Evaluation

Having completed all the research and drawings for my comic I have arrived at the end of the project and I can say that it has been a very educational experience. One of my main aims for this project was to actually finish a comic story idea which I feel I have accomplished with this project although there are aspects of it which I would have liked to be more finished: I would have liked to have finished colouring all the pages however I feel I have learned alot from the

colouring I did manage to do:

This was my first experiment colouring using photoshot, whilst I got some interesting results I felt that this style Of colouring that I was doing didn't fit with my style of drawing

Origional sketch

I decided to try a different more simple style of colouring which would add transparent colours so you could still see the lines underneath and could be layered like watercolour. This technique

worked alot better with my style of drawing.

although I only got to colour about 8 sheets in total out of the 30 I drew this really helped me to develop my skills on photoshop. I feel much more confident with using photoshop and I look forward to further developing my skills and finishing the colouring process on the remaining sheets after the project.

I also feel that this project has helped me gain a much better understanding of how comics work. Through research and my own work I have alot more knowledge about how panels and text lead on to each other in comics and the different art styles required depending on the story.

I also feel that my skills in terms of research have improved alot as well because although I had already read alot of the material I used for research in my project I look a them in a different more analytical way which helped me not only gain a better understanding of how they worked but it also gave me more insight into the stories themselves and in some Developed colouring style cases I discovered new things about them that I had missed in prior readings.

I have also improved and developed my style of drawing and feel that there is now more identity im my work, I have even improved upon some of my existing ideas from years ago which is a very useful benefit because this puts me in a better opportunity to revisit them and finish them.

more sketches

Here are some more sketches I have done for creatures in my comic

final idea sketches

Here are some more sketches for my idea:

final idea and influence

I have come to a final idea of a story line for my comic. This is a story I came up with a few years ago and have some sketches that I did for it back then. As a child I was very much into dinosaurs, this interest spawned from many different things including books, films, cartoons, museums and toys that I collected. something I always was always very curious about was what it would be like if dinosaurs and people lived side by side in the same time period. The story I came up with dipicts just that.

a sketch for the idea

The comic follows a tribe of people who live and work alongside eachother, helping out one another similar to the relationship we share with many animals in real life, some of the tribe are brought up along side dinosaurs so they form a kinship and can preform for tasks like hunting, fighting and fighting sidby side as a unit, this story will be about the relationship they share and how they live together.

Gon

Gon by Masashi Tanaka has been a great influence for this idea. besides the fact that the protagonist is a small d

inosaur, the main inspiration has been the art and the format. This comic is purely image based and relys on the panel structure and art to tell the story rather than any text which fits well with my style and the fact that english isn't one of my strong points.

gon

Story idea 2: The Road

'The Road' would be a graphic novel split into different stories revolving around five different characters. The central story arc is that earth has been linked to a city in the centre if the galaxy/universe (haven't decided yet) via a gateway aka 'The Road'.; This central city is linked to countless other planets meaning that extraterastrial interaction has become the norm in this day and age. The characters would be different people from this time from both earth and other worlds.

Story Idea 1

My first story Idea is one that I have shown sketches for and have gone briefly into in previous posts. Earth (or atleast what is shown of it in the story) has had much of it's cities and societies destroyed and left in ruins from a bygone war between machines and robots. This war while essentially having been won by the humans has left them with little to build from.

This story shows mankind's struggle to rebuild civilisation. It follows characters from a small community going about daily life and surviving and battling rougue robot enemies from the old war which emerge from the reckage and threaten them.

(One of the first sketches I did based on this story idea)

(4)First sketches and ideas continued...

For this character design sketch I decided to use some fine liner colour pens to see how coulour would work with my art style.

(3)First sketches and ideas continued...

Here are some more character sketches, for my drawings so far I have used pencil, fine liner and biro. these fit well with my scratchy style of drawing. I would like to tryusing some other mediums in future pictures such as paints, colours and possibly some computer art e.g. photoshop, ilistrator etc.

Artist Research: Moebius

Image 1

One of the artists I wanted to look at in particular was Jean Giraud or as he is more commonly known Moebius.

Moebius has a very colourful and detailed art style and oftem creates fantastic and alien worlds (image 1), many of his comics are simply the panels with the art and no speach or words meaning that people must follow the story by the images alone.

His character and creature designs are very weird and interesting, he trys to be as alien as possible with his designs and much of his work consists of character designs (image 2) whether they be one offs, based on real people or characters in his storys. he also specializes in sences of land scapes and citys which include big city scenes (image 4) with huge crouds of people and

scenes of exotic mysterious worlds. as well as working on his own comic series and art books he often does work for magazines such as his story for 'heavy metal' magazine 'Azach Image 2 and cover art for the album 'voodoo soup' by Jimi Hendrix (image 4).

Image 3

Image 4

First ideas and sketches continued...

Here are some more sketches I have done for character design

Research: Astro city

Book title: Astro city

Author: Kurt Busiek"s

Artists: Alex Ross (cover)

Brent Anderson

This line of comics is one that I found very interesting. While like most comics it is about superheroes and villains it looks at them as a part of real life, they deal with real life problems as well as fighting crimes and it shows them as a normal part of everyday life. It features very stereotypical superheroes and villains which are based closely on existing ones for example one of the series' main characters bears a close resemblance to Superman, the best thing about this fact is that the readers are meant to know this, it is much more about the concept of a world with superheroes more so than that of the characters which is why each story doesn't usually lead on to one another which is good because you get a different story each time unlike may comic lines which will stick to one story arch for a while, having different storys each time is sometimes better because it gives the reader something new each time.

