Narrative and image are inseparably linked, even the simplest images consisting only of a single color can communicate something. An illustrator must learn to use this connection to best communicate with whoever their audience is. This can be accomplished by using words, colors, symbols and composition. In this chapter I hope to learn how to use these elements in my own work.

William Hogarth was an 18th century painter, printmaker and satirical cartoonist who liked to address controversial subjects in a direct manner. His career peaked at a time when art was becoming more and more commercial, so much so that he needed to appeal to the courts for the protection of his work because of how much it was copied and sold. The Engraving and Copyright Act of 1734, also called the Hogarth Act, was the first to protect images from unfair use.

Hogarth’s approach to art is based in storytelling and moralizing. His images, whether paintings or engravings, are meant to be analyzed. A story is told and a lesson is learned. As he himself said in his manuscript that he would think of himself as a writer, and the picture a stage the characters live on. This was a somewhat new idea at the time. Interpretations and reinterpretations of legends and biblical scenes as well as historical events were the norm, but the ideas that came along with the invention of the novel were inspiring the world of visual arts as well.

In analyzing his work, we can learn much from the way he uses symbols, gestures and composition to convey his message to the viewer. The images above were created as a campaign against the consumption of gin, which was a severe problem in England at that period in time. People were driven into debt and early graves in astonishing numbers and the consumption of gin was at 32,000,000 liters in 1751.

These two engravings, meant to be viewed together, inform, or rather shock, the viewer in regard to the depths the problem that gin can lead to. The illustration to be viewed first, Beer Street, depicts a prosperous and happy scene full of healthy people going about their day, some taking a break from work and drinking a pint of English beer. Gin Lane, meant to be viewed second to enhance shock value, is a image full of people broken and killed by addiction. This is to be observed in the hanged man in the background, the coffin, the funeral procession, the people handing over the tools of their trade just for a few more pennies to spend on gin, and the central figure of the woman letting her baby fall to its death while she apathetically draws out a box of snuff. She was apparently based on the real cases of women like Judith Dufour and Mary Eastwick, the first who strangled her child and sold its clothes for gin money, the second who fell asleep in a stupor and let the child burn to death.

The artist uses several tools to portray his point. The most striking is contrast. The images, though separate must be viewed together to understand the message, which on the surface is “Drink beer not gin” and in more depth is a story of class and poverty. The characters in the first image are well fed, even obese, smiling and singing, as can be seen in the verses below the image. The characters in the second are emaciated, desperate, and dying, the poem at the bottom is a warning against gin. Even the buildings in the second image are crumbling. The only functional places on Gin Lane are the pawnbroker and the distiller. In the first image there is a hanging barrel of beer, while in the second a hanging coffin and a hangman. In the first people are carrying around entire baskets of fish and vegetables while in the second both a person and a dog are gnawing on a bone. In the first people are sitting around, drinking, smoking, romancing maids, while in the first they are killing children, rioting and hungering. On Gin Lane people are desperately gathering around the pawnbroker, while on Beer Street someone is selling to the pawnbroker.

Hogarth also uses small details to give the characters more story. Such as the key in the girl’s hand from the first image, which suggests that she is a maid, or the saw in the hand of man at the pawn shop from the second image, which suggests his profession as a carpenter.

On a broader level, it is interesting to see how the compositions are structured in such a way that they mirror. On Beer street the man on the far left seems propped against the edge of the page, while on Gin Lane the man on the far right is leaning back against the page. The pawnbroker’s building also seems to become one if the two images are placed together, especially because the light comes from the same direction. The images aren’t meant to make a single picture, but the parallels bring cohesion.

Those are just a few of the symbols and stories hidden in plain sight by Hogarth in these engravings. It’s truly fascinating to see how many elements one can fit into a scene while also not making it too abstract in its symbolism or too crowded looking.

A single saying can have multiple meanings depending on perspective, as can be seen in the illustrations above which are both related to the phrase “You are what you eat.”. The task at hand is to select a similar saying and depict two different perspectives on it, keeping in mind Hogarth’s illustrations and how he approached his own subject.

I chose the saying “A leopard can never change its spots.”. Most often this means that people’s core nature does not change over time, or that it is impossible for someone to change deeply ingrained habits. I started the brainstorming process in the sketchbook, writing the proverb down then thinking of two different interpretations for the illustrations.

Interpretation one (1) or the “control” (similar to how Hogarth had Beer Street as a control to Gin Lane) is the more obvious option and would have to do with a person engaging in a activity which proves that they haven’t changed.

Interpretation (2) is a little more tricky and nuanced. I wanted to draw a scene where someone is being judged based on past action (perhaps rightfully), but they are also someone who is trying to make a real change. A difficult thing to do if they are being judged at every turn.

