For my final assignment, I need to bring together all the knowledge and understanding that I have acquired throughout the course. I will do this by producing a five-page comic book. I will plot, write, design, and draw my own five-page short story with a beginning, middle, and end. The context will be – A standalone short story. My original story pages will be 38cm high and 25cm wide (standard size for reproduction to normal comic book format).

Alongside this, I need to create a working file of supporting material (sketchbook with photos, printouts, workings out, sketches, thumbnail sketches, etc) and then add my working file to my learning log.

Idea Generation – Working Out:

Script/Plot:

Thumbnail Sketches – (I did a few variations of each panel and will choose the ones I will use later):

My Chosen Thumbnail Sketches:

Panel Design – Layout:

Initial Idea Generation – Choosing and Developing From Thumbnail Sketches:

Process Of Creating Illustrated Panels On Adobe Illustrator:

Designs Without Text:

My Final Designs:

Evaluation:

My assignment was based on an idea I had about the ‘Cadbury’s Egg Hide’ advert that I saw whilst watching TV. I thought about how I could make this into a comic idea and starting looking into ideas right away. I wanted to make it as sinister as possible and feel like I achieved that. I feel like my use of different panels worked well as they show variety and helped make the story flow. I think it was a good idea to use a thin pen (1px) on Illustrator as I didn’t want the illustrations to be too bold as this might make it hard to see. I was going to add colour to my panels but decided on not doing this as I think my colour theory isn’t that good so didn’t want to confuse or make a mess of the panels. I feel like it was better to have the panels in mono like a traditional comic. I am happy I did this assignment digitally as I was able to add the text faster and it would also be clearer and more uniform. I think I added a good amount of work to show my process starting from idea generation to thumbnail sketches using a traditional sketchbook method with pencil to finally using my graphics tablet to create my digitalised designs. If I was to change this at all it would be to make some of the linework neater as well as maybe incororating a grayscale colour scheme into the mix?

Final Reflection:

I find that my creative approaches to writing and drawing really developed over the course, this is because I am thinking of the connection between words and illustration in a way I haven’t before. My use of observational drawing and using photo-reference as forms of visual research and idea development has definitely become more apparent in my work on this unit, it is helpful when I am illustrating a true story or a real person but not so helpful when I am creating a completely made up story or character. My ideas about comics and graphic novels evolved over the course as I found out and researched into comics online and different artists styles. I found out so much about the different styles, some I like and some not so much. The genres I found most engaging and inspiring were horror and the non-fiction (reportage) genres, I feel as though I was attracted to those genres as they are the type of art I am interested in anyway. It is different from illustration or creative writing because it is a mixture of the two, you can tell a story and it is easier for the viewer/reader to understand the context with the use of text. I want to take what I have learned and maybe use in in future after this degree as I enjoyed creating comics and developing my designs. I want to both approach professional publishers and make more personal work and distribute it myself in the future, maybe I will start by making personal work and then if it becomes popular I will have something to show professional publishers knowing I have a with a developed portfolio.