Part 3: Assignment 3

 For this assignment I knew I wanted to use the short story of the 'Ugly Duckling'. I'd been thinking about this since working on the exercise 'Once Upon a Time', it was on my short list of fairy tales. A favourite book from my childhood it seemed the perfect choice for this assignment. As I am currently inspired by ducks and geese this seemed a nice flow into drawing swans and signets as well. I knew I'd be able to use the techniques I'd picked up in the exercise 'Girl Meets Boy' to help me construct my mini graphic novel.

I started by reading the original book and plotting out the scenes into a list to see how many there would be. I decided to simplify the story a little more and focus on how he went from being rejected, surviving the Winter to being discovered by the Swan and finding his place. Since the style of my comic was going to be similar to how I did my duck comic, I knew it would be aimed at children 3 years and up and wanted to keep it quite short.

I decided on this age group because I had done a lot of research previously to help me learn about the different ages that read comics and graphic novels and how the illustrations are presented. Raymond Briggs books like 'The Snowman' and 'The Bear' can be suitable for younger children as well as older ones. He has a graphic novel style to these books where each scene is created in a panel and the focus is on the pictures rather than the words. So I felt confident that creating a mini graphic novel for ages 3 and up would work well in my style and be colourful enough to capture their attention.

Link to comic research: https://nikisillustration2degree.blogspot.com/2022/05/comic-and-graphic-novel-research.html

Starting the planning stages:

After writing out the plot main points I went on to using post it notes to help me work out the panel shapes and sizes in my sketchbook. I made adjustments as I went and will also make adjustments in the next stage.

I was then going to make a mock up to help me visually understand how my mini graphic novel will come together. I sketched out how I thought the panels would be and included a cover page. This was A4 paper folded in half. I found this more confusing and so I decided to use my iPad and Procreate to help me work out the panels instead because I can easily move things around in a way that makes sense to me.

Before moving onto Procreate I decided to start doing my initial reference sketches. I looked at the plot and the storyboard I had made in my sketchbook to help me choose images that fit the story line well.

I then transferred these sketches into Procreate to create the line drawings and work out the panels.

                                       

These are my first attempt at laying out the panels. Looking at them I think I'm going to need to adjust the last few panels. When the Signet realises who he is, is quite a big moment and so I think those panels need to be larger. So I'm looking at rearranging some to fit them into the brief of three pages.

As I worked on Procreate I made lot's of changes to the placement and details of the characters and scenes and I also did change the last page as I found some of the scenes were redundant and the important last scenes should be bigger as they are of high importance.#

Here are the finished panels:

I feel like the last page is the strongest but am really pleased over all how these pages have turned out. I'm totally new to drawing comic panels so I think these came out quite well considering. I tried to place the characters in a way that told the story well and emphasized parts that were really important. Where the goose is being mean to the signet I made him tower over him so that it showed what was happening. I kept the speech and thought bubbles to a minimum as I think the illustrations showed the story fairly well.

Then I started thinking about the cover and how I would represent the story well. Most of the scenes take place on the river so I wanted to use that for the cover. I think the panel where the mother duck is leading the ducklings with the signet trailing behind is a good illustration of the story and thought about how I could make the book title fit in with that.

Here is a first draft of the cover:

I don't really like how small the ducks, ducklings and signet are and the fact the ducks face is cut off. But I do like the flow of the scene. I might be able to move her over a bit so she is in full view. I think a script font that is easy to read would be a good fit for the title. I placed the word Ugly nearer to the signet to imply the 'odd one out' in the row of ducklings.

I did some more research on covers that have simple colouring.

Thinking about whether to just have colour on the characters or to have the background fill the whole page.

This is my favourite colouring style so far but doesn't seem to work on the other pages.

Back to the colouring stage and I experimented with different options. My initial intention was to use my favourite colour palette and colour all elements in the panels. I started with the last page because it is my favourite out of the three. I discovered that it looked better with a limited colour palette, putting more emphasis on the characters, rather than the background.

