Reflective Questions
How has your work evolved during this module?
My work in this module has evolved in a couple of ways. In the realm of writing I’ve gone from big exploration paragraphs to much more condensed bits of text and bullet points in my personal writing due to figuring out how much flavour for a story I can fit into such a small amount of text, as evidenced by the short writing exercises Claire had us do. This let me work a lot faster when going from ideas to a final script as it’s easier to chop up bullet points into panels and go from there.
When it comes to art my visual style is mostly the same but I’ve become a lot more choosy with my compositions and clarity, after struggling with the pocket cartoons at the start of the semester so badly I was reminded of how important a good composition and clarity in character design is. I’m not there quite yet but I really want to get better at things like this so that my future work is as easy to read as possible.
We also worked a lot with iteration, something I tried to put into my final two skill building projects in a more visible way to show how trying a lot of concepts out can help you land one something better than your first thought. While I might do this in the past I wouldn’t keep previous versions around to compare or ask for peer feedback the way I’ve been trying to do lately.
In context, Please outline your contribution to the Big read project.
The Big Read was a project where we all came together to make a book to be printed and distributed at local schools to promote reading. We interpreted one limerick each and made two page spreads. I made mine colourful and child friendly both in hopes to appeal to children and because I knew the specific style I chose contrasts well with a lot of my classmates art which is often lined and may choose more neutral colours or be beautifully painted in the way Xenia’s work was. I also provided some transparent art of the cheese character and some bees which proved useful as filler on the front cover and throughout some of the pages making me glad I took the time to make some that were transparent and easily separated.
Please provide an example of a design problem you encountered and how did you resolve this?
When interpreting the art of the children for the Park Royal project, I was given an anthropomorphic cat to draw. I don’t draw a large number of animal characters and was unsure how to tackle it at first without it looking awkward or uncanny. I ended up resolving it by doing research on other popular animal art, I wanted it to not be too human. Most the references I found were more clothed than the character I was given but I found references of cartoon racoons and real cats that I used to try and close the gap since most cats I found from beatrix potter and over the garden wall were portrayed in long dresses. In the end it worked out and I feel pretty satisfied with the art I ended up making.
Who is your audience for your single panel cartoon and how have you tried to appeal to this audience?
The audience for my single panel comic, as instructed by our course tutor, was supposed to be anybody. This seemed a little far so I tried more for a person over 14-15 as it was based on a newspaper article and I think below that age a person might not keep up with every story and controversy. I kept the palette neutral and the art as clear as I could and wrote on the topic of the plastic straw ban, something I’ve seen both older family members and young people talk about in the last few years. Once I’d revised it with an easier font and rendered it more cleanly I think it’s a decent all ages comic with enough colour and digital cleanness for young people white keeping close enough to a more classic cartoon’s content for those who wouldn’t understand the more nonsensical in jokes people often use online.
Please provide an example of you working collaboratively during this module
During the module we worked collaboratively multiple times. My personal favourite was working with Pearl’s script in the comic-script-comic exercise where she had interpreted a page of the HunterXHunter comic and I then interpreted that script back into a comic page. It was her job to be my eyes and ears as I had not seen the page and my job to then research and try my best to follow directions. The end result, while not fully accurate, did get across a similar meaning to the original and we were both quite pleased. Another example was the Park Royal project where I got to work with the wonderful and humorous designs of the school children and worked with the challenge of interpreting their art and instructions into an end result I felt confident they would be happy with. A steep task since 9 year olds are rather harsh critics.