Comic
I think I will start with the comic this time, rather than the written part. The mid-point review will include what I’ve written here then. I have mostly gotten around to drawing more readable versions of the comic pages, but I have to say that the results are underwhelming. Leaving aside the messiness and how long it’s taken for me to finalize just a few pages, I think the story isn’t well-served by my having avoided the initial confrontation with the Snow Queen. I thought I was clever when I jumped straight to the part where they talk, but I think it just goes by too quickly. There’s only so much one can do in less than twenty pages, but still. This Queen is a loner and a hunter and I think the reader should see the protagonists as they feel a little bit like they’re being stalked before she essentially tells them to get off her lawn. I think I will try my hand at conveying this in a page or two, that way we also get context for Morten losing his peg leg and the rest of the group being so far away from Verner when his confrontation with Ida (the Snow Queen) happens. By the way, I did not notice that Morten has two legs in the full-body shot of the group until I started writing this. I don’t know how that happened, the peg leg is one of his more important traits! And it happens to be important here specifically because he loses it in the fight and that’s why Runa is supporting him. No wonder something looked wrong.
I made a stand-in title page and an exposition page for the sake of context, but I would like to have a more dramatic cover with Ida as the main focal point. I also made a very quick map, because I like maps in fantasy stories. It will need some changes because I’ve not made a definitive outline, so I don’t know exactly what places the characters stop at yet, but it’s good for now.
I was going to work on an establishing shot and then got distracted. On brand for me, but not helpful. So that establishing shot will have to be part of the next assignment.
The sketchy bits need clean up, like on Maia’s panel and many more panels in this project.
That leg! I can’t believe it. Also, I’m still deciding how much detail I want the characters to have, considering I’m redrawing them many times on a single page. On the one hand, this looks sparse and a bit strange to me, on the other hand I don’t know how many extra pockets and bags I want to draw.
This is functional (if messy) but I think it’s too abrupt. I think I would really like the first time they see Ida to be with her just as a pair of glowing eyes in the dark and then they fall into her trap. Or she just steps out to meet them and tell them off. The point is that I think a dramatic reveal is due and this doesn’t achieve that at all.
Also, this argument feels like it’s been won far too quickly without having seen the previous fight. Or even the beginning of the conversation.
I really like how some panels are flatter and others are more painterly here. I’m not sure if others would find that inconsistent though.
I made the page dark and the panels mostly white to show it’s a flashback.
Should probably make the magic glow a little more there. I like how I did it in the third-to-last page.
The perspective and the ice palace doors are awful, but I still haven’t managed to make a design I like for the palace. And again, I could make the magic glow more.
I thought I could make Morten and Runa switching places make sense, but it really doesn’t. She needs to support him because he’s lost his peg leg (that’s why he’s leaning on his rife too), so supporting him on the wrong side when taking the stairs would be a little useless.
Being at the halfway point means I now have to make a decision about how much I want to keep working on this comic. I will add the establishing shot, the intro page, the title page in order to give context and make it look more complete, like it’s part of a series. The thing I’m not sure about is the level of refining I want for the pages I’ve mostly completed. It does look very rough, all over. Mostly because of my haphazard process. I do want to clean up some parts of it (and correct inconsistencies like Runa and Morten switching positions) but there’s cleaning up and then there’s just basically redrawing the whole thing. And that would probably be time better spent on a new project.
Including a couple of pages at least hinting to the beginning of the fight and a more dramatic reveal for Ida would be good though.
Review
The focus of this course:
“Stage Three aims to synthesize your learning by extending a systematic and coherent body of knowledge, utilizing specialist skills through self-directed study, critically evaluate ideas and evidence from a range of sources and apply creative skills and significant judgements.
This stage should be shaped by your own interests and ambitions, and it provides a platform for you to define and achieve your own creative outcomes.
It aims to equip you with the knowledge, understanding, and application of skills to continue your practice in whatever direction you choose.”
The aims of this unit:
A1 To enable you to identify external contexts for your creative practice.
