Assignment 9: Your work in Progress

Since my last submission of assignment, I have been working on many pages of the story; still unsure what to define this story as, whether it's a comic, graphic novel, or manga. The story itself is now complete, and I am in the refining stages, getting feedback from fellow students and my tutor; the next step would be sending it off to be printed with MIXAM.

There were a lot of challenges with this section, motivation was the biggest. Throughout this project I was dealing with a few mental hurdles that I was being seen for professionally, and so I took a bit longer than expected with finishing up the pages- I tried to maintain balance in my life since it had got quite unsettled.

Another challenge I had come down to the project itself, I had grown to be very disinterested in the whole idea, everything I was creating felt like I wasn't creating to my fullest; I struggled to even like anything I was putting down-- however, after many sessions of CBT and looking back at the first few pages of my work, I have grown to love it. They're not great and they may not reflect the style I would like, but it's an example of growth, it's inspiring for myself to look at my work and see that I have improved (even if it's slightly) in drawing. Then, when a few years down the line, I'll look back on this book and really appreciate the time and effort it took to make it.

The stages I was working on was sketching, inking and charcoaling the pages I had created with the thumbnails; I had played around with different ink pens at first, using my old traditional pen, but I found myself drawn to a new ink brush pen that worked much better and suited my style. I also tried out charcoal pencils, it provided more scratchy textures which I didn't end up liking in the end.

As I was going through each page, each panel and looking at each dialogue I ended up either switching things around or re-evaluating what the page should look like, I feel like this benefitted my work style, I was able to more freely adapt and create more emotive pages.

The images below are some of the finished pages.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/92ebe1_ecea013cac5a493b99fb28935150c1d3/file

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/92ebe1_f3c1a3200e014d83a6be14211bb6b80f/file

For the front cover of the book, I went through 4 iterations, played with two ideas that had been picked the most from feedback and continued to play.

I wanted to create a very colour-oriented design, I have recently seen a video on how some digital artists play with colour and almost throw out the colour theory-- focusing on saturation to create mood and focus. I ended up really liking how both designs turned out since I was playing so freely that I ended up using the other illustration for the back cover.

Reflection (where to now)

Overall, the main stage is complete, I do want to get feedback from my tutor first before jumping in and getting it printed, as she is the only one to see it in full till then.

I'm going to take some time away from the comic till then and work on my critical review and some personal art.