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20.5.2022 - 1.7.2022 (Week 8 - Week 14)
Loh Qiao Yin/ 0348923
Illustration and Visual Narrative/ Bachelor of Design in Creative Media /
Taylor's University
Task 3/ Graphic Novel
[Webtoon]
[Motion Comic]
LECTURES
Week 7: [3-Acts Structure]
3-Acts Structure
1. Setup
2. Rising tension
3. Conflict
4. Resolution
Storytelling Basics
1. Central theme
- Major theme
- Minor theme
2. Characters
- Central characters
- Protagonist
- Antagonist
Short narrative exercise [My Plot]
Prepare a short story to base your character on. Employ
the 3-Acts Structure, but limit the word count to maximum
300 words.
Fig 1.1 Short narrative exercise (My Plot), 13 May
2022
Week 8: [Independent Learning Week]
Week 9: [Transitions]
Transitions and Gutters
1. Moment-to-Moment
2. Action-to-Action
3. Subject-to-Subject
4. Scene-to-Scene
5. Aspect-to-Aspect
6. Symbolic
7. Rolling transitions
8. Non-Sequitur
1. Setup
2. Rising tension
3. Conflict
4. Resolution
Storytelling Basics
1. Central theme
- Major theme
- Minor theme
2. Characters
- Central characters
- Protagonist
- Antagonist
Short narrative exercise [My Plot]
Prepare a short story to base your character on. Employ
the 3-Acts Structure, but limit the word count to maximum
300 words.
Fig 1.1 Short narrative exercise (My Plot), 13 May
2022
Week 8: [Independent Learning Week]
Week 9: [Transitions]
Transitions and Gutters
1. Moment-to-Moment
2. Action-to-Action
3. Subject-to-Subject
4. Scene-to-Scene
5. Aspect-to-Aspect
6. Symbolic
7. Rolling transitions
8. Non-Sequitur
INSTRUCTIONS
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Task 3:
[Webtoon]
[Webtoon]
i. VISUAL RESEARCH
Colour scheme
Searching for monotone colour schemes in order to depict different
locations or moods.
Fig 2.4 Artwork by @pluspixels on Tumblr, 4 June 2022
Fig 2.5 Artwork by @SkyBurial on DeviantArt, 4 June 2022
Background art composition
To assist with establishing view and when wanting to create a sense
of depth.
Fig 2.6 RatcheK76 on DeviantArt, 4 June 2022
Character design
This sparked an idea plan to facilitate my comic-making process. If I
design the limbs and heads separately, turning them
into assets in my library, I could copy and paste them
into most scenes with minimal editing. This ensures consistency
and an efficient workflow.
Fig 2.7 Game assets by CraftPix.net, 4 June 2022
Collecting references on the possibilities of arranging the comic panels to ensure a fluid reading flow and keeping things dynamic.
Fig 2.8 Left: SparrowHawk#1 by Matias Basla; Right: Stand Still
Stay Silent by Minna Sundberg
ii. PLOT PLANNING
(Refer to Fig 1.1 for the main plot)
Major theme: action
Minor theme: betrayal, war, survival, loyalty
Characters
- Tank guild; Monk guild; Bomber guild.
I tried my very best to push my ego aside and not add any complex details to the character design. Also, I kept in mind to use big distinctive shapes for each character.
Fig 2.1 Sketches of tank guild characters, 4 June 2022
Fig 2.2 Sketches of monk guild characters, 4 June 2022
Fig 2.3 Sketches of bomber guild, 4 June 2022
Sketching out all the panels I hope to draw based on the plot. This rough sketch phase is the fastest way to for me to decide on the types of comic panels and the flow of transitioning from one panel to another. Mostly on seeing the overall big picture how my comic will turn out to be.
Fig 2.4 Sketches in my notebook, 4 June 2022
iii. BUILDING ASSETS
Imported the sketch into Illustrator to be traced digitally. Having
assets ensure consistency in my character designs and in some panels,
I can copy and paste the assets with some tweaking in the anchor
points to speed up my workflow.
Fig 2.5 Bear character sheet, 10 June 2022
Fig 2.6 Frog character sheet, 10 June 2022
Fig 2.7 Bird character sheet, 10 June 2022
Arranged the layout of the comic panels before inserting the backgrounds, characters and speech bubbles.
