Illustration and Visual Narrative: Task 3
13/10/2021- 24/11/2021 (Week 8 - Week 14)
Metta Angelica (0349095)
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Illustration and Visual Narrative Graphic Novel
LECTURE
Week 7: 3-Act Structure
This week we learned how to make a story.
Central Theme
The theme is what the story is about. It is the main idea or underlying meaning. Often, it is the storyteller's personal opinion on the subject matter. A story may also have a major theme and a minor theme.
- Major Theme: An idea that is intertwined and repeated throughout the whole narrative.
- Minor Theme: An idea that appears more subtly, and doesn't necessarily repeat.
Conflict
The conflict is what drives the story. It's what creates tension and builds suspense, which are the elements that make a story interesting.
If there is no conflict, not only will the audience not care but there also won't be any compelling story to tell.
Conflict is what engages an audience. It's what keeps them white-knuckled, at the edge of their seats, waiting impatiently to see if the protagonist will overcome their obstacle.
Characters
A story usually includes a number of characters, each with a different role or purpose. Regardless of how many characters a story has, however, there is almost always a protagonist and antagonist.
- Central Characters: These characters are vital to the development of the story. The plot revolves around them.
- Protagonist: The protagonist is the main character of a story. He/She has a clear goal to accomplish or a conflict to overcome. Although protagonists don't always need to be admirable, they must command an emotional involvement from the audience.
- Antagonist: Antagonists oppose protagonists, standing between them and their ultimate goals. The antagonist can be presented in the form of any person, place, thing, or situation that represents a tremendous obstacle to the protagonist.
Three- Acts Structure
- Setup: The world in which the protagonist exists prior to the journey. The setup usually ends with the conflict being revealed.
- Rising Tension: The series of obstacles the protagonist must overcome. Each obstacle is usually more difficult and with higher stakes than the previous one.
- Conflict: The point of highest tension, and the major decisive turning point for the protagonist.
- Resolution: The conflict's conclusion. This is where the protagonist finally overcomes the conflict, learns to accept it. Regardless, this is where the journey ends.
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| Fig. 1 |
Next, we need to make a short story for our next assignment, below is an example given to understand how to write it.
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| Fig. 2 |
Week 8: Visual Techniques: Transitions
How to create comics? (frame-to-frame storytelling)
Everything starts with a goal or an idea! but where does it come from?
- Ideas can come from your experience
- Good ideas never came from browsing aimlessly
How I come up with ideas:
- Brainstorming
- Mind mapping
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| Fig. 3 (lecture) |
5 Assignment practice (building a mental library)
- watch cartoons/movies
- play new games!
- read new mangas/comics/graphic novels
- listen to different genres of music (ambient/cultural)
- try a new dish! trying something new will stimulate the brain, and to jumpstart the cells.
The more you stress on finding the ideas, the more it will stray you.
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| Fig.4 (lecture) |
Art is a form of communication between the artist and the rest of the world.
Ideas/stories that relate = ideas/stories that win an audience.
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| Fig. 5 (lecture) |
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| Fig.6 (lecture) |
Great & meaningful ideas are born from the greatest, most influential Inspiration & Passion.
Week 9: Transitions
Moment-to-Moment
One of the most common forms, metaphorically think of it as a blink or two between seconds of a film, it can be used to slow down and draw out action, but be aware, if over utilized it can make your comics dull and laborious to draw and read.
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| Fig. 7 (http://makingcomics.spiltink.org/transitions/) |
Action-to-Action
Typically focuses on significant events. or movement from panel to panel, and over larger intervals of time between moments.
Subject-to-Subject
A cut between to related moments, but focusing on a different subject in the same scene. Think conversation in a restaurant, or a shift of focus onto another actor in the scene.
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| Fig. 8 (http://makingcomics.spiltink.org/transitions/) |
Scene-to-Scene
A Scene is a series of events that happen in one location, and continuous period of time. A change of location or significant jump in time between panels is considered the end of a scene and the start of a new one.
Below is the result of using after effects.
Aspect-to-Aspect
It can be an interesting way to jump around a scene, taking in key details or letting the characters focus wonder. It’s also a good way to introduce their environment to a reader, though the players eyes perhaps or inviting them to wonder away from the players a bit.
Symbolic
Symbolic transitions deal with the unreal, the felt, and the imagined. Moving the readers from an imagined or recalled space to either another, or a real one.
Rolling Transitions
The idea is that instead of having panel gutters or boarders as separate graphical elements at all, the images are melded and mixed together. Overlapping and interlacing.
Non Sequitur
In a non sequitur transition, there is “no logical relationship” occurring between images on either side of the transition.
These are not rules
This is by no means, a list of the ONLY ways we can describe transitions or the only one’s possible. You can mix and match traits of many of them as well, for nuanced and complex storytelling.
Not rules, Just aids in clarifying and decoding the kinds of panel to panel, or image to image transitions and qualities of closure you can design your work around or read into the comics you consume!
Week 10
For this week, Ms. Jenifer will teach us about what we should do next after having our sketch.
First, we need to make a new file and use the film animation presets.
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| Fig. 9 (lecture) |
Which then will turn out like this.
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| Fig. 10(lecture) |
Ms. Jenifer also taught us how to separate the layers because if we move it to after-effects it will only be recognized as one piece.
After grouping and separating some part that we want to animated, we then have to to use after effects to animate it.
In after-effects we need to make a new composition with a ratio of (Recomended 1280:720), with 25 fps, and Adjust resolution HDV 720 (depend on the PC). After this we will import our file and start animating the objects.
INSTRUCTION
Story Making
Making ideas for stories is not an easy thing, there various types of inspiration that make me wonder which should I make. The only thing that held me back is that when I have an idea of what I want to make I will later forget it when it is a good idea. After telling this to the teacher, she encourage me to write the idea whenever it came. So I did it, then I put it into a document file.
After showing my story, the teachers gave a few suggestions to some parts that I probably need to change.
I did a lot of drafts for this story composition, but the characters would end up too complicated to make and with my current skills, it will look rigid or not so good looking. So I forget my previous story and jump right into the scary part. I plan to make it simple, and flat. So I plan to color it in black and white or grayscale with thick lines which is my favorite part for a simple short story.These are some of the digital parts I made.
I still need time to fill the middle and the finishing parts, for now I made the current ones I have.
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| Fig. 1 |
After Effects
After finishing making all the static pictures, I had them uploaded to webtoon. Then I continue to edit using after effects.
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| Fig. 2 |
Fig. 3.1
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| Fig. 3.2 |
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| Fig. 3.3 |
Below is the result of using after effects.
This all the final result:
FEEDBACK
Week 8
The main idea of the story is good, but some part of the process needs to be changed to make sense in the story. For example, the toilet part only takes a short time so it needs to be changed to something like chasing a butterfly to make the time longer.
REFLECTION
From this task, I have learned to improve my skills using the pen tool and other tools as well as using After Effects.
FURTHER READINGS
Top 10 Story Telling Basics
- Include a beginning, middle, and end
- Show, don't tell
- One word: Conflict
- Make your protagonist proactive, not reactive
- Have a central core to your story
- Know what your story is about
- It is better to be simple and clear than complicated and ambiguous
- Say as much as possible with as little as possible.
- Get in late, get out early
- Characters, characters, characters
Source: Top 10 Storytelling Basics
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