Gap Year work

All the Final commic pages in order

The Master Plan

Since my technique in creating my comic book takes a very long time to do, I have decided that the basis of my comic which acts as the first issue is to reveal how the characters are made...which leaves an interesting cliff hanger... but then again i guess that's the job of any first issue - to introduce characters and give a background story.... all i have to do is rearrange how my pages will go in terms of following the plot i have written and since i have decided not to have speech bubbles but to have story boxes instead this means i can create less pages because there will be a story to aid the visual graphics :)... this thursday i plan to get everything sorted out including my presentation...i really want to have sent off my comic to get printed by the end of next week so that it will be ready for the exhibition in time...it should be done over half term.

Class critique/peer feedback

The questions I asked my classmates regarding my work so far were:

1.  Would the comic book look ok if it was A5?
2. Does anyone know any good places I could go to to print my comic book and posters?
3. Is there anything you would change

This is the feedback i got:

For the front cover keep abreviated version of title..so just H.V.O without it written out underneath - but i put it under so it would make sense as to what it stands for ...as this is the first issue people would need to know what h.v.o stands for ...but in later issues i would just use the abreviation because people should know by then what it stands for.

Front page cover - looks good flowy but make the V more sharp because it looks like a U

Paragraph page - get rid of red background...a bit too distracting

Add boxes for story - peers and teacher liked the way I wrote my epiphany page

Back cover - continue as front cover ( same design)

Can print at street print

Final Comic Pages in order

FRONT COVER

Some people have said the front cover looks good but looks a little flat - i shall work on this by placing shadows behind characters...or around the center image of Revesera.

BACK COVER - 17/05/12

To an extent i think the back cover looks better than the front cover ...but then on the other hand for a back cover its captivating and draws you in, also i tried to incorporate a face and a body within it...representing Revesera.....it looks like its from changing...which is good.

INSIDE PAGE OF FRONT COVER

I am pretty happy with this page and my peers and teacher were happy with it too so i shall be leaving it as it is.

FIRST PAGE

Something to take into consideration...as the characters are taking over most of the page space to avoid losing parts of the page due to cropping I am going to place my final comic pages in illustrator so that there is some space left on the border of the pages...so when i get the comic printed and bound, i wont lose parts of it.

FEEDBACK via Facebook : The footer text does not match with the rest of the page... I shall make all

 of the writing in Cracked Font.

PAGE 1

Some people including my teachers think having the red background is too busy and distracts from the story line... but they like the cracked font and have suggested to highlight some of the important words in different colours-- which i did but then that got lost when i placed the red background... I plan to only have the writing in cracked font then highlight important words in the story.

Own criticism : I have some spelling issues to sort out.. :S

PAGE 2

Everyone - class peers, teachers happy with it..so leaving it as it is :)

PAGE 3

Page also liked so leaving it as it is...although i plan to not have speech bubbles in the whole comic i think this page works well with the speech bubbles.

PAGE 4 ( speech bubbles to be removed replaced by story boxes)...and need to fix one characters hands... they look funny ...and its annoying me

 After some class feedback from this point i will not be placing speech bubbles as such as peers felt that my story telling skills were better than the speech bubbles i made...which i agree with...the speech bubbles are a bit tiresome to read because they are boring.

For now i am focusing on getting scenes done ...then i shall place text afterward.

PAGE 5 

( Still being worked on.)... I like how i have put so much detail in every different person here but i'm afraid this will get lost when printed in a4... this page looks really good zoomed in :/

Since I want to create a comic book with quite a few pages to make it reasonable and i plan to get my posters and comic pages ready to print by next friday i have come up with a cunning plan...work on different comic pages at the same time...that way i dont get too bored on one page and lose focus :)

 Page 5  - done ( just text to be added)

 Page 6 (still being worked on)

Page 7 (still being worked on)

Page 8 (still being worked on)

Page 9 ( Still being worked on)

Page 10 (Still being worked on)

Character Design Sheets/ working on final pieces

CHARACTER DESIGN SHEETS

As i had done all my experimentation by now, I decided to start working on my character design sheets. The character design sheets are based on real people who filled out a questionnaire i created. My participants had to describe their personality and describe how they would be if a villain or a hero..

 from that i created a design sheet of the characters which was to act as a visual aid for getting a summary of what the characters personality is like - relating to my pathway work of looking at alter ego's and partially to my fine art work during the exploratory stage which looked at the unconscious and the conscious..looking at dreams.

Processes of creating final pieces.

When it came to starting to create final pieces I decided to use a mixture of the techniques I looked at during my experimental stage during the FMP. I was going to use the block type look that noir comics have a swell as the rough strokes i started making with fine liner but doing that digitally instead. For most of the poster designs i used rough drawings i had done on character design sheets which in this case I took pictures of as I did not have a scanner at home but that did not really matter i just needed some outline to start to work with digitally.

I decided to give the three categories of characters different colours so that they have a definition of their own, purple for the ordinary human, blue for the superheroes and red for the villains, I decided to not give the characters faces because it added a noir style and feel of mysteriousness. Also the poster looked much more cleaner, slicker without a face.....plus they don't have faces because they are all based on real people ordinary people who would not be famously known...superheroes and villains in comics are famous...but the person behind the mask is often unknown.

1. Laura  - The Ordinary Human

 I took a photograph of this quick sketch then i placed it onto photo-shop, where i painted around the outlines in white, then painted on the hair in different shades, using the smudge tool to create layered effects, i then painted around the border of the image and also used the smudge tool to create a more electric background with motion...i used the burn tool to crate shadow in the background and the dodge tool to  add a fluorescent highlight... I did the same for the other posters.

In some cases it helped that the rough sketch I done was lightly painted before in water colour..this reacted really well with the smudge tool...therefore creating much more vivid and textured work... This piece is my favorite out of the 6 portraits.

I really liked the way the smudge tool gave me much more control that a fine liner would, plus i could always press undo if i did not like something.... I was not particularly enthusiastic about the design sheets i made for the above character but what i turned it into below is pretty coooool...I am liking the outcomes.

With this piece it looked ok with a face but then i thought the pieces would not link if some had faces and others didn't.... so all of them have no faces.

I really like how this piece has a feel of movement flowing colour and soft fluffy hair...i can see texture.

Here i was more experimental with the way i did the background which look like grape vines...sort of... I think its good that the backgrounds have their own type of designs slight differences which reflect the different personalities the characters have.

RED = EVIL

BLUE = GOOD

PURPLE = NEUTRAL.....blue and red makes purple

Moving onto full body posters

I wanted to have a go at crating full body posters... i had though about having the portraits and full body posters....but i think this might be too much to put in the exhibition.. I may just use the portraits for the exhibition and use the full body pieces as part of my comic book.

I used the same techniques as i used for the portraits ...except I was going for a less abstract look... the poster did not turn out exactly as i wanted it to...

I asked some peer to look at my work and they gave me advice that the full body poster did not have the same sleek/professional look as the portraits and this was because I made the back ground different from the portraits.