Class Work
This semester we've had many classes with Claire, Conan and Becky where we learned core concepts around making and marketing comics. These are the exercises we did in order to learn more about each concept.
Advertising
In this class with Claire we worked on learning the concepts around advertising and talked about ad campaigns we had noticed in the past. I talked about the ad campaign around the neflix tv show based on the dark crystal because, alongside trailers and beautiful posters, they put up a lot of videos showing the process of making and working the puppets used in production. I felt it was a wonderful way to get people invested in seeing the results
Later in the lesson we were asked to work as a team to come up with a name and tagline for a pretend brand. We were asked to design a guitar brand for learners and school aged people. We settled on the Conquest, a guitar that lights up the strings in the places you need to hold them down for specific notes, with the tagline 'Dare to Climb'
Dramatic School Chair
On this day our homework was to draw a plain school chair at an interesting perspective. I went back and forth on the position I wanted to draw it from and used a free 3D model of a different chair in clip studio paint as a reference for all the angles I tried out. I settled for a drawing looking up from under the chair but saved a few of my favorite sketches as well
The next part of the day involved doing some perspective tasks with one, two and three point perspective. I did my best at giving it a crack but I feel like some of the objects in the room are awkwardly sized generally in the height department
This was also hourly comics day so have some little looks at my thought process during that day. I'm not sure it'll shed much light but it does show that I got very tired very easily.
Fix a Flat
Our next class was about composition with the exercise Fix a Flat being our homework. We took very flat images and had to turn them into dynamic panels by changing the position of the camera. My approach to this one was very simple but I'm pretty happy with a lot of the results. If I had to do it again I'd have properly drawn out the runner so I could draw them in proper perspective for that shot
After that we did the Get it Laid Out task where we took short scripts and made the comic layouts. The main concern was the paneling but I thought it'd be good to put in some drawings to give an idea of composition. I feel like the panels with the priest turning in the last one have a risk of being read straight down making people skip the panel with the groom talking but hopefully the speech bubble positioning makes that less likely
The golden ratio task was one where we were asked to make a poster or cover or comic page based on the golden ratio. I decided to go for a graphic based on 80's children's book covers. I made it as potential merch for the comic I'm working on in the group project and think it could make a cool shirt.
Cover Art
Another group project but one where it was mostly ideas that we had together and each drew our own art. We were asked to come up with book covers for a randomly generated title which was either the song of the Phoenix or the song of the Griffon (I couldn't tell you which because apparently I wrote it incorrectly on one of my sketches)
I did two sketches during class of the golden bird on a clock with the concept being the 'song' in question was actually the toll or ticking of the clock. I was very inspired by the idea of YA fantasy novel convers for my interpretation
For that reason when I chose to render it, I went with the simple and more symmetrical design
The Dark room Sequal
The next project we did was a follow up on a project from last semester you can find on this site! Unlike the first version of the comic this one involved actual art but also focused on choices of font and bubbles. I chose to shake up this sequel by making it in a scrolling format. The one you're seeing is actually the version I edited after showing it to Claire where I was advised to give the panels more breathing room between them.
The final set of tasks with Claire were the posing task and the hand posing task. In the first we looked at a reference, broke it down by tracing it and then made an Illustration based on it. I chose to draw a magical girl character of mine for it because why not.
The second was drawing some unique hand poses onto models provided. I used my own hands a lot for reference and did my best to render them well with all the unusual shapes fingers make.
Dramatic drawing and hand posing
ok so who is this comic for?? where is this homework from?? I like it but pls just put it where it needs to be I feel like it must have been for claire but idk
Moving onto Conan's work we have my art for the class on hashtags where we tried to make an art meme happen in 24 hours, I really advise you check out the #datemyoc hashtag on twitter and instagram. There's actually even work from some friends of friends they did to participate and I actually was the person who named the hashtag (though the task was not my idea) and drew the stock background and overlay people used!
(personal fav)
The final thing we did with Conan was a class on icons where we made some icons for some famous clients. I opted for Billie Eilish and Gordon Ramsey. I think the Billie Eilish looks a bit too much like toph from avatar and the Gordon could use a stronger sketch and better colours but overall they're not bad