Interpretation 1

The most obvious idea for interpretation 1 was to show a young man who keeps moving from girl to girl. This was the first idea I sketched. But then I thought that it would be more interesting if I reversed the genders of the characters, meaning that the girl was the flighty one. I tried out this idea by sketching it out on paper with pencil and then refining the sketch in Photoshop. I thought the idea was best conveyed by drawing a scene where the girl has already moved on to a different boy while the first one looks on longingly. I also wanted some sort of speaker, as if they are the ones giving the saying, so I drew the poor young man a friend to console him. Though the fact that he chooses to say something related to leopards and spots, he must not be too sympathetic to his friend’s misfortune. So I drew him shrugging and giving an impassive expression.

In the first image, now entitled “Told you last time…” two characters stand on a bench and a couple passes them. At first I had wanted to be able to see the faces of the characters, but ended up changing their position because I realized that the girl walking away rater than towards the character on the bench has more thematic visual meaning. I thought this sort of drama would work best with younger characters, so I made a point to include backpacks and make their faces pretty young. Hopefully some of the details on the characters also add to the story. I made use of the eyeglass stereotype and made the young man skinner, gave him a less flattering haircut to make him look more like a “nerd”, in comparison with the boy the girl ends up with, who looks like he might be into sports. The defeated young man is also wearing loudly printed, mismatched socks which could be a testament to his general absentmindedness or even poor taste. The boy’s friend, our narrator, is a little better dressed, or at least more tidy. He has keys on a lanyard at the neck, which means that his parents are both working and consider him responsible enough to handle himself. But his expression is of course the most telling thing about him and their relationship in this illustration.

I struggled a little with composition because in order to mimic the Hogarth prints, the drawings would need to relate to each other not only in theme but in composition. I began making some decisions which would help mirror them in order to keep cohesion between the two drawings. Both drawings make use of one point perspective and both of them have the speaker sitting on the left, where the viewer starts looking at the drawing. Then the perspective moves the eye to the right where the person with the leopard print is, the girl with a printed dress in the first and a man with a printed tie in the second.

Adjustments had to be made several times after photographing the drawing in order to bring the compositions closer together and to add more detail to the environments. Both images were inked digitally, again keeping in mind Hogarth’s images as inspiration.

In the second image, now entitled “Better luck next time…” two men sit in an office at a job interview. Our narrator is on the left, holding some papers and keeping an unconvinced expression. The second man is on the right, again the perspective aids the viewer’s eye, and he looks either nervous or resigned. More clues for the specifics of the situation are in the image on the desktop computer, a mug shot, the second character’s slightly misshapen nose and face tattoo which says “Lucky”. This is all in contrast with his immaculate clothing (marred only by the terrible tie) and sharp haircut, especially compared to the boss character on the left who is wearing a short sleeved shirt, ripped jeans, and stubble growth. The man on the right is an ex-con, but I tried my best to show that he is choosing to take a better path, even if most people and most employers will not be able to look beyond his “spots”. Initially, I had planned the face tattoo to be leopard spots, as can be seen in the sketches, but I couldn’t make it work. It just looked like he had some sort of disease. The idea would probably work better in color and/or his face was much bigger on the page. I settled for just writing something related to the theme which I thought a young criminal might impulsively tattoo on his face. “Lucky” seemed to be in a similar enough vein with face tattoos I saw online.

Other elements adding to the composition are the various mugs, takeout containers, broken fans and outdated computer (indicated by the fact that the man has a smartphone on his desk) are supposed to tell the viewer that this business is not going well, so the interviewee cannot be aiming very high for a job, which says more about the state of his credentials when he is refused. I also tried to make the blinds on the window mimic prison bars, but I am not sure I entirely succeeded.

Elena Napoli

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a bizarre, but highly human story of a man named Gregor who wakes up in the morning ready to go to work, only to realize that he has been turned into an enormous critter. The meaning behind the story is debatable, but what is certain is that we can readily recognize ourselves or people we know in the characterization of Gregor and his family, who are the ones dealing with the consequences of his plight in the telling. Kafka paints vivid images with his words which have been turned in media other than the written word. Below I have selected a few illustrations, a graphic novel, an educational video, and a ballet. They all chose to approach the same images in different ways, depending on their medium and the limitations that medium presents.

