Illustration and Visual Narrative - Final Project: Comic cover and Animated One Page intro

|| 2nd July - 26th July(Week 10 - Week 14)

|| Kek Han Shin (0352571) Bachelor of Computer Science
|| Illustration and Visual Narrative
|| Final Project: Comic cover and Animated One Page intro (40%)

⚫Task Description

We are required to select a story from the short series by Edgar Allan Poe in [ https://poestories.com/stories.php ] and create

comic cover page
animated one-page intro

For the animation, consider below

- Parallax (to create depth)

- Secondary Action

- Animated Background

⚫Ideation

Researching and Referencing

After browsing through the stories I decided to go for his "Silence - A Fable", the story is about a man who encounters a demon in a desert land. The demon shows how frightening silence and solitude can be, using the calm but tense nature to teach a lesson about fear and isolation

I really liked the story as it leaves so much imagination wandering, the man was more terrified by the solitude, as the storm and demon were less scary by the silence.

I gathered and researched for the art style I wanted to go to that fits the theme and atmosphere the most, which is gothic and dark fantasy. The artists include Emily Carroll, Mike Mignola, Dave McKean and Richard Corben.

Figure 1: Emily Carroll

Figure 2: Mike Mignola's art style

Figure 3: Other similar artists

A few common traits I have noticed are that these artists generally used dark muted color tones, and they used thin lines to carve out the details.

Ideation and Sketching

Analysing the story, I decided to focus on a few elements in my design:

man in isolation
despair, miserable
natural disaster (storm)
eerie landscape

Figure 4: gathering elements for referencing

Figure 4.1: arranging interest reference...

The initial sketching for myself to plan out the panel's layout:

Figure 5: sketching draft

Before starting in Illustrator I had refined sketching in my Procreate as I find it easier to design it in Illustrator

Here is one of the sketching process I had:

I had difficulty in drawing the human figure in different poses so take reference pictures by myself...

Figure 6: Reference pictures

Figure 7: Sketching process and refinement

The final sketches to be transferred:

Figure 8: Final sketches

⚫Designing

Comic design

Not me searching for tutorials on converting sketches into Illustrations...

Figure 9: how to transfer sketches 101

Figure 10: importing sketches

Initially, I tried to use image trace for my sketch but further down I encountered a problem: the tracing is not accurate at all as my sketches are too detailed and have thin strokes...

Hence, I used a combination on using brush to manually outline and image tracing.

Figure 11: Manual tracing is a pain

Figure 12: man in toga is done!

As shown, the man I was trying to Illustrate has thin hair strands, which is impossible to just use Image Tracing. Hence at the end I was using brushes a lot.

Figure 13: Extremely thin hair strands

Some panels image tracing did okay.

Figure 14: image tracing result example

Some I have a combination of using both tools

Figure 15: brush + image tracing

Final design version of uncoloured design:

Figure 16: First version - black and white

Next, colour, in my opinion, is one the most important elements that really make the comic express, hence for colour tones I did reference Mike Mignola's art style, using dark muted colours to portray the dark psychology in it.

Figure 17: Mike Mignola's art style

Adobe colour offers a very useful tool for extracting color palettes from images I am interested:

Figure 18: extracting color palettes

The coloured design (second version)

Figure 18: version 2.0

Animation

I really have a hard time in After Effects as it keeps crashing on my laptop 😭but for animation I decided to go for background animation, of lightning and lilies panel.

Figure 19: lightning animation

Figure 20: lilies

I tried to let the timing of both panels synchronise, to make it appear where the lightning strikes at the background of the lilies too. And I am happy with the results.

⚫Final Result

Cover:

Figure 21: comic cover

Animated One pager:

🖊Reflection

This project is definitely a roller coaster ride for me as I find the timeframe really tight 😭one lesson learnt is definitely to plan oneself time WISELY. Nonetheless, the moment I see myself progress through and the final result I am immensely proud and happy! I noticed myself really did progress and apply the things I have learnt in this semester-pen tool, pencil tool, image tracing, colour palettes... Looking back when going into this class I did not even have a single clue on how to use Illustrator but thanks to Mr. Hafiz tutorials, I think I absorbed the knowledge on how to use the tools.

Although the process was painful I enjoyed this project as I got to experiment with an art style I am not familiar with - dark gothic. Not just only Illustrator techniques, this project really involved a lot of skills requirements -- comic narration, composition and animation. I realized a good design that conveys stories involves a lot of consideration, and this makes me start to better appreciate the good artwork around me too! I am grateful to Mr Hafiz for providing guidance throughout the semester, he focused on providing a practical demonstration and giving feedback on the exercise, which I think is where a lot of learning happened.

Kek Han Shin (0352571)