Out of Class week 9

We're in between projects so there was no assigned work. I did work on a personal comic for a bit this week however. 

Week 9b

  Today in class I went down to Jerri Robinson's Intro to Digital Theory and Skills class. I met with four students and gave them feedback on their projects, and showed them somethings in Illustrator. Overall everyone was very receptive of feedback, but some of them were reluctant to make changes.

Week 9a

Today in class we had a critique for the second project, the "life of" comic. We split the class in half so that it was easier to see the comics and easier to give feedback. Here is the feedback I received:

- The five o'clock shadow was effective for showing that the character aged.

- People like the drawing style and the unique layout. They thought it helped the comic stand out and make more of an impact.

- They like the neighborhood layout

- Jerry enjoyed the moment to moment transition with the house burning down.

- Jerry also thought that the smoke breaking the gutter was a good because it added more action and moved the eye around the page.

- People thought that the houses blended together for the last tow rows. They suggested changing the colors a bit so they stood apart.

- People questioned the old man saying  "welcome home gang" at the end, but I still stand behind him saying that, as I've defended in an earlier post.

- Professor Panifino thought that the type face I choose for the title and dates was a bit too strong and distracted from the comic. He suggested changing it from black to a dark yellow.

- People questioned using the triangles to balance out the page. Some alternate suggestions where a border, a larger typeface, and some small drawings closer to the page border.

- Panifino thought that the title and dates flowed together, and I agree. I spent a lot of time trying to find the right spot for the title, but I think that I moved it a little too close to the dates.

- People also suggested that the smoke could be yellow. They felt that it was to dominate being white, and that a yellow would help it stand out less.

week 8 out of class

This week outside of class I finished up the comic and printed it. Finishing the coloring was easy, but I ran into to trouble with the lettering. In my drawing I had bit too much open space at the top so I had to try lots of variations with the letters to balance it out. In the end I added two black triangles in the top left and bottom right corners and that tied the empty spaces together nicely. Once I finished up the lettering I printed the comic out on a piece of 11 x 17 card stock. I picked the card stock because I wanted a matte finish to the comic, but I didn’t want it to feel flimsy and cheap. After the comic was printed the last thing to do was trim off the extra paper.

Week 8B

At the beginning of class today I meet up with Bryce and Alex and we gave each other feedback about where we are at on the projects. The feedback I got was mostly positive, but the one thing they brought up which i'll need to consider is that the man at the end says "welcome home gang". He says that, but he isn't saying it to any one in particular so they felt it was a bit confusing. I like it because it is a reflection of what his father says at the start so the story starts and ends on the same note. So I will have to give it some more thought on whether I keep it or not. After the meet up I worked on coloring the comic. This took all of the class and I still didn't quite finish with it, but I am very close. So this weekend all I will need to do is add Text in Ai

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Week 8A

   Today in class I met with Vance briefly at the beginning and then had lots of work time. The first thing that I did was bring in the scans I got into photoshop and “stitched” them together into the whole comic. Then I set all of the levels, and messed with the hues to get rid of my blue line.

Comic put together in PS:

Then I started to try and color it, but James recommended that I find my typefaces first because that might take longer and I need good typefaces that match my drawing style. I found two typefaces that I thought would work for the balloons and then were actually very similar. The first one (and top of the picture) was called Indie Pimp, while it was stylistically closer to my drawings I think it is harder to read. The second typeface (Bottom image) and then one I think I will i use is called Fish Fingers. It is a slightly more plain but I think easier to read. For the years I had Baduy (top) and Daddy in Space (bottom). I tried Baduy because the dotted line around the letters matched the marks I made for grass, but the letter shapes themselves weren’t very organic. Space Daddy on the other hand looked much more organic and the heavy black space of the letters matches the roofs of the houses in the comic. James did say that I should try it smaller and smaller was better for it I think.

 (Smaller sized date)

When I felt good about the typefaces I moved onto color. I put lots of colors down quickly just so I could see what they looked like without investing to much time. Right away I knew I didn't want to do the red or blue because they added emotions to the story that weren’t really there. So I played the most with neutral to yellow tones. I stayed more towards an Ochre because it has a warm but not sunshine feel because I felt sunshine wouldn’t be appropriate for the comic. In the end I decided that the grass color should be the darker color because the comic needed a bit more weight on the right side. The bottom picture is what I’m going with for the final I think.

