First group work and end year exam

Here's the magasine that I've worked on for the past 7 weeks with 3 other classmates, Nilas RD, Kristian Bay and Eydi av Hamri. We got Fantasy/sci-fi as theme and the sentence "this is the saddest story ever told" along with the character themes or personas homewrecker and a scorned man.

and as the final end year exam we had to do a 2 pages story with the premise "afterwards I realized it was a big mistake"

Concept development with John Kenn Mortensen

A couple of weeks ago we had the freakishly handsome John Kenn Mortensen creator of post-it monsters and cartoonist in Politiken. The workshop focused on concept development.
The first assignment we got, were to make a concept based on Nick Cave and the badseed's song "The curse of Millhaven" from the already highly conceptual album Murder Ballads.

The thing that caught my attention the most in the song was the part with the mother saying Loretta had always been evil. I then went down that tangent and twisted it into being Loretta's Mother who had been home schooling her. The reason Loretta keep killing people was because her mother needed new pupil dead or alive.

The second assignment was to create a high concept also called a Hollywood concept. We made some a what if sentences, like what if Hitler was really an alien. Then we had to find two films or stories that sort of described the concept. I came up with this

What if the children AI robots and human played together in the ruins after a doomsday battle between their parents. 

Stories: Peanuts meets Terminator

Setting: Post war ruins

Target audience: Playful adults

Synopsis:

The war between Ai robots and humans has reached a stalemate and earth is in ruins. The robots have killed most of the adult human population. The orphans play in the ruins their only care in life is passing time. A few years back the robots started sending their new personality efficient AI robots known as P.E.A.R’s out to play with the human children. So they can learn from them and in the end take their place.

Format:

Webcomic strip:      

The third assignment was to steal some part from one of the others concept when they pitched it. We then had to make a low concept which is what most Indie stories usually fall under. Low concepts are also harder to explain in a few words. I stole Evil space wizard from my classmate Eydi's story. 

I then came up this concept:

 

The concept or story is about an old stoner type who finds a real magic mushroom growing from a dead unicorn. He gets stuck in the powerful trip believing he is a evil space wizard. He sells drugs to the kids in the neighbourhood, believing they are lazy his henchmen. He has turned his handicapped blood hound into a chariot by fixing a bicicle seat on the dog. The lower picture above is how he sees himself. How he sees himself is actually real in another dimension. He meets himself later when he tries to tear a hole in time and space.

Graveyard reportage w. Kai Phiffer

Here's the roughs and the final pages from the comic reportage workshop we had with the German cartoonist Kai Phiffer a couple of weeks ago. I tried to be more loose with the final rendering and work more with positive and negative shapes.  

ROUGHS

FINAL

The creation of a comic...

The aesop story about the fox and the eagle

Stage 1: Breakdown and ideation

The story about the fox and the eagle:

The eagle and the fox became friends and decided to live near each other. The eagle built her nest in the top of a tall tree, while the fox built her home in the bushes below to raise her young.

One day while the fox was away, the eagle, unable to find food for her babies, swooped down and picked up a young cub for her brood the feast on.

Returning, the fox discovered what had happened and was less grieved for the death of her young one than her inability to get revenge on the eagle.

Meanwhile the eagle had found a village nearby where a goat was being roasted on an open fire. She snatched a piece of cooking meat and flew back to her nest not realizing that she was also carrying a burning cinder.

A breeze rose to fan the cinder and soon the nest was ablaze. The young eaglets could not yet fly and were roasted in their nest and dropped down dead t the bottum of the tree.

There, in sight of the eagle, the fox gobbled them up.

Morale: Do unto others as you do unto you.  

Concept sketching:

I start out by sketching, getting my first ideas down on paper. Everything should be loose, nothing is wrong,

just let one idea form the next.

                                                   

Break down:

When I have a more firm feeling of where I'm going with the style. I break the story down into pages. My focus is to tell the story with as few actions possible by breaking the story down into its most essential elements.
In this case 4 pages.

Page 1: The fox and the eagle are friends, the eagle doesn't have food, fox leaves.

Page 2: The eagle snatches a cub, fox returns, eagle leaves

Page 3: Eagle returns with a burning ember.

Page 4: Nest catches fire, fox gobbles up eaglets.

Stage 2: Thumbnails
I then go on to drawing the layout in thumbnails. I try to improve everything I can from stage to stage, seeing each stage as a new start.

Stage 3: Rough Sketches

When I have the layout in thumbnails I do a rough sketch in a larger format. In this case A4.

Stage 4 to 6: Critique, self evaluation, Going back

When I've made a larger sketch I always try and have someone else look at my work. Preferable not some too close personally, but someone who is able to give constructive criticism. At the moment I'm lucky enough to have a whole class to critique my work.

 In this case most of the critique was on the readability. Since I see it is a bad sign, if you have to defend your work too much. I realized that I had tried to bring in too much extra story. After this conclusion I decided to start again from scratch and focus on telling the main story with clear readable shapes and silhouettes.

Above: First drafts 

Stage 7: Back to thumbnailing

One of the important elements in making a comic is NOT to think of it as a completely linear process. If something that doesn't work, go back to the last working stage  and start from there. In this case I went all the way back and made new thumbnails.  

                                                    

I had an idea about making the shape of the tree function as a kind of panel grid as well as establishing the setting. This idea lead me unto thinking that it could be kind of fun, if I could also integrate the negative shapes into the storytelling in other ways. I also thought the more abstract paperclip style fitted the Aesop story well.  

Stage 8: Rough sketches

I did some new rough silhouette sketches. Focusing on having clear and interesting shapes letting shapes transform into other shapes were it felt natural. But always trying to keep the main story elements clear. Because of time pressure I made rather big changes to page 2 and 3 because I wanted them to work as a splash page. This is not the best way to go about making big changes, it is better to do it in the thumbnail stage.

   

Stage 9: Tight Sketches

After I had a better idea of the layout. I tightened everything up using the lasso tool. Still refining the silhouettes as I tightened it up.  

The text still need refining.

But I really wanted to try and ink a page. So I also made a half finished style test page by printing out the first page in light blue and inking on top.

It still needs a lot of love but hopefully you'll get the idea.

We also had to do a rough layout sketch for a reduced 2 page version. My version is very rough but my idea was to make the splash page into the 2 page version. Taking the most important visual element of the 4 page story and tying them with as few words as possible. 

Design 2 with Lawrence Marvit

Here is my illustrations from the week with Lawrence Marvits. The focus of this workshop was to show form and space and using value as a design element.

The three themes was:

Magic vs Science

Lost in a giant world of fruit and vegetables

Heaven and Hell

I really been wanting to make some action scenes to break away from the more quiet things, I've been doing lately. So this was a great opportunity to crank up them explosions and it was  nice to just focus on one picture and composition for awhile.