Comic - Page 4

Comic - Page 3

Comic - Page 2

Comic - Page 1

Just going to do this one at a time so that I don't have to deal with ordering them in Blogger's mediocre image placement controls.

What's to come...

Just scanned everything in, will have it up shortly. Sorry for the wait, here's a preview of my brainstorming notes in the meantime:

Ideas for Final Module

While I'm still not totally sure on the narrative, I've pretty much decided on what my visual style will be. I developed a style for one of the first games that I made for Game Development I that I really enjoyed and am thinking of employing some of the enemy characters that I designed:


Not sure if I'm going to color them like the ones shown here just because of time constraints, but I will definitely keep the inking style consistent.

For the narrative, I think I might go for some kind of birth story - weird creature is born and the reader watches its first few stages in a life completely different than our human lives, but with metaphorical representations for the things we experience. Just have to think of some "problems" for said creature to encounter that will help the narrative develop.

Just realized this never uploaded :(

So I tried to upload the video I made for Mod 4 - part 2, about a million times to blogger, but it kept on failing. Here's a link to where I finally ended up posting it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdCuplxaOG0

Stealers Wheel is pretty sweet

Above is the animatic I made based on the infamous section of the script from Reservoir Dogs in which Mr. Blonde cuts off the cops ear. Good stuff.

Limpets lounge luxuriously in lieu of logic

For Module 4 Part 3, we had to write a story with a basic linear narrative using the following picture:










Here's what I ended up writing:

Barnacles munched at his underside as Boat continued to rock in the ocean. It seemed like at any point the ocean creatures might finally break through him he had been sitting there for so long. Day after day the simple wooden boat screamed at his tormentors, “Try as you might, you will never break my spirit!!” Yet they continued to mindlessly gorge themselves on what seemed to be the only available meal. Boat had long given up pulling and tearing at his anchor; no matter the swell of the wave he encountered, he could not break free. Even as he tried to rest it was not the frigid sea air nor the murky waters that kept his mind alert, but the possibility that those who had made him anchor here would never return to free him.

Boat awoke with a start when he felt himself being sucked deeper into the waters. His thoughts raced, “Have they finally found a way to sink me? Was my struggle until this moment all for naught?” until he realized he had stopped descending into the water, but instead felt a heavy weight within his hull. The hoofed beast began to bray, seemingly as perplexed with its new predicament as Boat. “Sea creature, remove yourself from my stern,” cried Boat, “no matter how many more limpets and mussels inch up my hull, I will not give in!” The creature, oblivious to Boat's cries, attempted to make as little motion as possible for fear of its small platform giving into the water below. Boat's cries of resistance echoed until nightfall as he felt his newly exposed sides begin to corrode.

The layer of once fresh, dazzling white paint on Boat was finally overcome by crustaceans to the same degree that his belly had been overwhelmed long ago. Upon finding that he could cajole the creature into returning to the sea as much as he could remove the monsters from his underside, Boat had concluded that the creature was perhaps not aligned with the sea. It in fact looked to be in pretty terrible condition; tending to sleep all day, its skin yellowed and seeming to protrude in every direction. The stench alone drew other animals that Boat thought he would never view again; great flying birds and even the tiniest insects that seemed to materialize from the rolling horizon were drawn to the presence of the hoofed beast.

Though the presence of other creatures was comforting at first, Boat became more concerned with their increasing numbers. With each wave of beasts that came to experience the sleeping creature, more began to roost on the boat, calling it their new home. “I thought once that you were my allies, fair creatures, but now do you shove me deeper as well? What is it about the thing resting on my bow that draws so many? Creatures of the sky, begone, lest we both drown with my strange cargo,” but no matter how much the boat pleaded, more and more came. Boat's hull was rotting, full of the salty water and monsters that had been eating at him for so long. As one more great Frigate descended to join its comrades, bits of water began to edge in over the sides of Boat. “HELP,” cried Boat as he felt the icy waters begin to fill his insides, “DEAR GOD GET OFF OF ME, SOMEONE HELP!” Neither the birds roosting and chatting within him nor the sleeping beast seemed to notice his pleas until Boat was so covered in ocean that they no longer had a place to sit. Boat's world darkened as he descended, his spirit broken, all while the creatures floating above watched indifferently.

Reading Response to Jim Steranko's Narrative Theory

I wrote my response in outline form so that, rather than trying to compile my thoughts after concluding the reading, I could dictate my thoughts as I thought them.

• Point on page 2 that “Literature requires only a visual sense to read the text, which in itself is antivisual.” Disagree – in some ways literature offers the most freedom in terms of visuals because they are created wholly by the reader. This makes it a more intellectually challenging experience because, unlike film, the reader must create their own imagery. This is similar to the gutter effect in comics

• Like his discussion on extrinsic perception – intrinsic perception is fairly easy but creating imagery that subtly implies a variety of things (like the bank robbers growing notoriety through newspapers proclaiming his higher bounty) is much harder

• Ludicrous amount of name dropping

• Steranko talks about “beginning a ruthless deconstruction” of the plot points that he has created, “hoping to eliminate weaknesses, finding other ways to tell the story, and discovering new new narrative configurations.” How does this affect the original story that the comic was trying to tell? Is he taking too much artistic liberty just so that he can tell his own visual story?

• Discussion of shots and viewpoints was generally informative

• Character lighting – made me think of Batman: The Dark Knight. Spoilers: I loved how they kept Harvey Dent's face hidden – you could only barely see how horribly deformed it was, letting your imagination make the unknown far more hideous than the cheesy-looking CG that they ultimately revealed. Had they maintained this mysterious, unnerving character lighting, I think the film would have been much more successful in portraying Dent's change of character.