A2 To inform practice through external engagement and contextual research.
A3 To encourage independence through professional levels of persona, transferable, and graduate skills.
A4 To enable varying modes of presentation and information sharing to communicate knowledge, understanding and skills.
In review of the last five parts, I think there’s been more floundering than “synthesizing my learning by extending a systematic and coherent body of knowledge”. I will confess that reading my learning logs back has been physically painful. I know I am a neurotic mess, but I think something about the self-directed nature of this course is really bringing it out of me. There’s a distinct lack of focus. Mostly because I’m not sure what I want the final result to be and because I seem to be changing my plan every single week. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I did do away with the social media idea fairly early and I didn’t work on the website thing in tandem with the comic and dissertation like I planned.
Also, I’m not really showing my process as much as I used to. I know I said that I’m not exactly focusing on exploration right now, but there’s still more stuff to show about how I work than what I’ve posted on here. There’s also the fact that most of what I’ve been working on has been knowledge-based and so my learning log entries look a bit different than they did when I was working on five different exercises per update. Lots more pictures, for one.
I first tried for a January deadline, which has obviously passed, and somewhat misunderstood the concept of “external partners”. I thought I would need to use whatever resources available to me and reach out “externally” and document whatever happened. I tried doing this via social media, but was unsure how to keep a consistent schedule and did not really have a goal beyond sharing some things that I had made and hope people interacted with the story. Which they only sort of did.
The concept isn’t a bad one, but my execution and quick abandonment of the idea upon not seeing results rather sunk the whole ship before it could set sail. I think a better approach would be to upload more low-stakes work like process sketches or just studies and leave the more elaborate images for the portfolio. Being precious about what the account looks like isn’t necessarily a bad thing if I approach it like a portfolio, but if I want to use social media for more interaction with others, sketchy/work-in-progress looking things would be perfectly fine and more conductive to regular interaction. This is what I think I will be doing in the next few installments. Especially since I want to work with my anxiety around showing my work a little more actively. There are some artists who post their daily warm-up sketches, either as images or process videos. I think doing this would help me both with anxiety around showing my work and with being more systematic about studies and warm-ups. Posting them as process videos on Youtube rather than Instagram might also feel like less pressure, because they wouldn’t show up in the “portfolio”, which is what I’ve been treating the Instagram profile as. This way I will also have a record of videos I can show.
Speaking of portfolios, my initial plan had been to first do a comic-version of the Verner’s Tale chapter and then do a more illustrated/chapter-book version. That’s an interesting experiment theoretically, but in practice I will not be able to make a satisfying end-product with just a chapter of a book. The comic works as it is even in printed form because comics can be very short sometimes. They were (and some still are) originally magazines. But printing a single chapter of a book doesn’t quite have the same pizazz. I will work on a series of portfolio pieces instead, in continuation to my analysis of artists’ portfolios from the previous assignment. Even in the Introduction, I made a note of my very outdated portfolio, and since I plan on becoming much more active soon, it would be the best time to make some updates.
Next Steps
Social Media:
Work on anxiety around showing work by posting daily studies/warmups as shorts on YouTube. + Post portfolio illustrations as I make them.
Portfolio
In the last section, I observed some portfolios and made note of what I would need to make mine a little more complete looking. The ideal scenario would be making a page full of completed book projects, but I do not have completed book projects of a quality I feel comfortable showing, so single illustrations it will be. I need a little more variety in terms of characters, creatures, environments and compositions. I plan on using work I’ve already made in previous units as inspiration in my process. The objective is to be efficient but also to make fully-realized illustrations of:
- 5 Characters (extremely simple background/no background)
- 3 Exteriors (no more than 1-2 characters)
- 3 Interiors (no more than 1-2 characters)
+ refining the comic
This would make for a collection of eleven pieces and a project as the final result of Illustration 3.2. This would be extremely satisfying, but I’m going to err on the side of caution and say that I might end up with fewer images in a stage of completion which I feel comfortable putting up in a portfolio. I’m still going to consider the challenge as I’ve outlined it though.
