1/10/2021 - 22/10/2021 / Week 6 - Week 9
Illustration and Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Decisive Moment
LECTURES
Week 6
In week 6 we were given a recap of everything that we've learnt from the past weeks. Ranging from layers of a background to rhythm and movement to lighting.
Week 7
For week 7 Ms. Noranis briefed us on how we'll do the next task. We were introduced to '3 Acts Structure' as we will be creating a comic on illustrator. The three acts consists of a central theme, conflict, and resolution.
Central theme is where our characters are introduced and the story is being built up. It can be quick or slow-paced, as long as it immerses the readers into the environment of our story. There are two important character roles from a story; the protagonist and antagonist.
A common misconception is that protagonists are always good and agreeable characters. It's not true at all, because the protagonist is merely the main character the story is built upon. A popular example that I take from the top of my head is Arthur Fleck from the movie Joker (I can think of others, but saying that one example already makes me cringe so I will resist mentioning them), who has done some terrible things throughout the movie. Even when a character is morally gray, when a story is built around them then they are the main character. (Please excuse me for the second time. This misunderstanding brings out a little bit of rage).
Moving on, an antagonist is the character that goes against the protagonist's goals, whatever that may be. Imagine you're the main character in a story and you have a quest to order fast food at 3 in the morning, but your family gets in the way and explains that it's bad for your health (they are definitely right). In this situation, they would be the antagonist. Are they bad people for being concerned? no, however they are stopping you from achieving your goal.
I've already lightly touched the second act in the structure, which is conflict. Conflict is necessary in a story so that it becomes interesting. If there are no conflicts, it would be very awkward. Imagine how a story will go without conflict, "a flower is planted, the next day it grows healthy without issue". Sure, conflicts are best avoided in real life, but in a story it's boring. Why read something you can experience with only one outcome?
Not mentioned previously, the period in right before peak conflict is named as a rising tension.
Last, we have the resolution. A resolution doesn't have to be complete, but it's necessary to have one after a conflict appears. People enjoy an ending, whether or not it's a solid ending or an ending that encourages our minds to create an outcome.
INSTRUCTIONS
Task 2: Minimalistic Poster
We were asked to create a minimalistic poster from a decisive moment inside a story of our choosing. For this task I decided to make the poster based off of my favorite webcomic, Homestuck. A description of it wouldn't fill you in on most of the story because it will never be enough, so if you're interested please read it for yourself when you have time- and if you have already, I'm sorry.
One of the most narrative-changing moments in the webcomic was in "[s] cascade." which I believe can be broken down to three key moments:
First, Jack Noir destroys the universe he lives in with the red miles. This scene wasn't the main part of the animation, but it's what brought a change to the way of story telling. The screen enlarges during this moment, which I personally was shocked by and basically made everyone who watched more hype.
Second, Jade reaching godhood after an accidental death and immediately got to work on getting herself and her friends to escape the doomed timeline by breaking through the 'Fourth Wall'. This scene was one of the most important moments.
Third, the rest of the human group ascended after activating a bomb that destroyed their entire dream planet and themselves along with it, which also created an energy source for Jade's powers.
Of all the moments I mentioned above, I really believe the second was more impactful, so after I sketched the first three, I worked on another one using a similar idea combined with the top and bottom sketch. There are already three perspectives canonically, which directed me to create one with a perspective that hasn't been done, which is from Jade's third-person view.
Once the sketch is finished, I moved it on to illustrator. I traced the sketch using the pen tool, and used the ellipse tool for the planets. I added lines where I thought would look right and colored it similar to the animation references.
When I finished the first draft, I realized the colors just didn't look good for the eyes. It's true that the webcomic itself doesn't focus much on the art as it does on the story, but since I'm not telling a story, it just doesn't work. I figured something monochromatic will work, so I compared the original with the other.
Seeing it beside each other helped in figuring out what fit. I chose green as it's one of the main colors used in the entire webcomic. I made one more, which ended up being the final choice, but I lost the progress shot of it.
I showed this to the lecturers for feedback, which can be seen on the section below final design. I worked on fixing and readjusting everything.
One of the main concerns was, as expected, colors and perspective. The ship the character is standing on didn't make sense perspective-wise, and the colors clashed a lot here and there. I searched for a green-black color palette and worked on it from there.
Finally, I came up with a design I think looked just right. Originally the lecturers asked for me to continue with an entirely grayscale version, but since the title had such a vibrant green I thought I just had to use the same color for the planets. I added a border to see if it would look better, and then removed it after. I decided that the stars are plenty and would be easier to do in photoshop for the animation than in illustrator, so I decided to just start on the animation immediately.
After I copied and pasted the layers into Photoshop, I drew a bit on a separate layer the general direction for how I wanted the animation to look. Although it's supposed to be minimalistic, the scene itself was dynamic and I didn't want to take that away, so I thought of how to make it as simple yet dynamic as possible. Unfortunately, I think it would be a lot more complicated to use the animation style Ms. Jennifer has demonstrated, so I went for a frame by frame animation from learning in typography class.
Finally, I ended up using about 16 frames. I had a lot of fun on it that I forgot to take a lot of progress shots yet again, but there was little to no trouble. I personally believe I did well, but what mattered most to me is that I had fun.
FINAL POSTER DESIGN
Feedbacks
General Feedback
By listening to the lecturers comment on other's works, I was able to get ahold of a few things to keep in mind, which is that a decisive moment will most likely have a moment of hesitation. However, other moments could be without hesitation, but it's a decision so impactful that the whole narrative changes.
Specific Feedback
After showing my work to Ms. Jennifer and Ms. Noranis, they told me they couldn't give much suggestions because they didn't know what the webcomic was. However, regarding the perspective in my first draft, there was clearly something off, so they advised to use the perspective guide on the ship. They also liked the grayscale version of the colors better than the original.
Reflections
The biggest problem I experienced while doing this task was figuring out which part of the story I wanted to make into a poster. The webcomic itself is extremely long and complicated, and choosing which decisive moment to use was a little difficult. On the other hand, since there's a bit of a bad reputation regarding the webcomic I was embarrassed to actually present it to my classmates. However, I was stubborn in making it anyway because I know I'll have fun, which always improves my skills.
After seeing my classmate's works one-by-one, I felt like I may have overdone mine. I still think what's important for me is that I'm enjoying what I'm doing, but there was clearly times where that ended up being my downfall.
However, all struggles aside, I learned how to use illustrator better than I have before. A few key things I have to keep in mind is the guides and rulers, they help out a ton and it would be a shame to keep forgetting about them.
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