Visual Language: Week Two - Result of visual experiments - 4 page comic
7th Oct -
Result of visual experiments - 4 page comic
As a result of my previous experiments and research, I decided to make a 4 page comic as a response. This comic concerned the continuing development of artificial intelligence and how it’s impact could possibly affect the future of current and future generations. I began by storyboarding the idea, drafting the pages in very quick sketches - just to establish the panel placements, and decided on the overall movement of the comic’s narrative across these panels. I then proceeded to create the comic digitally using Clip Studio Paint as my program of choice.
Rather than sketching out the poses and environments of each scene and fine lining over that - I went straight in with the rough, sketchy line art to emphasise the dark underlying tone of the narrative. I further emphasised this by picking a monotone colour palette, defining the individual shapes and forms of both the environments and characters with gradation between the values of tones used. I then used a rough spray brush to add further texture to the work, giving the piece an aged look in contrast to its literal time setting. This was to imply how even though time has moved forward, ethically and sustainably humanity has instead devolved, through its constant striving towards evolution. This aged look also helped to further establish the varying tones between the characters and environment, creating a clearer visual contrast between the two and making the work more legible.
 |
| page one render |
Visually, the art style was greatly influenced by the work of Osamu Tezuka, specifically ‘Astro Boy’ and ‘Metropolis’. I enjoy the way he depicts darker aspects of humanity and technology in an unexpectedly childlike, bubbly art style. He elicits a sense of innocence in his character designs and playful warping of perspective, while conveying a darker tone across the narrative of his works. This contrast helps to greater illustrate a feeling of unease and eeriness in his work. The use of a monotone colour palette was inspired by oki-chu’s ‘Space Dog’, in which he uses gradated values to define shape and form.
 |
| page two render |
On reflection, I feel that for my first attempt at creating a comic, I managed to capture the narrative well using only visual elements. The biggest drawback I see in my work is my time keeping during the piece. I feel that if I gave myself more time to learn the program I was working on, understanding the tools and shortcuts available to me, I could have greater used my time to put in more detail into the environments. This could have also helped me develop a better panel layout to better convey the narrative. I feel this time constraint was also substantiated by my lack of character designs made for this small project. If I was to create key character concept sheets before making the comic itself, I feel this would have allowed me to use the time creating the comic to instead further detail the environments and background characters. I will apply this knowledge in my next narrative based work, so as to better manipulate my workflow. The reason for these adjustments is mainly in response to the time it took to create the comic. Of the four pages, I only managed to render two of them - and I feel I slightly sacrificed quality for quantity in getting the piece finished. I plan on continuing to work on this mini project in my own time at some point, and possibly further refining it, as I feel very passionate about the subject matter and I’m quite pleased with the current results.
Comments
Post a Comment