Iker Ayestaran

The most iconic images in the story are of the enormous bug, Gregor, lying back on the bed, the image of the small room with the closed door, and images of his family backing away in terror as they realize what he has become. It is interesting to see how various artists approach drawing Gregor/the bug. Some prefer to keep things fairly realistic, as we can see in the magazine illustrations, others take a more abstract approach, as we can see in Iker Ayestaran’s work. Ayestaran superimposes the Gregor sleeping in his bed with the giant shape of the bug to suggest the looming transformation, and to show as best as he can that in those first moments Gregor does not fully internalize the transformation (all he does is ruminate on the plights of his life as a salesman and what will happen once his boss realizes that Gregor is late for work).

The linocut by Natalia Moroz is a wonderful play of light and shape as she includes the silhouettes of the parents among the shadows among the abstract lines and wonky perspective designed to enhance the eeriness of the situation.

Peter Kuper’s graphic novel is a different approach to the story and a challenge considering that so much of it is dependent on Gregor’s inner monologue, but from the panels I have seen he does a great job of telling the story through sequential imagery. He takes a slightly different approach to the design of the creature in that he chooses to give it a humanoid head, most likely so that the reader would be able to distinguish Gregor’s facial expressions clearly. A very practical choice considering he is the main character.

Peter Kuper

TED video

In the realm of video, I chose two, the first an animated educational video on Kafka by TED and the second a ballet. In the TED video I especially liked the image with the clock, since it was original and quite clever, as Gregor would have snoozed his clock at some point, even though he doesn’t remember by the time he wakes up.

The Metamorphosis was also preformed as a ballet, which I have linked twice as there are both short videos by the Royal Opera House a full recording by what I believe is a Czech company, though I could be wrong about that. The most striking thing about it is the performance of the main character and how they choose to depict the abomination in the Samsa household. The performer does not wear a costume, just shorts and some dark goo. The bug like elements come entirely from the choreography. It is rather impossible to describe in words. Another interesting thing about the performance is the way they chose to divide the stage with an invisible wall, which exists only when the characters interact with it, except for the moment (which can be seen in the Royal Opera House clip) when the family breaks down the door and a bright light is shone, revealing the metamorphosis and showing the silhouette of the thematic door, created by a lighting effect.

Royal Opera House

Czech Ballet

The interaction of text and image on a book cover is probably the most vital thing to keep in mind when making a design as it can not only affect the legibility of the message but also greatly affect the reader’s perception of the book. Flowing text framed with many flourishes and delicate drawings gives a different impression from a bold font overtaking the cover to the point it overflows to the back and squeezes the image into the margins, and both are different from a regular, centered font with a single portrait above or below it. I have selected examples from several different categories of book covers where text interacts with image. All are theoretically good approaches if paired with a book fitting said approach, but execution can vary in the particular examples I have chosen.

Despite the theme, I thought it would be a good idea to start at the more minimalistic side of things, where image is not necessary. Here the font can be left to shine, whether in a frame or with a subtle textured or colored background. Or perhaps a bold background as in the example on the right, where the simplicity makes a statement. A book designed as in the example on the left showing the classic Penguin Books cover would give a different feeling from the simplicity of Burn the Fairy Tales. It is timeless, simple and can easily fit in a collection.

The second category, the most varied and most common, is of text separate from image. Whether both are framed separately, or the text is superimposed on the image they are still separate entities from one another. Sometimes the image is built to flow around the text, other times it simply makes room for it by leaving a mostly flat space, the approach I like the least is using a semitransparent shape or gradient behind the text and over the image in order to keep the text readable. Sometimes it can work with the right image, but still more times it does not. I think it obscures the necessary sharpness of the letters and makes them just a little less clean, if not illegible.

Third on the list are covers with text which interacts with image in some way. This can range from a shape weaving in and out of the text to the text being misshapen by a character or the environment of the image. This is  a more difficult approach, but a more creative one and can probably be accomplished with most titles if the designer is willing. It requires more thought, but also will be more likely to attract a secont look in my opinion.

Image interacting with text.

Image becoming text.

Lastly, text and image becoming fused into what is basically a single image. It is definitely the most artistic approach, though it only works with certain types of books and is dependent on the text of the title itself being compatible with a visualized concept for the book.

Having these categories in mind when designing book covers in the future will definitely make the process a little easier. This way, I can easily eliminate ideas from the get-go and focus on the more viable options for the specific brief and client.

Pinterest Board with more examples of interaction between text and image.

Pauline Baynes

Some stories and books were immortalized by illustrators in such a manner that their images have remained iconic, even after others had their own attempts at the story afterwards. E. H. Shepard’s illustrations in Winnie the Pooh and Maurice Sendak’s work in Where the Wild Things Are both stand as examples of visual storytelling which has become inseparable from the written text they were inspired by. Another such artist is Pauline Baynes, whose work depicting C. S. Lewis’ famous Chronicles of Narnia has been beloved since its publishing.