While the art in this is very 'comic-bookie' I think it works because afterall it is telling the storys of superheroes but what makes it different is the fact that this style of art is being used to tell the story of what the real world would be like with superheroes in it.

First ideas and sketches continued...

Here is another character design for my futuristic story idea, the style of art I have chosen for my drawings so far is very rough and sketchy because I feel that it fits in with the world I have come up with for these characters because it is very rough and gritty.

First ideas and sketches

After having done some research by reading a few graphic novels I felt like coming up with a few character designs, I thought this would help me not only come up with a few story idea but also the style of art I would use.

This design is for a futuristic character, on his coat I have added blocky patches to make it seem more futuristic like some sort of technological futuristic item of clothing. I have drawn the character with futuristic weapons and in each picture you will see robots that the character has either killed or is battling.

When drawing this I was just playing around with what I thought was cool and through this I came up witha pretty simple story idea of a world which has been through some sort of war with robots (who knows where they came from?!) and how people are living on afterwards which includes many encounters with old rogue robot warriors from the war meaning most people have ways to defend themselves. This is just a pretty early simple idea which is pretty childish but I thought I would include it as part of the project to show the progression of my ideas and artwork.

Research: The Dark Knight Returns

Book title: The Dark Knight returns

pages: 192

Duration: 2 days

Author: Frank Miller

Artist: Frank Miller

Another of my favorite comics the Dark Knight Returns tells the story of a future Gotham city where Bruce Wayne has retired as batman due to his age and the death of his sidekick Robin. Appaling crime rates due mainly to the infamous Mutant gang and the return of Harvey Dent convince Wayne to don his old alter ego once again. While being a somewhat an unofficial addition to the Batman contunuity it gives a good view of a batman who was pushing 60, while having experience he lacks the physical attributes he had when in his prime and must prove to Gotham and himself that he has what it takes to protect his city once again.

As well as having a very compelling well written story This has some of my favourite artwork, whilst it is very 'comic bookie' type art work it is different from most art and had very nice texture to it.

Research: Phoenix: a tale of the future

Book title: Phoenix: a tale of the future

pages: 287

Duration: 2 days

Author: Osamu Tezuka

Artist: Osamu Tezuka

Phoenix a very clever and well written story that had me glued to its pages, this story is set in 3404 ad and shows a fairly depressing view of the future where the population of earth has been forced to live in five underground capitals due to lethal levels of radiation on the surface, the protagonist Masato is an escaped fugitive who used to be a police officer in one of the capitals, he escaped with the last of a banned shape shifting race called moopie's and on his run encounters a scientist who's one goal is to create life. This story whilst apearing to be simply a futuristic epic explores life, evolution, people and the idea of god.

One thing I really like about this graphic novel is the fun slightly childish manga art style as it contrasts with the serious and depressing plotline. In terms of inspiration I think the story and writting will help me the most as it is very well constructed and compeling.

Research: Moonshadow

Book title: Moonshadow

Pages: 468

Duration: 1 week

Author: John Marc DeMatties

Artist: Jon J Muth

As part of my research for this project I decided to look at a graphic novel called Moonshadow. It is an exiting story of adventure, love, life, death and incorporates alot of pop culture in to the plot such as books, music, films, people and much more. The story's protagonist and the story's namesake Moonshadow is a boy who was born and spent the first 12 years of his life in the zoo: a strange world created by the godlike race called the G'l dosses who abduct creatures from all over the universe including his mother. Monshadow is then told by his father that he is leaving the zoo to venture out in to the universe on a journey of self discovery, accompanying him are his mother, his cat and his reluctant friend Ira.

I thought that this story would be perfect to look at for this project for a number of reasons: the book features very beautiful art which is painted using watercolours and is very interesting to look at, I didn't at any point whilst reading this get bored with the art and I feel it will be very useful throughout this project as inspiration and for ideas of what style of art to use for my own comic. One of the great things about this story is that to compliment the art is very good writing, there is a very poetic theme in Moonshadow and there are constant refferences to pop culture, especially books making the reading experiance alot more interesting as well as exciting. Because my skills for this project lie mostly in the art this will really help my writing skills.

Proposal

Project Proposal

Project Information

Project:

Graphic novel

Summary:

Over the course of this project I will read and study different existing graphic novels so that I can have a good understanding of how graphic novels are laid out depending on the type of story and the different scenarios taking in the story for example how panels are laid out and where to have lots of text and where not to have any at all. From this research I will also get a good understanding of what different art and writing styles there are which will help me to decide what style of art I will use and more importantly what the actual plot of my graphic novel will be and how I will write it. I will try and do as many designs and sketches before I actually begin on writing and drawing the final piece. Depending on when and where I set my story I will need to research the time and place I chose as my final setting so I can have a good knowledge of the setting so it can more accurate. During the process of making my graphic novel e.g. writing, artwork etc I will try and make regular checks with people who are knowledgeable in these areas so I know that I am on the right track. Once it is finished I will get a number of people to read my graphic novel and then give me a brief review of how they found reading it, what they liked, didn’t like and whether they enjoyed it overall.

Background and Motivation

Making a graphic novel is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I have always loved reading comics and graphic novels from an early age and as my drawing skills progressed I came up with a separate style for comic art which is something I enjoy working on and I do it in my free time. As well as my drawing style I love to come up with and tell stories so I have always wanted to put these two skills together and create a graphic novel myself. I have always known that making a graphic novel wouldn’t be easy, I have tried before and only come up with brief stories only lasting a few pages which were good practice but I feel that now is a good time to do it properly. I think that if I can successfully make a graphic novel then I will have gained the skills and experience to do it again if I choose and improve on my skills and knowledge of the area.