Assignment 6: Writing your own brief

For this assignment, I have to now think about what my self-directed project will be; I have to write a brief for the project and show my timescale/schedule, as well as showing anything that helped me develop this idea for my project.

Brief

I would like a black and white graphic novel using a manga format, the cover design can be in colour but must feel cohesive to the story. The amount of pages must be longer than 48 but less than 200; said novel must be aimed at 18 and older with a focus on horror elements, for those horror elements pull inspiration from fantasy creatures and mythology. Lastly and importantly, the story should aim to make the reader feel scared and included in the story, if possible include the reader as a character.

Intention

What I plan to do for this project is tell a story of horror using different creatures and suspense to create the feelings asked for in the brief. I want to take the 'illustrated guide art book' type to spin the narrative into a story that makes the reader feel involved, whether its showing POV First person shots or allowing them to read through logs that the main character creates in the story.

I want to strip everything of colour to make the story feel cohesive and easy to read when switching from the narrative to creatures description-- but will play with this. I also want to approach this brief with the manga format in mind, from reading manga this size feels really easy to carry and read, and reading graphic novels is clunky. What I hope would make the reader feel is that since they're a part of the story that being so easy to carry would feel more personal.

I'll experiment with using charcoal and ink pen to decide how to use both, or using either individually, but I would like to capture a distinct style that feels unique to this story.

Plan Board and link

I've provided a link to the plan board for more in-depth reading. https://app.milanote.com/1VNF0Y1QxeIc8d?p=4T8i6N3VSP2

Thoughts/Evaluation

Overall, I'm excited about what the project entail, I didn't focus on any drawing elements yet since I didn't want to get drawn to one particular idea straight away. Initially, I wrote on post-it notes and organized them to what jumped out to me, and slowly gathered an idea of what I wanted to create.

I ultimately ended up deciding on a graphic novel/manga (using the manga format but not the typical manga style), as said in my intention the manga size format makes for a more personal read and is easy to carry-- and I like the paper used to print.

I want to get the story down before I start to decide which material to use (ink pen or charcoal, or both)-- once the story is down I'll get a vibe for what works.

However, when it came to the timescale, I thought I knew how much I had to do, it was a lot in a short amount of time but I thought "I could do this, 2 weeks off work and I'll do this easy". Thought when it came to actually scheduling it in to my diary and looking at what else I had to do for this unit (i.e critical review), I knew I was really pushing it. I ideally wanted to get this unit done in time for the April Assessment period, though now not so much. So it's now a toss up between rushing a project that has possible potential to be something good, or miss an assessment slot and wait till September.