Photographs sourced from official website: The Collection from Pauline Baynes

The Chronicles of Narnia have a wealth of beautiful imagery and charming creatures which Baynes took full advantage of in her illustrations. She was still at the beginning of her career when she made the first illustrations for Lewis, but original black and white images still inspire the imagination. Color and meticulous attention to detail are the things which define her work, as can also be seen in other works of hers like A Dictionary of Chivalry and Bilbo’s Last Song. Her drawings are painstakingly detailed and carefully researched when it comes to period clothing and architecture. Most of her work included humans but her love was of plants and animals which she included in her illustrations in great quantity and variety. She has been criticized of human characters which lack expression or distinction from one another, but “same face syndrome” is not an uncommon problem for artists in general.

The illustrations in the Narnian books are largely not of sweeping scenes, but smaller moments or snippets of the action of the book. They bring one into the scene, earnestly inviting the reader to take part of a conversation with a faun or a talking badger. She is not much interested in realism, but nonetheless the labor of love going into each little world give the illustrations an impression of truth.

Task: Create a series of black and white illustrations based on a fairy tale.

The fairytale “Făt-Frumos cu păr de aur” translated “Prince Charming, the Golden-Haired”, is not very well-known but it has several familiar tropes and themes. The foundling prince in the story is raised by a hermit. After the old man dies the Prince is accompanied by a magical horse on many adventures. They steal clothes and magic from fairies, fight magnificent battles, participate in mishaps and inevitably, meet a princess. Though there are certain unexpected aspects.

The Hermit and the young Prince gathering wood.

The Prince and the winged horse being chased by fairies.

The horse advised the Prince to dip his hair in a magical pool the fairies owned before they did. Upon doing so, his hair turned to gold and the fairies became very angry. The horse also advised to steal three opulent sets of clothes before fleeing, one like a meadow with flowers, one like the starry sky, and one like the sun and moon.

The Prince and the winged horse destroying the garden in their merriment.

And on the day her father tries to marry her off like her sisters, she demands that all the suitors present themselves at her tower window. The Princess promises to marry the man she throws a golden apple at. The suitors pass beneath her window, but she refuses to throw the apple until someone drags the gardener’s apprentice to the event. Everyone is shocked when the Princess chooses the poor, ugly, bald man to be her husband and her entire family, including the King and her brothers-in-law, becomes rather resentful of them. But they live happily in a little house outside the city.

One day war breaks out on account of the king having married his most beautiful daughter to a commoner. This only increases resentment between the in-laws and the young man, so much so that they barely let him go out to fight with them. But they eventually relent and give him a mule to ride behind the rest of the army. On each of the three battles, he swaps his mule for the winged horse, his rags for the fairy-clothes, and the bald cap for golden locks. He fights so fiercely and the opposing army so fears him, that the Prince’s army wins and everyone gets to come home. Though on the way back he is mocked for having gotten stuck in the mud with his mule. The King returns home with his arm bound with a part of the Prince’s kerchiefs.

The tide of battle turned by the Prince.

Upon returning home, the King becomes ill and blind and says he will only heal if he can wash his eyes with the milk of a wild red goat. He promises his kingdom to the one able to bring him the milk. The two eldest brothers-in-law set out without taking the Prince with them, but he manages to get ahead of them on his winged horse and milk the goats before they even scale the mountain. On the way back, he dresses as a herdsman and meets the other princes. They offer gold in exchange for the milk, but he only asks to mark them as his slaves with hot irons instead. Thinking that no one would ever believe a lowly peasant if he made his claims of them, they agree. The Prince gives them regular milk instead of the magical kind. The milk doesn’t work, of course, and after much begging on the part of the youngest daughter the King relents to have his eyes bathed with the Prince’s milk.

The old man’s eyes miraculously heal and they have an enormous celebration. At dinner, the Prince asks if it is lawful for slaves to sit with nobles to which the King says no. The Prince confesses he was the herdsman and that the other two princes are marked by him, which they are forced to prove. This causes an uproar, and the Prince disappears only to re-enter the room clad magnificently and sporting golden hair. He also reveals the missing part of the kerchief the King’s arm was bound with in battle.

Now, the King’s offer of his kingdom becomes much more gracious, and he congratulates his young daughter for her choice of husband. The Prince’s first act of power is to release his brothers-in-law from their servitude. And then the party, at which the author was a witness, goes on and on with good food and much merriment. And so the charming fairytale ends.

The grand reveal at the King’s court.

The tale was retold by the beloved Romanian writer and folklorist Petre Ispirescu, whose work has cemented many iconic tales into the our national psyche, both in the historical and fairytale realms.