Week 7 Out of Class

This week out of class I finished drawing the final version of the comic in blue pencil and then inked it. I'm definitively happy with he final results of the drawings. The line work in the drawing is neat, but not perfect because I didn't want it to look like it could have been done on the computer. I think the element of hand craft is important to the story of the comic, since it is about an address being restored through loving manual labor. I also drove up to the school and scanned the pages so that I can get started with the word balloons on Monday.

Week 7B

Today in class we started off with a quiz on the reading from the Scott McCloud book. I think I did pretty well on it, probably on two questions wrong. Then we shared where we are at with our comics to the row. I got positive feedback from everyone on my sketches at this point so I feel confident about my research. Because of this feedback and positive feedback from others I’ve decided to start working on the actual drawing. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to scale this since I don’t have a paper large enough for the working size. My solution is to use two pieces of Bristol board and split the drawing. Fortunately one of the streets in my sketch has nothing in it so that is where I’ve divided the picture. This leaves two rows of houses on the top page and three rows on the bottom. I then spent a lot of time measuring and drawing guides all over the page. This will ensure that all of my houses and all the parts of the house will line up very closely. I don’t want them to quite be perfect because I want to make sure that it still looks hand drawn. After I had all of my guides done I started sketching everything in and I managed to get the first two rows totally drawn in pencil. Unfortunately since I was working in Non-photo blue pencil it is very hard to see what I was doing on these pages.

Week 6 out of class

      This week outside of class we had to read two chapters from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. The first chapter dealt with the gutter. I never really thought of he gutter as being important, but McCloud says that it is really one of the most important parts of a comic. It is where we link separate images into a complete idea through closure. Closure is the process that happens where we imagine or assume what happens whenever we can't actually see what it is happening. This helps comics move along without showing every action or scene frame by frame. The second chapter dealt with time and how we perceive it in comics. McCloud says that time can be controlled in comics by four ways, content of the panel (including words and sounds), number of panels, closure between panels, and the shape of a panel. Also outside of class his week I bought a non-photo blue pencil and practiced with it. I have never used one before and it amazed me how effective it was, when I took the pictures to put on my blog I couldn't see the lines at all without doing any erasing. I wished I had picked one up a while ago. With the pencil I practiced inking in some characters for the comic. Also since I was working with the pen I decided to try and nail down an art style for the house. To this point, how I had been drawing the house had been changing around a bit. Number one is a more realistic style while number two is much more lose and abstract. Number three is the one I am going to stick with moving forward. I think it is a good balance of realism and iconic abstraction and captures what McCloud says about not having the art distract from the content. It is clearly a house and isn't too loose like number one, but it does not have to many distracting details either.

Week 6B

Today was in class work time to continue and develop our comics. I choose to focus on finishing some designs for people and objects that I still hadn’t nailed down entirely.

The first was planning out what Gerald (the man who ages with the address) looks like throughout his life. I tried to keep his face the same as he ages, but since it's a very simple face I was worried that people wouldn’t recognize him as the same person. So I ended up having him wear the same shirt in all of the panels. It’s unrealistic, but It's important that people recognize that it’s the same man.

The next thing I worked on was practicing drawing small figures and details. Since the comic will be zoomed out most of the time it’s important that I can draw the figures and have them be recognizable at a small size. I also redesigned the moving truck at a small size.

Next I worked on designing Gerald’s truck since I wanted to have it be in a panel, but did not have a solid plan for it. At first I stuck with a typical pickup truck, but then I thought of the Ford Econoline trick. I decided to stick with the Econoline because of how odd it looks.

Finally I practiced drawing the house on fire. I wasn’t satisfied with how I had drawn it in the thumbnail sketches so I worked at it some more. I think what make this one more successful is moving the smoke cloud up higher and showing more flames.

week 6A

Today In class we shared our thumbnail sketches and designs with two different groups. People were excited about my neighborhood layout idea so that is enough for me to pursue that one. Some feedback I got about it was that I should try to add a few close ups to add a bit more character to the humans interacting with the house. They felt that it was a bit to distant at the moment. After meeting in the groups we had in class work time. I started on a more detailed sketch of the page. I also made a couple of changes. I dropped the amount of house in each row to three instead of four. Four felt like it was too much info for the readers in my opinion, and three felt like a good solution since two would probably not be enough. I also added the close ups that my team mates suggested. The closeups will focus solely on the boy who grows up with the house and is the one who changes it. I think the speech bubbles will also go into the close ups, just to keep the page neater. I didn’t quite finish the page, I will probably finish it this evening.