Assignment 3: Nine Panel Grid

Brief

This assignment will bring together some of the experiments you have undertaken in the course’s exercises so far, where you have looked at comic structures and conventions like:

• The opening scene

• Character design

• Point-of-view

• Text styles of word balloons and text captions

• The silent comic

• Visual style

The nine-panel grid is most famously used in early Spider-Man and Doctor Strange comics stories by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. You can also see it in the work of comic artist Daniel Clowes, and the superhero graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1987). Also known as a ‘waffle’ grid , it is a 3 x 3 panel grid where all the panels are the same size.

For this assignment, produce a nine-panel comics page that brings some of the structures and conventions from the course so far together. You may decide to use all of them in one page, or you may choose to make a text-heavy or completely silent comics page. Here are four titles you can use as starting point options to develop a story.

1. ‘City Story’

2. ‘On a Journey’

3. ‘A chance encounter’

4. ‘The Big Event’

These are starting points for your story, you can interpret them in any way you want, and your story can be black and white or colour. The important thing is to consider the structure and how you move your narrative along within the nine-panel grid format.

Research the following:

• Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell, From Hell (1989-1998) – Please be warned this is a story about Jack the Ripper and contains very gruesome and disturbing material that is not suitable for sensitive readers.

• Eddie Campbell, Alec: The Years Have Pants - a charming compilation of Campbell’s 1980s autobiographical stories of his dissolute early life as a forklift truck driver.

• Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (1987). This is recommended throughout this unit, as it is considered one of (if not the most) significant creations of the art form, and the only graphic novel to be included in ‘Time Magazine’s ‘All-Time 100 Best Novels’.

• Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man (1963-1966). The first 38 issues of one of the most famous comic book runs ever published are often drawn in a nine-panel grid to cram in Stan Lee’s infamously dense and snappy dialogue.

Research

Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell - From Hell

From Hell is a comic created by Alan and Eddie in which they decide to take a new direction with inspiration from the Jack the Ripper. From Hell, published in 1998 and renewed in 2018, is a gruesome comic (after revising in 2018) and authentic comic; the comic has heavy concentration on trying to recreate London as possible- which is important, references are important. 1 Not only references but their trademark would be with their camera angles and their use of "hard and angry pen strokes" to create madness of reality. 2

3

Eddie Campbell - Alec: The Years Have Pants

This autobiography strip of Campbell's life from his small press days to his eventful moments that would change his life, whether it's meeting creative partners, settling down, and gaining success from the comic From Hell. His drawing style is described as "distinctive", scratchy but clean, it truly shows Eddie's life as an artist. 4

5

Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons - Watchmen

Around 1986 to 1987 Watchmen produced a comic that wasn't going to fit the "status quo" of superhero comics, it shows a darker side of comics; showing powerful heroes turn into horrible and uncomfortable people. For this it became the best seller and became highly rewarded and recognised to this day for it's thought of little details, reflecting its plot of losing innocence 6, it involves awkward and uncomfortable camera angles, close ups and shadows. It's violent but nonchalant, it's haunting and brooding which is a huge juxtaposition to the bright colours to the dark story. 7

8

Stan Lee & Steve Ditko - Amazing Spider Man

Ditko described as "a master of visual storytelling", using the nine panel grid as a throwback to the popular comics in early years; the nine panel grids structure created "dense action and narrative momentum". That momentum being a set-up conflict and climax, it gives the feeling of being in the same moment and every moment of spiderman life. It helps make the panels feel dense and uncomfortable as spiderman gets more anxious until it slows it pacing as the narrative slows down. 9

10

Jaime Hernandez - Flies

Jaime Hernandez uses the nine panel to jump "back and forth" and critics call his work as a film by showing two narratives at once 11; it has a clean and elegant drawing style that is simple and pleasing with it's bold blacks and tentative linework, the style resembles that of a noir movie with it's black and white and bold shapes. 12

13

Ridley Scott

I saw a video on thumbnailing with Ridley Scott and I wanted to note a few things that were important to the video and to learn from. Ridley Scott talks about how light helps an environment, how it plays with narrative and to be inspired by what's around you.

When thumbnailing it's important to edit the thumbnail as you go along for scenes to feel natural, to talk through the story so you understand it and until it feels natural.

Realising that blank space is no fun, it's important to fill the scene and seeing the "dynamic of the scene" but knowing when to stop and "pull back" from editing a thumbnail.

14

David Finch (Proko)

I took some notes on some Youtube videos on how to approach composition, and it's similar to how you would approach movie making- and how Ridley Scott would compose a scene; to summarise it's combination of rule of thirds and shapes.

Every point should lead the viewer's eye and it's important to have a figure of interest, you can use any shape as a guide and as many as appropriately possible; think how to make an impactful arrangement to engage the reader. Think of shapes and how you use people and objects to create that "shape" to lead the viewer's eyes and have a great composition. 15

Mind Map

Script

Mood Board (& Character Mood Boards)

The thought behind the picking of pictures is anything that jumps out at me that I want to feel/include in the comic, many of the pictures are dark, dingy; the first four pictures are styles I want to aim to use for my work-- though that's up for debate on whether I can achieve this.

Anya

Banks

Birdie

Mac

Character sketches

After doing these quick zombie sketches, I really liked the inking style and wanted to use it in my final piece-- I especially love this last zombie I did which inspired me to use ink and copic pen in this style.