The illustrations were realized with pencil, ink wash and dip pen on A3 paper. The technique is not one I had used before. Essentially, it was an experiment with graphite and ink. I generally tend to not use pencil in ink illustrations beyond the initial sketch, which gets erased as soon as possible, but now I decided to build on the layers of graphite, occasionally sealed in the paper with water, and then use ink as a last layer. The style was most influenced by the black-and-white illustrations I remember seeing in certain folktale books when I was small, along with Arthur Rackham’s representation of Grimm’s Fairytales.

Page one depicts the beginning of the Prince’s journey and his relationship to the old hermit. The story specifies that they were poor enough not to own proper clothes, so I tried to reflect that by showing them in rags and without shoes. But I wanted the scene to be a happy one, since the hermit had been very happy to find a child to care for, though he did not know the child was the unwanted child of a princess far away.

Page two gets the reader straight into the action as the Prince flees with his newly-golden hair. I tried to show as much emotion as possible for both parties. Anger on the side of the buzzing, pointing, yelling fairies. Fear and possibly giddy adrenaline on the side of the Prince. Capturing a sense of motion was a challenge and horse anatomy does not get any easier when one adds wings. Nor does the position of the rider.

Page three was a challenge in setting rather than motion. I wanted to have a small glimpse of the princess in the far away window, so I had to figure out a way to show the chaos caused by the Prince and horse in the garden whilst also showing the tower. Overall, the perspective is not great and I should not design garden landscaping anytime soon, but the horse and rider are amusing enough that I don’t find them too distracting. This is the first illustration showing the clothes stolen from the fairies. This one shows the suit “like a meadow of flowers”.  The inspiration for this came from 18th century men’s suits (especially French) which were, at their most ostentatious, amply embroidered with flowers.

On page four, the Prince wears a starry cloak, which disappears into the sky as he rides in battle. The focus, aside from the flying rider, is mostly on the reactions of the soldiers. The enemies of the Prince are shocked and awed while the Prince’s army is overjoyed and reinvigorated by the sight of the mysterious warrior.

Lastly, on page five the Prince is dressed in the sun and moon ensemble, though the moon would theoretically be on the back of his cloak. I decided not to include it because I didn’t want the moon motif to create confusion with the similarly night-based one on the previous page. In the story, everyone is sitting at a table, but I was not sure how to accomplish that on a vertical page orientation, so I used a bit of artistic license and set the action in the throne room instead.

One of the best ways to learn how to create sequential images is by analyzing films and the way they treat the progression of the characters on the screen and how they pace their shots, frame the scenes, and develop the overall flow of the story.

I recently started watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier so I chose to analyze the second episode as an exercise.

The genre show is essentially a blend of the buddy-cop and superhero movie. The action takes place in a world post the apocalypse and victory of the heroes in the previous films. The premise is that Steve Rogers, the legendary Captain America, is now aged and cannot take up the shield in a shaken world that needs a symbol to look up to. So he hands over the mantle to his friend Sam Wilson, who refuses it. James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve’s best friend since WWII, takes issue with this. The first episode had been wholly dedicated to establishing both their mindsets and their environment, as well as the main threat they must eventually face together, but the two never actually interact. In this episode the writers establish exactly what their relationship is. As is customary in buddy-cop movies, they mostly dislike each other. Though each respects the other’s abilities and always has his back in a fight.

Visually, the showrunners made the interesting but natural choice to reflect the color palette and style of the Captain America: The Winter Soldier film, in which our protagonists respectively are introduced (Sam) and revealed to not be dead (Bucky). Everything has somewhat of a grey cast and the look veers closer to “action thriller” than “adventure” or even “superhero”. An aesthetic that Marvel had employed early on in order to make the films more grounded in reality, but eventually abandoned upon being criticized for their rather muddy looking shots. The Winter Soldier is perhaps the one film for which the approach fit perfectly, given it had more to do with secret agents than superheroes. Given that the show is the more serious variety of buddy-cop story, this approach works excellently.

I have not yet watched the full show, so I cannot give an impression on the overall plot and structure, but this episode already has plenty of material to analyze. The first interesting point is that I had expected to separate the episode in sections according to action scenes. Usually in an action film or show the writer spreads plot and character development in between action scenes in order to keep the interest of the viewer. I took a look at my notes and saw that I had only written about one, I thought that it might be a mistake on my part, but no, the 45 minute action show episode only has one fight scene at the first quarter mark. I probably didn’t feel the lack because the conflict of the story is mostly centered not around the outside conflict with the “Flagsmasher” terrorist group, but between the two characters. I should have probably deduced this from the number of times I wrote “bickering” in my notes as I was watching.

