Illustration & Visual Narrative / Final Project: Comic Cover and Animated One Page Intro

4/7/2024 - 26/7/2024(Week11-Week14)

Amber Tan Jing Jing (0372746)

Illustration & Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media 

Final Project

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Lectures

Lectures have been completed in Task1.

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Final Project: Comic cover and Animated One Page intro

I chose the shot story of Edgar Allan Poe which is "The Black Cat".

Below are the part that I would like to draw. The highlight (bold) are the key points of my comic.

    One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; -- hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; -- hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; -- hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin -- a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it -- if such a thing were possible -- even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

    On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

    I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts -- and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire -- a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.

1. Comic and comic cover

I first found some references on Pinterest and Google.

Figure 1.1 References

Then, I came out with some simple sketches.

Figure 1.2 First try sketches

I think 3 panels are not enough. So, I add more panels.

Figure 1.3 Sketches

Figure 1.4 Keep trying out the final outcome

Figure 1.5 My first outcome

Lecture's feedback: The box sizes are mostly same. I can give it a slight variety of size and give it rhythm.

So, I try to adjust the box sizes.

Final Comic and comic cover

Figure 1.6 Final Comic

Figure 1.7 Comic cover

2. Animated Comic

I decided to animate three panels: the second panel, the third panel and the fifth panel.

Figure 1.8 Animation the second panel storyboard

 
Figure 1.9 Animation the third panel storyboard

 
Figure 1.10 Animation the fifth panel storyboard

Regarding the animation, I put it in Google Slides. I put both comic cover and comic animation in Google Slides. Below is the link to Google Slides.

Google Slides link: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BEWlvvuYKWjHfGkQTuIMXLGUhbkPXTT__0npYqSaqTU/edit?usp=drive_link

Figure 1.11 Google Slides Screenshot

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Reflections

This task was quite stressful for me due to it scale—from story selection to creating comics and animations. I spent a lot of time searching for story content because I wasn't sure which parts to draw. Mr. Hafiz suggested using ChatGPT, which helped me determine the content for each panel and made the process easier. After many revisions, I finally completed the comic.

Somethings I have observed is that using ChatGPT greatly shorten the time I spend on this project. It would directly provided me the content I wanted to draw for each panel and the story scenes. When working on the comic, I needed to define my art style and the overall color scheme of my comic because it needed to look coordinated.

Edger Allan Poe's stories really fascinate me. By exploring his works, I delved deep into narrative techniques and visual styles.