour would change over different scenes IE: a Rustic mansion would have a dark green to denote shadows, whereas a mad scientist's laboratory would have an almost pastel blue.

There are four scenes in my comic (two of which take place in the same area) so I was wondering if I could mix it up and use different colours for them all?

For example in the first scene is set in the middle of Berlin at evening, so I have dark red shadows and orange light. The second scene takes place in the middle of a forest so could I swap the red for a dark green? Would it have the same effect as the first scene? Should it? Could I potentially mix it up in between chapters and not scenes, maybe to show the passage of time?

Another thing I noticed about Bá's work is that when he uses two colours, he still uses pure white to show light (using the secondary colour to show a different set of shadows). It adds almost a sort of purity to the scene, throwing the light and dark into more contrast than it would be if he used another colour to show light. I think it makes his illustrations a bit stark or sterile though, so for my comic I think I'll stick with the a colour to denote light... at least until I possibly get to a planned scene set in a laboratory, in which case a bit of sterility would help the scene.

Lettering

I also experimented with the type I wanted in my comic. I had a lot of trouble even finding a font that I felt worked with my sort of sketchy style. Most fonts seemed too uniform and utilitarian and they clashed badly. Other, sketchier fonts just looked relatively tacky in comparison.

In the end, if I was going to use a font I would settle on Britannic Bold, as while it was uniform and sort of clashed it seemed very 'no-nonsense' and easy to read without clashing as much as the other fonts.

I also tried hand lettering which I'm much more pleased with. It's definitely a littler harder to read but it fits into the illustration so much better.

Colour / Texture tests

So after tidying up the lineart a little bit, getting rid of mistakes etc. I added in some basic shading. Now originally I was considering just sticking with the lineart and making a black and white comic, but just seeing a little shading on it is already making me question that decision.

I experimented with that shading, making it bother lighter and darker:

Making it lighter made the shading seem more realistic (the scene is set in broad daylight, so shadows wouldn't be that dark), but while the darker shading wasn't as realistic I felt it really added some much needed contrast to the image. I also experimented with colour:

The blue I felt made the scene seem quite lonely almost, and made the scene appear as if it was set at night illuminated by moonlight. The green I felt didn't work, it made the scene too... surreal I guess?

I quite liked the red though, it sort of makes me see the scene as being set around evening which I feel could work for my story.

I then added a second colour as a source of light, and played around with the colour of that for a while too:

The red I felt sort of removed the 'evening sky' quality of the image, but I felt like it added a whole new meaning to the image tonally (sort of like the work of Gabriel Bá who I'll look at in further detail). The blood red light really set the scene I think for the coming violence in my book, but I felt like it was too obvious?

The yellow light made it seem like it was set in the evening even more so, which I felt was good. Visually I found it a lot more appealing than the harsh red as well.

While the green is a good contrast the red shadows, I felt it was too harsh on the eyes and made the scene appear far too surreal.

I also tried making the light blur a bit to add to the realism, but I disliked how it bled out from the lineart (most noticeable in the trees in the first panel), which sort of made too much of a mess for only a slight improvement:

After that I experimented with textures, going with textures either in just the shadows or everywhere not shining in light:

In reterospect I should have tried just putting a texture under the light which I felt could have made the scene look more realistic. I do like the textured shadows though. Adding texture to the neutral lighting of the scene though, I felt really muddied the image up.