The thing that ties the narrative together is the question “Why did you not accept the shield?” which Bucky asks Sam at every key point in the episode in some form or another. It is also what creates the climax of the episode when they are both literally forced into a therapy session by Bucky’s court assigned therapist. The conflict throughout the episode plays a lot like a one-sided game of tennis in that Bucky keeps asking while Sam either avoids by addressing the problem of the terrorists or straight up refusing to answer. Usually, the climax would change this pace and have him answer the question, especially since Bucky actually opens up and tells his true reason for pestering Sam, but because this is a serialized story the writers can reverse the expectation by having Sam say that all they have to  do is get through taking care of the bad guys and then they “never have to see each other again”.

Other notes on the episode:

• The cheerleaders and show on the football stadium for the inauguration of the new, UN-appointed, Captain America. The show doesn’t explicitly have to state that his journey directly mirrors the one of the original Captain because we associate the scene with Steve’s touring around the country in the name of selling bonds.

• The use of warm lighting (if possible) and overtly compassionate behavior in the scenes where the villains interact with each other, demonstrating complexity of character rather than two-dimensional evil intent.

• When Sam and Bucky are having a discussion in their usual tone (bickering), but are unfortunately situated in a neighborhood where someone took notice and called the cops on them. They ask Bucky if there is a problem, because they notice Sam’s skin color but not the fact that he’s a world-renowned superhero. Bucky ends up being the one in cuffs, as there is a warrant out for his arrest because he missed one of his court-mandated therapy sessions.

The best example of sequential illustration is in comic books and graphic novels. A comic artist must know how to tell the story visually: how to make movement convincing, how to make the sequence of events clear and interesting, and how to incorporate other elements such as text. Three of the most influential artists in western comics whose works I particularly enjoy are Mike Mignola, Georges Remi and Alex Ross.

1. Mike Mignola

Gotham by Gaslight was the first real comic book I ever read. I had seen comic strips before, and not really liked them, and had come across comic continuations of films when I was younger, but had not put much stock in them. This was the comic that convinced me. I absolutely loved Mignola’s mix of simplicity and boldness. Much of his work relies on silhouette and contrast, which is not unusual as most art relies on these things, but in graphic novels where the images are read like words and are not always larger than one’s thumb these things are extremely important. And Mignola knows how to push them and mold them to fit his stories.

2. Hergé (Georges Remi)

Remi’s work looks deceptively simple. The characters are more cartoonish than realistic, the lines and backgrounds are clean and without much texture. The character designs are distinct and easy to recognize from afar. But I think that the best thing about his work is the movement, the action. At a time when much of what the characters did had to be written out in dialogue (and oftentimes monologue) in order for the reader to make sense of the story, Georges Remi relies solely on the movement of the characters to make a scene work. Above, we can see how this is portrayed in physical comedy. The characters are having a conversation, but the reader can also see how they interact physically and it allows for layers of storytelling. Today, cinematic storytelling in comic books is not entirely uncommon, but Hergé was ahead of his time.

3. Alex Ross

Alex Ross is famous for his realistic approach to graphic novel covers, especially when illustrating superheroes. He brings the characters closer to reality whilst also elevating them to a mythical status. The superheroes are no longer ink doodles on a page, and they more than “realistic”. His work builds on a Norman Rockwell sort of idealism and nostalgia not only in his approach to the subject but in the painting technique itself. He paints traditionally using gouache or acrylics and a very important part of his artistic process is taking photographs for his references.

Task: Illustrate a one-page sequential illustration based on the concept of “girl meets boy”.

The Concept

The traditional phrase “boy meets girl” rather than “girl meets boy” is used to describe a romantic story structure wherein the boy meets the girl, then the boy looses the girl (in fairytales an evil force like a dragon would steal her), he then fights for her hand, saving her literally or by regaining her affection. The prompt would obviously be a gender-reversed version of this story. I had the story of Hades and Persephone on my mind and it seemed especially fitting because of the reversal of perspective the legend has gone through over time.

The Rape of Persephone by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622, stone, Galeria Borghese

The Fate of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld; Goddess of Spring by Walter Crane, oil and tempera on canvas, 1877

As shown in the above depictions of the tale, the original story of Persephone is a violent, but rather run of the mill bride kidnapping (as far as legends and fairy-tales go). The story is meant to explain why every few months the weather turns cold and why after a few more moths it warms up again and brings nature back to life. Winter is a terrible thing if one lives off the land, so for an ancient person telling this story it wouldn’t be too dark to suppose that the goddess of spring is stolen and taken to to the land of the dead every autumn. It isn’t a love story, it’s about explaining a natural phenomenon.