Thumbnails

Inking

After inking- even though I used a red pencil, the pencil was still showing, and although it looks to what I wanted to achieve I wanted to push it further...and even though I said I would try to avoid digital this time around, I used it again-- originally to get rid of all the marks. However, I coloured one panel to see if it was good and I was encouraged by others to continue.

Digital

I was torn between colour or black and white so I asked some students and friends which is the best and they said that they're both good but colour is the best way to go.

Video process

I wanted to add some extra touches by adding a colour overlay so it would look coherent throughout the comic to feel together and in one complete scene, and I also added some sound effects which I haven't done before and I experiment on colours and underlay- the result I was really happy with.

Final work

I wanted a really grunge feeling so I went with a brown overlay with a paper texture to really bring together the look and make it feel like a finished product.

Evaluation

This assignment was a really good way of learning about style, composition and pacing; with research and planning I was able to produce a fully-fleshed nine panel comic while practicing my strengths of character design and sketching.

What I think went well and what I enjoyed was stepping outside my comfort zone by playing with camera angles, and using Finch's influence about playing with composition to get a strong outcome. I also used the watchmen for inspiration for uncomfortable camera angles and adding little detail, in this case I added little details on what the characters are like based on what they're wearing or how they talk, which was really fun to explore. I attempted to use the Spiderman comic as inspiration as well by having a set-up, a conflict and climax but I don't think that was as successful; I like the colour scheme of the comic and I like the homage made to my adolescence. I did change the script slightly with the weapon choice of Anya, instead of a gun I wanted to use a bat since I wanted each character to feel more individual and somewhat real, guns are real in the UK and I didn't want the main character to come across as threaten with a gun.

What I think didn't go as well is the anatomy and drawing of the characters, I really wanted to make an impressionable comic with well-drawn characters as I did for their character design- however that didn't go to plan when drawing in such a small space (even though it was drawn on A3). This will be something I want to improve on, I want to reflect my skill into the final piece. I also wanted to have a slight comedic relief before the sad part but I'm not sure the joke paid off well, with trying to make a joke out of the rats- I would also like to improve my script writing skills.

Overall, there are some panels in this piece that I am extremely happy with and wouldn't change and some that I am slightly unhappy with but I would like to refine my skills and redraw this when I'm better; this assignment was extremely fun to do and found myself not wanting it to end. I would like to revisit this comic in the future.

I think to really finish this off would be to create a cover, since this is only a page of the comic (which I would've loved to flesh out more) it would be nice to design a front cover.

1 C. Holub, Entertainment Weekly 'Eddie Campbell explains why he's coloring From Hell for the first time', May 31, 2018. https://ew.com/books/2018/05/31/eddie-campbell-from-hell-color/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

2 L Coppin, Image & Narrative 'Looking Inside Out. The vision as particular gaze in From Hell (Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell)', Jan 2003. https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/uncanny/lisacoppin.htm Accessed Sept 3 2022.

3 R Webster, NerdTeam30 A Review of From Hell: Master Edition from Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell', Oct 31, 2020. https://www.nerdteam30.com/nerd-news/a-review-of-from-hell-master-edition Accessed Sept 3 2022.

4 L Williams, downthetubes.net 'Retro Review: Eddie Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants', Dec 17, 2021. https://downthetubes.net/retro-review-eddie-campbells-alec-the-years-have-pants/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

5 View Comic.com 'Alec the Years have Pants', U/A. https://view-comic.com/alec-the-years-have-pants-tpb-part-6/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

6 A Abad-Santos, Vox 'In 1986, Watchmen skewered the way we love superheroes. It’s still as relevant as ever.', Oct 18, 2019. https://www.vox.com/2019/10/18/20917361/watchmen-hbo-comic-superheroes-explained Accessed Sept 3 2022.

7 L Princi, Blurbbank 'Watchmen', July 5 2009. https://blurbhack.com/reviews/review.php?recordID=74&type=comic&code=watchmen Accessed Sept 3 2022.

8 A Sternbergh, New York Times ''Watchmen’ Is Coming. (Actually, It Never Left.)', Oct 16, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/arts/television/watchmen-comic-history.html Accessed Sept 3 2022.

9 U Turtle, Urbane Turtle 'EXPLORING STEVE DITKO’S NINE-PANEL MASTERY IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #32', Nov 6 2020. https://urbaneturtle.com/2020/11/06/exploring-steve-ditkos-nine-panel-mastery/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

10 Pinterest, U/A. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/199495458466570222/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

11 DerikBadman, MadInkBeard 'Panels & Pictures: One Page', Mar 19, 2007. https://madinkbeard.com/archives/comixpedia-one-page Accessed Sept 3 2022.

12 C Parker, Lines and Colours 'Jaime Hernandez'. Oct 14, 2003. http://linesandcolors.com/2006/10/14/jamie-hernandez/ Accessed Sept 3 2022.

13 DerikBadman, MadInkBeard 'Panels & Pictures: One Page', Mar 19, 2007. https://madinkbeard.com/archives/comixpedia-one-page Accessed Sept 3 2022.

14 MAGLIXTE FILMS PRODUCTIONS, U/A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVSpbmXDZg Accessed Sept 3 2022.

15 Proko, Proko 'Basics of Comic Composition'. Sept 30 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KX7WpRVtVU&t=195s Accessed Sept 3 2022.