Progress Presentation 2

My second progress presentation held yesterday. Explaining where I stand with the project, the decision of producing a collaborative effort with Juan on the comic as well as producing illustrations based on text.

The main concern raised was that there needs to be defined roles in the collaborative project so that it is clearly stated who is doing what. As it stands right now; The story of Capitan Benezuela is based on my original story which Juan is taking to develop into a series bible which we can work with to produce the comic. Juan is producing the series bible at the minute and as we the series bible is being written we are both working out further story elements and plugging up plot holes as he goes. The script will be a joint effort and I will be producing the development and sequential art of the comic sample as well as covers. This seemed to be acceptable for our lecturer so we will move forward.
In the mean time I will push forward with developing initial ideas for visual elements of the story as well as begin gathering research for case studies. After the Christmas break I will finish my case studies which will benefit the production phase of the project. 

Other aspects of the project that were brought up were methods of consistency and methods of art production. 

Principles of Cinematography

Certain elements of cinematography can be applied to comic art in order to enhance the visual narrative and make the sequential art read or flow better for the reader. Principles such as the 180 degree rule can be used as they are in film to make sure the viewer is not disorientated during conversations or action scenes.

The 180 Degree Rule is a basic guideline for the visual/spatial relationship between characters and/or objects within a scene. An imaginary line called the "Axis" connects the subjects and by only shooting a scene from either side of the line the relative position of each subject remains the same (i.e. the one on the left stays on the left and the one on the right stays on the right according to the viewer). This allows the viewer to orientate themselves in relation to the subjects, making the scene easier to view.

When looking at comic layouts you can pretty much think of them as more dynamic and in depth storyboards. The panels can all be broken down to different camera shots such as establishing shots, close ups, long shots etc. 

These can be used to enhance the drama in an image as they are used within film to enhance the portrayals of scenes. 

Empire magazine posted an article on their website describing 30 of the most important shot types and examples within film of where they are used.

 THE 30 CAMERA SHOTS EVERY FILM FAN NEEDS TO KNOW

Within the article it describes a number of shots such as the tilt shot which involves physical movement of the camera. Initially I wondered if these would be relevant or even translatable to sequential art then I remembered Jim Lee's work on Batman: Hush (an example from researching layouts). 

When depicting Catwoman and Harley Quin's acrobatic movements Lee pulls the camera/viewfinder out to a wider shot and draws the characters at multiple stages of their movements. This helps to emphasise the action in the scene as well as give the impression of a more dynamic camera shot such as the tracking shot. 

A knowledge of these techniques as well as how they can be manipulated will aid in visualising scenes in a more comprehensive way. This will make the end result a more enjoyable experience for the reader.

Further Reading

Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know

                                      

Capitan Benezuela (Spelled with a 'B') XD

The original doodle of Captain Venezuela was done while waiting for a bus in a coffee shop in Edinburgh after my partner in crime Juan Carlos De Abreu asked me to sketch a Venezuelan version of Captain America.

In complete ignorance and with only a couple of reference images on a phone this was sketched. 

The idea of the character stuck with Juan and after he recounted a couple of dozen ideas he had for the character we decided to take it forward as part of our Honours Projects. Our projects allow for this as Juan is looking into cultural differences in storytelling and mine is about transmuting writings etc to visual media.

The story is being written at the minute and will be fully fleshed out over the Christmas break. Once it is all worked out I will elaborated on it. 

In the new story Capitan Venezuela is one of the most renowned Luchador in Latin America, wearing the colours of his home country on his outfit. Juan and I agreed that we didn't want a ridiculously ripped, roid case. Juan wanted CV to be a "naturally big guy" like Roy "Big Country" Nelson or Mark Hunt of the UFC's Heavyweight division but with a bit more definition. So the initial consideration was his build.

Big Country (upper right) Mark Hunt (lower right).

With this in mind I began to produce silhouettes, figuring out the character's build, what kind of outfit he will wear and how to tie in the colours and iconography of Venezuela. 

Juan explained that the most important elements for him were the colours and stars from the flag as well as incorporating the horse into the uniform. On the current Venezuelan flag there are 8 stars, one was added by order of Venezuela's current president Hugo Chavez. This among other changes to the Venezuelan coat of arms such as changing the direction of the horse were not received well by Venezuela in general Juan told me so he requested that it only has 7. 

Capitan has a tattoo across his chest reading "MUCHO GUSTO" meaning "much pleasure", a response to old style wrestler rants from the old WWF wrestlers of the 80's and 90's. The other element is the horse graphic on the side of his mask. 

These will come in handy when redrawing Capitan for panels as the edit tools such as Warp and Distort tools can be used to apply them to him and blend them in as part of the art. This will help with the overall consistency of the art.

I feel that this is a design that is both pretty striking thanks to the bold pattern of his outfit and should prove to be easily reproduced from panel to panel in the comic. 

Project Proposal and Project Direction

Just a quick wee update. Getting the project proposal written has helped me narrow down exactly where I am headed with the project (about time too).

The project now is split into 2 main objectives. The first is a collaborative effort producing a comic entitled "Capitan Benezuela" (spelled with a 'B') with one of my peers, Juan Carlos De Abreu. The idea for this has been simmering away in the back of my mind for a while now since one fateful day last year Juan asked for a quick sketch of a "Venezuelan version of Captain America". The idea has completely changed, nothing to do with super soldiers. 

The second part of the project will revolve around the transmutation of written text or stories into images, depicting scenes from the text. Whether the text is self-written or based on existing text will be decided over the Christmas break.