However, modern storytellers do change the original legend to a love story. Usually elements of Eros and Psyche or Beauty and the Beast tend to get mixed in the narrative. Depending on how close one sticks to the legend, this can either lead to telling a disturbing tale of kidnapping, emotional manipulation and a stunning case of Stockholm Syndrome. Or if one chooses to stray very far, as many do, it becomes a story of a young woman learning to live apart from her over-protective mother and falling in love with Tall, Dark and Handsome a.k.a. Hades.  It has even been popularly suggested that in the original legend Persephone actually goes down into the Underworld of her own free will, and that the kidnapping was a latter addition; however, I do not think there is any real proof of this claim. The only thing that would support it is the fact that a Persephone-like goddess seems to have existed far before Hades did, along with the story of going to the land of the dead and then re-emerging. But that would make it a different story altogether, and it is no the one I am illustrating here.

Brainstorming

While brainstorming, I mostly thought of style and about how to show the story in a different light. When people go about illustrating classic stories or myths they generally try to put a new, fun spin to it. I thought about doing that. Then I did not do that. I instead went back in time and looked at Greek and Roman sculptures as inspiration for the figure designs. I tried my best to combine that style with the comic panel format. Sketching digitally allowed me to try several iterations for the structure of the panels and the scenes that would best describe the story. Of course, the story I am telling is a love story and one centering the female lead, so I interpreted the “kidnapping” as Persephone accidentally crashing into the Underworld throne room. (Girl meets boy.) The next panel shows the two bonding, and the third shows Demeter, Persephone’s mother, turning the world into a wasteland in her grief. The fourth panel is made of two stages: (1) Demeter comes into the Underworld and attacks Hades, which is not quite how the story goes but I have taken some liberties, (2) Persephone makes her choice to be tied to the Underworld by eating of the pomegranate tree. (Girl looses boy, girl wins boy back.) The last two panels show the three of them being mostly reconciled and summer returning.

Drawing

Since I found drawing on such small panels difficult by traditional means, I stuck to a digital medium. This way I could achieve much more detail and a cleaner result than I could have when using paper and pen. Even comic book inkers with years of experience eventually clean up their drawings digitally, so I went with the easier option as a beginner.

The first coloring stage

The illustration actually went through several types of color palettes, all pretty colorful and bright. Unfortunately I did not save the experiments. I had tried to combine the style with a modern-looking sort of color scheme and it was not working.  Then I realized that if the style mimics art from the past then the colors should too. We have few extant examples of ancient Greek color schemes, and all of them tend to be in pottery. The pots offer a beautiful array of ochres, blacks, reds, and browns. This approach to color created a much more unified composition.

The second coloring stage

Several more details were added while re-coloring like the yoked bulls, and some more Greek motifs inspired by pottery, but so many as to drastically change the page. I do like the final result. Though if I were to think of this as a mock-up for a larger project, I would try to solve some of the issues with clarity. It seems my style doesn’t quite translate. Perhaps a thicker line would work well for the line art. And I think the characters could use more stylization in order to show emotion better.

Animation means movement. A still image is never really “animated”. We can say that a still image looks lifelike or like it could move, but it doesn’t really, it’s the illusion of a two dimensional plane moving in a three dimensional way. People have experimented with making two dimensional things appear three dimensional or life-like ever since they started drawing on cave walls. Egyptian paintings, Greek reliefs, Medieval tapestries and church murals depict stories where the characters “move” from one place to the next. But that is more akin to a comic book than an animated film. The real magic happens when one starts overlapping those stages of movement and starts playing with optics. Objects like the Thaumatrope, Zoetrope, and Praxinoscope were early experiments with images moving with such speed that it seems the image itself is moving. After the ability to make images move, came the ability to project them on a screen or wall and so came the invention of film and animation. It is still a relatively recent invention, but one we are still constantly improving and experimenting with.

Animation is a modern medium, but technology has evolved with an unprecedented speed in the last hundred years, allowing animation to go through several astonishing transformations along the way. The four I have chosen to describe below are not the only styles or even mediums animation uses, but they are descriptive of the main trends popular animations have followed.

1. Sleeping Beauty

It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that animation and Disney were almost synonymous for a time, but not by much. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a critical success and really the first animation to reach such heights, but I personally think that Sleeping Beauty takes the artistic ambitions of Snow White to their natural and spectacular conclusion. The backgrounds (by Eyvind Earle) are among the most beautiful in animation history. The characters move fluidly and not just naturally, they dance across the fantastical backdrop and belong completely in it. The film is truly like a modern medievalist tapestry brought to life. I believe it has some of the finest 2D animation ever made.