• Not sure what to think on his discussion of listening to music while working – I've heard some professionals say that it distracts your mind too much and that you will see a significant improvement in your work once you stop listening to music, while others claim that it helps them focus on their work and, as Steranko suggests, focus on a specific atmosphere or time period. Personally, I prefer not to listen to music because I end up just focusing on the songs I like.

• Not sure how helpful his panel by panel discussion was, particularly because of how he organized the the comic way before the started discussing each panel. I had to keep flashing back and forth between the panel and the text, making it hard to gain anything from the writing.

IT - Mod 3, Part 1

Still need to read the book, but probably one of my favorite movies inspired by a Stephen King story. Basically just looked up the first scene on YouTube and chose some key shots to draw in the first scene where IT kills the little girl. I think that the ratio of the video compared to what I was drawing was different though; in some of the later closeup panels I had to give myself a smaller space, otherwise the face looked stretched out. Here's a super long image of all of the shots:

Reservoir Dogs - Storyboard for "Stuck in the Middle" Scene

Haven't cleaned these up yet, but here's the shot list to act as a Rosetta stone for my lovely handwriting.

1. Show hand turning the dial of a radio

2. Wide shot of Mr. Blond walking towards the cop

3. Close up on opening a large knife

4. Blonde pulls up a chair, looking at him from behind the cop at the cop’s eye level

5. Switch back between Blonde staring at the cop and the cops terrified face

6. Over the shoulder of Blonde showing the newly formed slash in the cops face

7. Blonde continues to stare as the cop freaks out (same behind the cop at blonde shot)

8. Camera centers on the two of them on either side as Blonde reaches for the cop’s ear and cuts it off

9. Close up of Blonde holding the ear next to his face so that the cop and the crowd can see

I think Eddie would approve...

Storyboard for part 3 of the third Module. Doing things chronologically would be far too organized

I used to believe (original)

I was planning on editing these a bit more, but figured since they wouldn't count towards the assignment at all to just post them as the original sketches. Enjoyed these a lot more than the actual project though haha...

Mod du

The last part of Module 2: create a comic using black and white and no words using the following words/ideas: family, dog, wall, fence, water.

Poetry and Comics

I actually started this assignment without reading the instructions, so maybe I'll post my earlier attempts eventually. Ultimately, I was told to " create a twelve-panel grid and have text in each panel that alternatively begins 'I used to believe/but now I know.' Here's what I ended up with:

Reaction to Blood in the Gutter - McCloud

The third chapter in Scott McCloud's graphic novel covered some things that I had already heard of; the gutter effect in comics, various types of transitions between panels, etc., but also covered some that I hadn't. In reading a variety of both western and Japanese comics, I had passively taken in the very different styles, whereas McCloud has cleverly pointed out where they can be so different. Western comics tend to focus much more heavily on "action to action" transitions and a few others, but very rarely a transition called "aspect to aspect" in which time is sort of at a stand still and various images are used to depict the mood or setting. Japanese comics, on the other hand, make much more frequent use of "aspect to aspect" transition in comparison to their Western counterparts. I'm sure that now when I go to read a graphic novel, I will be looking much more closely at the scene transitions than I would have prior to reading Blood in the Gutter.

mod du - du

For the other part of Module 2 we had to look at Pieter Brueghel's piece, Proverb and create a narrative from various sections of it. Please excuse how ridiculous the following story is:

mod du

For this assignment we had to find a trailer that we had never seen before and take screen shots of each "key" scene. We then take those shots and, after numbering the order in which we took them, attempt to arrange them in a cohesive narrative. Mine isn't very cohesive, but if you look closely, maybe it will come to you:

Module 1 is over

Image 1 = Single Image Narrative
Image 2 = Usable Instructions for Making a Grilled Ham and Cheese
Image 3 = Part 3, entitled "Low Five!" Note that the first panel was originally from Frans Masereel, the second one is my build on it

Comments to follow eventually

Reaction to The Vocabulary of Comics - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's book was surprising in how much it discussed that my Multimedia Century class is also covering. McCloud focuses on the use of "icons" and how much more universal they can be than almost any other medium. At the same time, Multimedia Century has begun the dive into the abstract and cubist movements in which visual art also becomes more universal. However, how universal we see visual art in the aforementioned movements is more because they are moving away from functionality (i.e. a testament to religion, patriotism, or some family hierarchy that only people from that culture can enjoy) and instead trying to only evoke emotions through basic color and line techniques that anyone can enjoy. Hence in The Vocabulary of Comics, Mr. McCloud is implying that comics like Tin Tin, which make much higher use of icons, can be much more universally enjoyable.

Personally, I prefer to see slightly more stylized or realistic comics, such as Preacher, The Dark Knight, or Kingdom Come. In these the icon is still at work, but I can focus on both the narrative and how the artist has chosen a visual aesthetic. Another example of this in the world of webcomics would be Karl Kerschl's The Abominable Charles Christopher ( http://www.abominable.cc/ ). I love how the characters have varying degrees of detail but are all very emotionally identifiable.

Thought this might be a bit relevant:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

The creator takes random strips of Garfield and removes Garfield and his dialogue from the strips without editing them in any other way. This presents John, now a solo character,in an entirely new light. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, but mostly different in terms of graphic storytelling and general comics.

The beginning of blogtopus...