I tried to implement this on the other pages and it didn't work so well. I think because there are less panels on the third page and they are bolder, less detailed, the limited colours work so well. On the other pages, I just couldn't work it out. I went back and forth trying different colour options, even tried taking out some panels to simplify the page, but that took direction away from the story.

So I decided to do some more research into comics that have limited colour palettes to see ways it can be done. This is new to me, I'm used to colouring in everything on my illustrations, but I see how striking a comic can look if it has a limited palette.

I really like the bright, limited colour palettes in these examples and notice how the artists have put colour on the important elements in the story.

I realised that in my third page I had used the line art colour for the darker places on the characters and saw that I hadn't done that on the other pages. I had used a colour for the dark beaks and legs, which was noticeably too dark, so I went and changed that to see if that helped.

That did make a big difference, this helped me simplify the rest. I tried to keep on the seasons colour theme throughout and use white it help make certain areas stand out more where there wasn't enough of a colour difference between the background and character.  I also tried to keep in mind complimentary colours to help the colours stand out against each other. These changes made a big difference to the overall result. I didn't realise how complex the colouring stage would be and next time I'd definitely do lot's of colour test thumbnails before attempting to colour the whole thing. This was a big learning curve for me.

Final Panels:

I am so please with how these pages have turned out, especially since I haven't done anything like this before. I really enjoyed this assignment and I would love to do more comics now. I feel very inspired to explore this path further, it's been one of my most enjoyable assignments to date! I definitely need more practice in using limited colour palettes successfully but this was a good start for me.

For the cover I wanted to keep in mind what I learnt from my cover research above and make something eye catching and in keeping with the style of the comic pages. I decided to put the background covering the whole page because without it it looked very plain and not very enticing. I wanted to make the text work with it as well so I kept it a simple font and enhanced it with white accents to blend it in with the water look. I chose the duck with her ducklings and the signet trailing behind because I wanted an image that hinted at the story without giving much away and not being too sad. I didn't want to put a sad image on there and put children off from wanting to read it. I felt the river scene was the best fit and allowed me to extend the background into the whole cover bringing in more colour without being distracting.

I think this is fairly successful, it's a lot better than what I started with and think it's eye catching enough to get people's attention.

Reflection:

Overall I am really pleased with how this assignment went. I really enjoyed it and planned the different steps much more than I have before. I did find the planning very beneficial to the success of the end result. I went back and forth a lot with the colouring stage, I found this the most difficult part. I went into it thinking it would be the easiest bit but it wasn't at all. Perhaps it will be when I am more experienced using limited colour palettes?!

The work from part 3 has been my most enjoyable of the course so far, I found myself excited to work on the exercises and assignment and wanted to spend lot's of time on it. It was definitely very challenging for me and this did make me procrastinate at points but once I got into it I really found my stride and loved what I was doing. Narrative illustration is definitely an area for me to explore further.

Looking at the assessment criteria I believe the work I've done meet the requirements to show technical and visual skills. With this assignment I worked with lot's of new techniques, learnt a lot about placement of the characters and how the colours helped or hindered the story. Throughout my projects I have aimed to explain clearly my working and thinking processes and have documented them with images as well as the write ups. My personal voice is certainly coming out more in these projects and I feel like this section of the course is the most authentic expression of my creative, personal voice which makes me excited to pursue this direction further. I have included a lot of research for this part of the course and it has influenced my decisions which I have documented all the way along. Overall I feel I have met the requirements for assessment.

Critical Review Outline:

I have sent my outline to my tutor for review.

References:

Pixabay. 2022. Pixabay. [online] Available at: <https://pixabay.com/photos/spring-may-duck-nest-eggs-591496/> [Accessed 19 May 2022].

Pixabay. 2022. Pixabay. [online] Available at: <https://pixabay.com/photos/goose-water-waterfowl-nature-3506513/> [Accessed 19 May 2022].

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Pixabay. 2022. Pixabay. [online] Available at: <https://pixabay.com/photos/rocks-the-landscape-of-the-mountains-5619660/> [Accessed 19 May 2022].

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