Consistency

Consistency in the art is crucial when producing a comic. When it comes to drawing just about every comic book artist advises to just draw the characters over and over, familiarizing yourself with the design and build up a reference archive to refer back to.

Manuel Gutierrez developmental work for Marvel's "Blade" miniseries.

Mark Silvestri's development work for the reboot of "Cyberforce".

Like in the games and movie industries all aspects of the character be considered including expressions, weapons, clothing, colours etc. which will aid in the process of reproducing the character or object repeatedly.

A comparison of Stjepan Sejic's Development and final pages for "Twitch".

Perhaps more than the games or movie industry the comic artist's knowledge of the design of elements of within their story is of the utmost importance. In the movies and games elements are designed, made and put to use by animators. Producing comic art is more comparable to 2D animation where the character is reproduced repeatedly for each frame they feature in.

Stjepan Sejic's 3D character sculpts utilised in final pages for "Ravine".

3D illustration has becoming more prevalent over the past few years and this is slowly filtering into comic art. Stjepan Sejic used a combination of 3D modelling and digital painting with great success while making his graphic novel "Ravine". The 3D helped to keep high levels of consistency throughout the 2 current volumes as well as produce an art style that was easily recognisable as Sejic's. As a result of combining high level 2D illustration with detailed 3D models, at points the imagery in the books bridges the uncanny valley with its realism.

While there are no quick solutions to producing consistent, high level comic art understanding the subject matter is key. The issue I have been having with the consistency of the art in the 2 test strips will hopefully be (at least in part) by doing more in depth character designs as opposed to the quickfire ones I have been undertaking.
Employing design practices from 2D animation and the employment of 3D into the art pipeline are ways to aid in this matter.

Hungarian Horntail Strip

With this strip I focused on trying to speed up my work flow by spending less time on the drawings of these panels and going for a more painterly approach. Though these pages are really only rough layouts they are revealing aspects of my work that I need to improve on or learn.

One of the first problems I came across with this strip was composing it so it made sense and flowed. 

During research will be looking into some of the principles of cinematography. While I was aware of the different kind of camera angles (bird's eye, worm's eye, long shot, close up etc.) I had not considered that film making principles such as the 180 degree rule are so important when producing cohesive pages in comics and graphic novels.

One of the biggest issues I have found is consistency in the art is lacking. Though I have looked into this, the best advice and methods involve more in depth character design processes than I am undertaking with these tests.

Learning to compose more suitable and interesting layouts is another, Though I understand the theory behind formal and informal layouts I feel that I need to work a lot more on this aspect of production. 

This and the previous strip I have produced have not featured any dialogue. I will be looking into scripts and their formats next before continuing on with the next character design/strip exercise.

Visual Narrative

The desire to tell and pass down stories has been part of human culture since the early days of our species. Paintings on cave walls depicting events from the lives of early humans have provide a glimpse into their lives. Today the desire to tell stories is still as deep routed in human culture as it was for early man.  

The term “Visual Narrative” is derived from the two words Visual and Narrative (surprisingly) and describes the telling of stories through visual means.

Throughout history each culture has developed their own unique method of conveying stories to their audience. Ancient Greek and Chinese ceramics depicting important events from their culture, sculptural reliefs and paintings within religious temples of most cultures are all examples of visual narrative. Over the centuries this has evolved into various different art forms such as films, animation and historical painting.

Comic books and graphic novels are also part of this group. Will Eisner published the book Graphic Storytelling and Narrative in which he defined comics as “the printed arrangement of art and balloons in sequence”.

Comics and Graphic Novels are considered Static Visual Narratives. Like Murals, sculptural reliefs and paintings comics are part of a medium that occupy surface area. The viewer discovers the story by exploring the area covered by the visual elements. As the viewer progresses the story is revealed. The stories in this type of visual narrative are revealed at the viewer’s discretion, leaving it up to them how much time is spent on the different elements of the visual and what order it is viewed. This is opposed to Dynamic Visual Narrative such as film or animation where the viewer is presented the visuals in a predetermined pace and sequence or Interactive Visual Narrative where the story progresses through the participation of the viewer.

These methods of telling stories have been developed over decades and centuries. They allow us to communicate where, when, how, why and what happened when an event occurred. Whatever the story it can be told through Visual Narrative, the visual element gives the story teller the ability to not only describe the characters, locations and events but also show them to the viewer.

Character Design challenge 3

This is the character produced for Callum MacDougall based on the description of the Hungarian Horntail dragon from the Harry Potter series.

I tried having a look at eagles and their anatomy to influence the design rather than just looking at lizards like I have in the past when drawing/painting dragons.
Overall I think the design, while fairly successful at communicating the description of the creature the overall design is pretty generic.
More importantly though, Callum was pretty happy with the effort.

Alien MMA Fighter Strip

Rather than going for a character design then taking it into a final painting it was suggested that I put them into situations and depict them through comic book pages.

This was the strip produced for the Alien MMA fighter. 

While creating the page I wanted to keep it traditional, working within conventional page dimensions and layout A). to see how restrictive it can be and B). so I could focus on composing the art within the panels as I feel that composition isn't one of my stronger areas.

One thing I have been curious about with modern comic/graphic novel production is utilizing 3D as a tool to aid in production so for the 3rd, 4th and 5th panel a small block out of the arena was made. This aided in speeding up the process of painting each panel as well as keeping the perspective in each shot correct. This type of process is used by environmental artists like Baron Tieri in the games industry as well as a few comic book artists such as Stjepan Sejic. This is a method that I will explore further as I produce future designs and strips this semester.

For this strip a my classmate Juan Carlos De Abreu was kind enough to donate his weekly character design to take on the green meanie.