2. The Adventures of Tintin

This film is perhaps on the completely opposite side of the spectrum. It employs motion capture technology, which some would argue makes it something outside the realm of animation, but I personally think that it is 3D animation brought to a natural next step. It may not be especially obvious in some films (such as Beowulf) where the animation strays rather too much into the uncanny valley, but this film did something more. Instead of trying to recreate the actor’s faces into a digital animation with all precision, Tintin stylizes them. The motion capture is used as a tool instead of a crutch, enabling the creators to combine the versatility of the animated medium with the live performances of the actors. The Adventures of Tintin isn’t a particularly loved film, in fact it’s list of critics is much longer than the one of its admirers, but its use of the technology is especially notable.

3. Klaus

Though made by a smaller studio, Klaus is a beautiful and successful achievement. By using the digital medium creatively, the creators strived to create the look of a Disney film made in a world where Disney didn’t choose to focus solely on 3D animation. The style focuses on light and texture, and though it is a digitally animated film, it maintains a sense of hand-made because the digital “cells” are all painted individually. The program they created for the film allows the artists to manipulate the lighting and textures in ways which make the characters look believable without actually using 3D animation.

4. Namoo

Namoo (Korean for “tree”) is a short film about the life of an artist told using a tree. It was made by Bamboo Studios, who are telling stories in a whole new way, using VR technology. I have not seen the film personally, as I do not own said VR technology and I suspect that the effect is not the same if one watches it on a screen, but I thought that it merits a place on this short list because it could be a new sort of animation medium for the future. Will it last? Who knows? At the very least, I hope there are bright things in the future of Bamboo Studios because they seem to be primarily concerned with telling stories, and that is what animation is all about, no matter the technology and the innovation.

Task: Produce a short animation with 007 as main character.

Animation is not a skill in my bag of tricks, but I tried to give it a good go. I first sketched the general choreography on paper and then moved on to animating in Photoshop. After watching a few tutorials on the subject I had a good enough grasp of the process to animate a simple bouncing ball which I did several times before attempting the more complex characters. Doing two characters was perhaps overly ambitious but the process of animation itself was not too taxing. (Especially since I kept things loose and sketchy.) The real problems began when I tried to export the animation. It simply would not work, I was frustrated to no end. Eventually, I ended up saving and exporting every single frame individually and using an online video-making software to line up the images and create the short action from them.

Task: Design an anthropomorphic character based on an animal.

Concept

African wild dogs were not my first choice, in fact I knew nothing about them before this. The reason I chose them was that they were more interesting than domestic animals which have often been designed with anthropomorphic proportions. Before starting the sketching process, I looked up the animal on the internet and familiarized myself with it’s general characteristics and behavior by reading and watching one or two documentaries. I also created a small board which would help me visualize the animal and the people who live in the same area with it.

Then, I drew a couple of studies, analyzing its proportions, coloring and thinking of how it differs from other animals I know how to draw like dogs or cats. Whilst drawing, I am also thinking of the big shapes this animal can be separated into in order to recreate it easier in the next stages.

Drawing the animal

Stylizing

After learning about the environment, proportions and anatomy of the African wild dog, I could now make an attempt at stylization. As I am not a very good cartoonist (or animator), I used a Pinterest board as an inspiration for how others have draw an anthropomorphic animal creatures.  Making an animal look human comes with all sorts of problems. It can look odd in certain styles. Sometimes there seems to be too much human in the design and others not quite enough. Also, having to determine what makes the difference between a furry and a different sort of personified animal creature was an odd enough experience on its own. (Furry drawings seem to be all about the human proportions for the body whilst having an animal head and tail. The more one borrows from the animal’s anatomy, the farther it strays from that.)

Once I had the design mostly figured out it was a very simple thing to draw it from multiple angles. The facial expressions were more difficult, but I think I did a fairly good job of keeping the face character consistent and convincing without straying too much in either Disney or furry territory.

I have to say that character design is not my favorite subject, and perhaps it shows, but I did my best to give him some expression and personality.

Conclusion to Exercises

Finally! The end has been reached. I think next time I will separate the post into multiple sections because this is ridiculously long. I have learned a lot about comics, movement, and sequential storytelling though. Despite my best efforts, I still have issues with clarity. The meaning of the images is very clear in my head and things seem to get lost in translation along the way. This is best seen in the very first exercise, where the meaning got a bit too hidden in the drawing. Exploring popular symbols in art has been recommended to me, and so has enhancing the contrast of my images.

I do think I might have done a better job on the assignment in this respect …

Assignment 3