Design Report

Jem Southam - 20241057 

Design Report  

In the beginning of the project we were asked to create our own briefs, I had been thinking about my final project for quite a period of time. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to produce my comic that had been In development for a number of years. I had previously tried to create my comic in my second year, although it was created traditionally with fine liners and markers. I wanted to improve my comic as I could see that my style of drawing had improved since the first attempt, I also felt as though many things in the story needed to change, and so I continued to develop the story throughout this project.  

I had been inspired by several artists which made me want to pursue in creating this comic, I wanted to inspire others with my own work in the same way. Each comic I had read was made digitally, as most comics are now, and so I began using a new media – a graphics tablet (Cintiq). 

I started my project by introducing my existing main characters to my CSS, which he had then told me that my two main characters Alika (female) and Akila (male) were too similar in the way that their names are easy to confuse with one another. I agreed with his opinion although I did find it difficult to change one of the characters names, as they are the main characters and have existed for 8 years now. I felt too attached to the character Akila and so I changed his sisters name from Alika to Skye, which I thought fit her character very well.  

I researched young adult fiction stories and their main plots and found that most of them were about seeing the main character go through dramatic changes in their life as they progress into an adult. I decided that instead of my story starting when my main character Skye is already an adult, I should start it when she is being born, this way the reader can see how the characters change as they grow and feel a connection with them.  

My CSS had given me the idea to make a script for my story as most comic book writers do, I re-wrote my script twice as the first script ended with having 50 comic pages, which I thought was too many for me to be able to manage in the time that I had been given until the deadline. I altered the story line slightly as I had been given helpful feedback from my CSS that would make the story sound more interesting and hook the reader at an earlier point in the comic.  

I researched styles from my favorite movies such as the lion king, Balto and Brother Bear, as the backgrounds in these movies always look very attractive. I also researched environments in North America as my story is set in a similar environment, this helped me when creating my backgrounds for my comic.  

There were several times throughout this project were I felt as though I could not get my comic completed in time due to spending a lot of time writing the script and then re-writing it and having lots of changes to the story. I had asked my CSS if I could change my project to something that I thought I could achieve a lot easier than completing a whole comic. I wanted to change my idea to a concept art book for my comic, although my CSS disagreed with this request and said he believed that I could complete the comic and so I followed his advice and proceeded with the comic. 

One of my teachers gave me feedback on my character Skye, telling me that her hairstyle did not look great, and so I developed her again, although her end design did not look too different from where it started as I thought other hairstyles did not fit her character at all. 

I found it difficult to create the perfect front cover for my comic as I wanted it to be interesting and eye catching but also portray the story properly. I sketched out several designs which included one of Akila in silhouette, although this image portrays the character further on in the story when he becomes a villain, I had positive feedback on this sketch and so I followed through with this design. I wanted Skye to also be on the cover as she is the main character and so I sketched an idea of her in the center with her younger sister, walking in the wilderness with Akila in the background, although his identity is hidden but is later revealed to the reader in the comic. When I showed this design to my CSS he told me that the most interesting part of this design was just Akila on his own. I listened to his feedback and altered the design again, this time only having Akila as the main focus, I also altered the text of the cover as he was not happy with the text I had used. This time I hand wrote the text and tried to make the text looked distorted, as that is the title of the story. I added a key and a key hole to the lettering to show that it is of importance in the story, as it is a talisman that Akila wears. I also made everything greyscale aside from Akila's eyes and a red scratch mark through the text, I did this to make it look more dramatic, my CSS thought this looked a lot stronger than my first attempt. Even with the positive feedback I felt like there was still something missing and so I tried a new design from scratch, using the silhouette idea again but this time even more dramatic, I made it so that Akila's face was right in front of the viewer, glaring with his teeth showing and his red eye glowing. I also learned how to warp the text by rasterizing it first, I once again made everything greyscale as I thought it was very effective in my first attempt and also used red in the text again as well as Akila's eye. My peers thought that this was my strongest design although when it came to my presentation my teachers thought my second design was the strongest and not the third one and so I used to the second design as the final front cover.  

When working on the pages themselves, I found that it took a lot of time to complete one of them, I was very focused on making sure the page looked polished and spent a lot of time getting the colors and lines right. I found that it was taking me too long to complete one page as I would spend around two days just completing one page, this resulted in only ten of the thirty five pages being colored. I wanted to ensure that I had a full comic to read at the exhibition, otherwise creating the book would have been for nothing, and so I spent a lot of time creating the black and white pages, and learnt to get faster as I worked on them more. I found that drawing the characters traditionally and then going over a scanned image of the drawing on my graphics tablet sped up the process a lot more, I was able to complete 2 – 3 pages a day when using this method. 

When choosing where to print my comic, my CSS recommended a company named Blurb, which I used to order my 10 colored page comic which arrived on the 8th of June after ordering it on the 14th of May. I was disappointed when it arrived as the text on the bottom of the first page had been cut off, which means it was not use-able for the exhibition. After completing all 35 pages I was able to use the University's reprographics center to print the full comic and have it bound, I was very happy with the quality of this book and will be using it for the exhibition itself.  

Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my comic and I am glad that I could finish the story in time, although I would have liked the comic to be completely colored. I feel like my drawings are not up to their full potential throughout the comic as I did not feel as inspired when creating the comic as I did when I was doing it as a personal project, although I will take this experience as a learning curve and will proceed to re-create my comic again as a personal project in the future. I've learnt that comics take a lot of time and patience, it is not just the comic that you have to create, scripts, rough page layouts and all sorts of designs are needed in able to create a successful comic and I will be using this knowledge for future reference.