1.
Research point Pick a film, read a book or look at a comic strip. Can you boil
the story down to its most basic elements? What’s driving this narrative and
how is it resolved at the end? What genre is it or is it an amalgam of more
than one? (Star Wars, for example, is basically a classic cowboy film
set in space). Make some notes on your reflections in your learning log. You
might want to extend this by finding another story with the same basic
structure but told using a different treatment or genre. Belgian poster for the film 'Le cargo de
la drogue' 1954 (colour
The Lord of the Rings films are some of my favourite films - I have also read most of the three very long books. The films cover over 9 hours so obviously have many themes and narratives. Sometimes I think that the main narrative is a journey or quest, starting in the Shire and ending in Mordor. Along the way the characters fight battles, encounter magical creatures in a similar war to Homer's The Odyssey.
This idea of a journey is also metaphorical to explain a movement or transition. This story tells of how Aragorn struggles with his own doubts about his ancestors and finally accepts responsibilities as king. The Elves, who had been an important race for thousands of years accept that they must leave Middle Earth. In the film, at least, Frodo is a young, innocent young man and his journey matures him so much that he saves the world, but ultimately has to 'die' by leaving with the Elves at the end. In this way, Tolkien was able to show humanity and our life journey in a single character in the middle of an epic war.
In some ways the quest of the Lord of the Rings is similar to the stories of King Arthur, in particular those about the Holy Grail. Those stories were about finding the Holy Grail, rather than destroying the Ring, but some of the themes are similar. The heroes must show they are worthy and pure by measuring themselves against items of treasure.
A modern story similar to Lord of the Rings, and obviously popular in its own films is the Harry Potter story. This also follows the journey of the main character. This is also a story of growing up and saving the world, although Harry is 'allowed' to survive at the very end, compared to Frodo who cannot stay in Middle Earth.
Research
Joel Mortiz comics tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2p9udyNwME
I have started this exercise form gather ideas of the stories. I sat down and came up with the idea to create sequential illustrations based on my own story of when I met my husband. Very quickly I started to draw some characters of the boy and the girl form my head, but no image was good enough.
My illustrations come from primary sources, as I did not support their images with anyone else's ideas. My sketches helped me a lot to create the final look as I was working on them for a while. The only research I did was to make sure the postures and the facial expressions were correct, and for that I looked in a book "Facial Expressions"
They were very helpful to me especially the book about the
When making the images, I was much more relaxed as I knew that using the light box would help a lot to create a consistent look of the characters. I could work more easily on changing their facial expressions without changing their look too much. This was very helpful also in terms of changing and working on the composition of the drawings. Once I was happy with them I started to play with putting them as a whole in Photoshop. Then it took me some time to make the right illustration I was really happy with. I was also using speech bubbles and clouds from the software.
It was a big pleasure to do this exercise as at that stage I was looking to the Dave McKean books to see how he solved this problem. How did he operate with the medium and space he had? I have learned a lot from his book and I realised it is not easy to create an interesting and original art work in this style. I did experiment with the colours a bit but .............
To describe my final outcome I can only say it looks better than I was expecting it to. However It was my first proper work like that and I wash I had more time to polish it. I know I am not going to be very harsh on myself as I know I will have more opportunities in the future to broaden this style and technique. I feel like I developed as an artist working on this task. It was fun to touch another artistic area I have never dealt with before. It is good to try something new. I would like to pay more attention next time towards the look of the image, the space and letters and make sure they all go together nicely and are interesting enough for the reader.
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