Fig 2.8 Panels arrangement (WIP), 15 June 2022
It is kind of satisfying to see my assets sheet expanding with different illustrations. Undoubtedly, the sheet has speeded up my comic-making process.
Fig 2.9 Asset sheet, 29 June 2022
There were tons of tryouts for the title design and also a very long discussion with my friend on what my title name should be. After thinking of tons of cliche, cheesy, punny names, I have decided on 'Well, Well, Well." To this day, I am still speechless about the title I have decided for my comic. Wow.
Fig 2.10 Title design try-outs, 29 June 2022
iv. FINAL SUBMISSION
[Webtoon]
I present to you my humble comic that almost made me pull all my hair out. I recommend reading the PDF rather than the webtoon link as the quality was compressed too much there and the line art became different too.
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Fig 3.1
Webtoon comic in PDF, 29 June 2022
p/s: Rant alert ahead
The process of importing the comic to Webtoon:
1) Resize 29 pages manually to a doubled size, export as JPEG in 300 ppi
2) Import to a third-party website to re-scale it to 50% and wait about 10 minutes for every 2 pages.
3) Extract every 2 pages from a zip folder as the website cannot handle too many files in one go.
4) Upload to Webtoon while fixing other troubleshooting problems.
5) Realise misalignment problems occurred when I resized it in Illsutrator.
6) Repeat the steps to fix them.
All of these just so I can ensure a slightly better quality for the image uploaded. The other way is to export as PNG in 500 ppi but it is still not as good as this one.
[Motion Comic]
i. PRE-COMPOSITION
Setting the measurement for my canvas in Illustrator to separate the layers accordingly.
Fig 3.2 Document preset used, 4 July 2022
Fig 3.3 Progress of separating layers accordingly, 4 July 2022
Fig 3.4 Turning on that icon to keep the quality of layers, 4 July 2022
ii. TESTING
The pace of the video was way too fast and skips to the next panel before I could finish reading the dialogues. I only have minimal room of improvement for dragging the transition a little longer as I have already reached 3 minutes.YouTube link of work in progress: https://youtu.be/wthTRYRJo00
Fig 3.5 Speed ramping to slow down the pace, 4 July 2022
iii. FINAL SUBMISSION
[Motion Comic]
Final YouTube link of Motion Comic: Well, Well, Well - A Motion Comic
Fig 3.6 Final motion comic of ‘Well, Well, Well.’ , 4 July 2022
FEEDBACK
Week 14
Casual progress check.
Week 13
Miss Anis mentioned that the ending has a nice plot twist.
Week 12
Miss Anis suggested adding more sound effects in some panels and also creating a distinctive feature for each leader in the guild so the audience can differentiate them. On page 12, add text boxes to tell the lore (while the bears are marching).
REFLECTION
Experience
I feel very burnt out, sitting in front of the laptop doing repetitive steps, especially during the pre-composition process. Not to mention, it felt like 80% independent learning as only sample works are provided for the students with no tutorial session on the workflow from Illustrator to After Effects. However, I am beyond happy to have this task in the module and successfully complete it because it reminded me of the old times when I used to draw comics just for fun. Now, being able to do comics but with a better knowledge of comic-making and digital tools is a whole other sense of achievement. It also shows that I am able to commit to a big project if I really pour out my effort, giving me the confidence to take on big projects in the future.
Observations
It should be obvious but only now have I realised that story-telling is not purely based on inspiration but behind every solid story there are 3-act structure, major/minor themes etc. I realised that establishing concept art for the characters and designing common assets beforehand can improve the efficiency and consistency of my comic-making process.
Findings
The constraints and limitations are there to train our creativity and
innovativeness to utilise what we have. I still dislike the fact that
we are required to use vector shapes to illustrate but at the same
time, I know that it saved me from being over-ambitious and creating
an unrealistic workload for myself. The main purpose of the task is to
teach us transitions and different types of shots using storytelling.
If we are allowed to use Adobe Photoshop completely, I believe
that I will just focus on 'drawing' pretty stuff, defeating the
purpose of the task.
FURTHER READING
Fig 4.1 Cartoon Studies: How to draw comics, 2 June 2022
A 20-page light reading of brief explanation about comic-making
process. It mentioned the variety of comics such as a comic strip, a
'one-pager', a short story and a few more. The way the explanations
are conveyed is easy to understand and straightforward. Also, I like
the composition of everything.
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