Exercise: Action & Reaction

Brief

Draw two boxes about 12cm square next to each other on an A4 sheet of paper or card. These boxes will be the two pictures (or ‘panels’) of a very short comic strip.

Now think about an event. This could be anything from painting a door, or going to the shops, to holding a political rally. The important thing is that the two pictures show the beginning and the end of an event. The first picture can set the scene, while the second picture should show the aftermath or consequence of the event. What you will not draw is the middle part of the story where the action occurred. For example, if it is a door being painted, the first picture could be a drawing of a person in clean overalls arranging their brushes and paints outside the house, while the second picture could be a drawing of the gleaming new painted door with the painter standing back admiring their work with their overalls now covered in paint. Or maybe in the second picture an accident has happened and the painter has a can of paint over their head. What you are depicting is known in comedy terms as the ‘ set-up ’ and ‘ punchline ’, where the set-up gives the audience or reader all of the information they need to understand the punchline.

Research

Before exploring the main work, I thought about the brief and was wondering how to approach it, exploring panels and transitions in comics books is a little daunting, therefore I thought best to research a little about different types of transitions.

It's easier with writing a novel since there is a constant flow and everything tells you what's going on, and it tells you what you want/need to know; however, with comics there's a play with how readers can perceive a certain panel/page/scene.

With the space, also known as the gutter, will also help in playing with narrative. For an example, having a lot of gutter could suggest time has passed-- whereas overlapped panels could suggest quick-timed events (almost simultaneously). Different types of panels and panel placing can help readers figure out what's going on for themselves.

1. Movement to Movement: panels side by side with basic movements to help drive a narrative forward.

2. Action to action: a subject moving and continuing the narrative through panels.

3. Subject to subject: transitions remains within a certain scene or idea and asks the reader to draw conclusions- this is less commonly used.

4. Scene to scene: different panels are set at different times and places-- used for montages.

5. Aspect to aspect: scenes that a taken place at the same time-- uncommonly used but is good for different point of view shots.

6. Non-Sequitur: doesn't make sense, mainly for abstract use-- very uncommon.

1

The different types of transitions has helped me think of more ideas of how to approach this exercise and taught me how I could use transitions in the future, I feel like the transitions I would be using will vary on the ideas i have- they most likely will be the common transitions since it's the idea of a 'set-up' and 'punch-line'.

I wanted to explore an artist before going in with the planning, and I came across a really inspiring artist that works in graphic novels.

Gabriel Picolo is a freelance artist who started out practicing drawing and art when doing a doodle challenge 2, his work took off during this challenge as his fan art caught many peoples attention from his fan art of DC's teen titans.

Gabriel's work had so much buzz and was so true to the characters of that universe, he loved the story of growth that teen titans had-- they weren't perfect superheroes, they were teens finding themselves, that passion caught DC Comics attention. 3

Taken from the Nerdist article as referenced above.

What I found so inspiring was he was creating what he enjoyed and what his interests were, he decided to turn these inspirations and influences and use it to his advantage-- the result ending in beautiful artworks that feel real to the fans and readers.

But why did I pick Gabriel Picolo as artist inspiration?

I have always admired his work and I have loved his use of narrative in all his imagery, and as I start this course I have grown to appreciate his use of clean lines and subtle block shading.

The apprentice, by Gabriel Picolo, Apr 18, 2018 4

Generating Ideas

Mindmap

It's a little messy but I wanted to explore as much as possible, but I was torn between, 'chopping onions', 'procrastination', 'pet loss' and 'social bar'. However, the decision came to 'chopping onions' since I didn't want to get too serious of a topic to start off with i.e Pet Loss. Though it is something I would love to explore in the future since I personally feel it doesn't get talked about much.

Mood Board

Character Design

Reference photos

Sketch (A4 Paper) and practicing hands

Inking

Process

Final Work

Evaluation

The final piece looks simple and easy, I could have done a bit more exaggeration in the face to make it a bit more comedic- or make it a close up of the face. However it was a good starting comic. The confident line work makes the comic bold, I'm sure if I didn't have confident lines that it would look distracting and unfocused. Though I do feel like it may seem like it’s the same scene, but it is meant to be two separate scenes (starting cutting onions and half way through cutting onions). It was good doing artist research as it helped me explore a way of colouring and inking, which you can tell in my final piece that I had a lot of influence from Gabriel Picolo. I like the colour scheme, the proportions of the girl and I really liked doing the character design. What I don’t like is- again, how it looks repetitive therefore that would be one thing I change is the first frame.

Next time I would try an entirely new action and reaction to make it more dramatic and either funny or sad. If I had to redo this particular comic I would explore different angles, like close-up on the onion.

1 U/A, Understanding Comics 'TRANSITION AND GUTTERS', U/A, https://understandingcomics177.wordpress.com/about/1-2/2-2/ Accessed 15 June 2022

2 I. Mikles, Art Side of Life ' Ep.15: Going freelance full time with Gabriel Picolo', 25.Sept 2017 https://artsideoflife.com/gabriel-picolo/ Accessed 13 June 2022

3 R. Knight, Nerdist 'HOW GABRIEL PICOLO WENT FROM FAN ARTIST TO NYT BESTSELLER', 24 Sept. 2020. https://nerdist.com/article/gabriel-picolo-artist-comic-books-profile/ Accessed 15 June 2022

4 Picolo-Kun, DeviantArt 'The Apprentice', 18 Apr. 2018. https://www.deviantart.com/picolo-kun/art/The-apprentice-741021153 Accessed 15 June 2022