Christmass update

Here is some of the things I've been doing for the last few months. I've been quit busy I haven't been the as consistent as I wanted to. 

 

We had a classic drawing workshop with  Artem Alexev, Professor of Fine Arts from the St. Petersburg Academy of the Arts. 

portrait of my classmate Albert

 

3 min. inkwash croquis

A couple of ink croquis. I think it was 10 min.

 

 

We had another drawing workshop with Lawrence Marvit. The workshop focused on drawing perpective and contrucktion, etc. constructing objekts into general shapes so they appear more dimensional.

 

The first assignment was to design an Atlantian weapon/Underwater weapon. Using only lines. I came up with  this underwater sonic amplifier helmet inspired by a spermwhales sonic attack.

 

 

The next assignment was to do an epic environment of Atlantis using only lines.

 

For the last assignment was to draw a grayscale interior perspective scene. We could choose to either draw an antique shop or a Sci-fi lab. I of course chose the sci-fi lab. 

 

 

Our last workshop of the semester was with Matt Madden. The workshop was based on Matt Madden's book "99 ways to tell a story". We had to make a template 1 page comic from a script had made.

 

Student 1 drawing a comic in a classroom

 

Student 2 enters

 

S2 sits down next to S1

 

S1 slids the page to S2

 

S1 says "She's all yours"

 

S2 starts to draw 

 

The workshop's goal was to show how setting obstructions for your story, can free it rather then kill it. The idea is inspired by "The 5 obstructions" with Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. 

Template 

 

 

 Above: The story made in the style of Illustrator/Comic artist Dave Cooper

Above: Story in pencil POV

 

 

 

 

Above: The last assingment was to make obstruction for a classmate. My classmate Jam found quit amusing to force me to make Manga Lucky Star style.

Well I wish every a Marry Christmass. I promise to try and be better at upload what I next year.

 

Happy year Zero ;)

http://vimeo.com/63234507

Test pages for 20 page story

We have mostly been learning about story structure and scripting for the last month. So haven't done as much drawing. But yesterday  I had to do a style test page for a 20 page comic that is going to be finished late January. I did a couple of tests, so far it's going to be black only.

Design with Lawrence Marvit

 

This week we had a design class with concept artist Lawrence Marvit who has worked for studios such as Pixar, Thrave, Nickelodeon,Universal Studios, and a nomination to an Eisner Award, according to himself because it long.

 

The focus of the workshop is the 7 elements of drawing:

LINE

SHAPE

VALUE

COLOR

FORM

SPACE
TEXTURE

 

which we are going to go through one at a time. This week we have gone through line and shape.

 

 

Our first assignment was to make a dynamic composition with 3 boxes and a line. All the boxes should be at a  90 degree tilt and couldn't touch the edges or each other. The line on the other hand had to touch to sides.

And

Just to make it even trickier no distance from edge to another could be the same. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our second assignment was to describe 70% dark chocolate using only line. We had to taste the chocolate and describe the taste poetically to give us something more focused. Since having no restrictions tends to keep you in the ideation process and it helps to avoid too many clichés.

My line was Autumn Deserted Playground.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we had to listen to Jazz, Miles Davis: kind of blue. Same process as the chocolate assignment, just using shape instead of line. The focal point had to be clear.  Resulting in this amazing jazz-shapes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final assignment was to make a picture on the theme circus of the dead, using what we had learned. I learned a lot doing this assignment. I need to stop trying to draw myself out and think instead. For the next couple of months I'm going to focus on shapes and composition for awhile. Since I had to redo and simplify this picture a few times. I ended up do most of it with the lasso tool, so I couldn't detail the shit out of it.    

 

Franquin style workshop

Here is a little update. This week we are having a style course on the famous French/Belgian comicbook artist Franquin.
We have spend the last two days on our own doing research getting to know his style a little bit.
The assignment for the week is to do 1 or 2 comic pages in the style of Franquin. This all sound pretty straight forward, but to freak things up a bit the story is a scene from Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The scene is where the father and son meets an old man and decide to share some food with him.  
So far I have made a character sheet spicing the characters with some post-apocalyptic gear. In the next couple of days it is all going to be some depressing post-apocalyptic slap-stick making with Mården Smet, know for Stig and Martha.

Basics of sequential art w. Thomas Thorhauge, Johan F. Krarup, Lars Hornemann

After Paul Karasik's we had the Danish cartoonist Thomas Thorhauge. We had 1 hours to brainstorm a sentence for a setting, where a story could take place. We then had 3 hours to make a sketch of our idea. I came up with this early Victorian circus powered by windmills.

 

 

I had an Idea of making a sort of clean steam punk world were everything was powered by clean power sources. Then have some sort of crazy inventor, who discovers oil powered engines or something like that. BUT...

 

We had to pass our concept on to the one sitting next to us. Based on that concept setting we then had to make new concepts and a story idea. I got this very rough sketch from my classmate Bob.

 

 

I then tried out some different ideas and styles

 

 

 

I had decided the week before that I would work with my layout. Especially the time aspect in the comic format. Since you are able some different forms of time simultaneously, as apposed to forms like storyboarding, which is more fixes to show time chronologically.

So I decided to try and make a comic that was both readable as one long continuous drawing and a normal booklet turn a page when folded.

 

Like this 

 

 

 

We then had to pitch our stories to the class. Since I focused more on the format I made a simple story about a hungry secretary and a delivery boy. We had an hour and a half to thumbnail it out, so there wasn't that much time to experiment with the panels things like that. But my idea was that the panels formed an eternity symbol when stretched out.

 

I called the story Samsara after the Buddhist wheel of life, seeing it as a form of a surreal never ending waiting line. Having this in mind I would have the waiting people in the middle of the page passing their heads along.

 I did this to give a sense time passing and movement, as well as a symbol of reincarnation. The main story would then be told in the panels forming the eternity symbol. Having the two main characters' story being told simultaneously and switching panel line in the middle, at the crossing of lines in the eternity symbol.      

 

Since I complicated things this much for myself(again). It was a relief when we had to ink a page for one of the others stories. I got Clara's Viking story and decided do it in watercolor

 

I didn't have time to quite as much as I wanted but it turned out okay. I can't find the original pencil but here is her blog http://www.claracomics.blogspot.dk/.

 

We finally got to inking our own comic but only had 2 and a half days to so. I combined the pencils in a single document inked like that to have a better overview. I then cut it up into single pages for print. This is the result. I'm planning to re-ink it by hand and do grayscale in digitally, but it's going to take some time since it is going to be in my spare time.   

 

 

 

  



Final 12 page story for Paul Karasik's class

 

I finally finished my 12 page autobiographical comic, we had to do for Paul Karasik's class. It is a story about my fear of having a mental disease while growing up. Only to discover that my had it instead. Then finally having a sense of relief when she got the right medicine to hold it at bay.

 

It was quite a struggle to get it done as I had to work at most nights after school. Since we had another course during the day for an 8 page comic.

 

We had to do it in a different style then we had done in our port folio. I tried to go for a more honest rough style since it fits the story better.

 

Hope you like it.

   



 

 

12 page autobio

The last assignment was to pitch a personal story that had changed you in some way. 

Making it into a 12 page comic.

Doing the layout and and a rough sketch over the weekend. Basically impossible and to make harder for myself I decided to make a narrator tell the story as a poem and have the dialog tell the story in a more down to earth tone. 

... and the iceing... trying out a new style.

I had it all thumbnailed by tuesday, before I realized I wasn't that my story wasn't working.

So I'm doing a whole different story.

But here is the sketches for the first story.

LAYOUTS:

   

THUMBNAILS: