Friday, 19 August 2011

Beauty and the Beast/ BUTTON PHOBIA

Hey Guys, for my Beauty and the Beast project I had more than one story I would like to tell. The first idea was about the hairiest man alive, suffering in a circus. He gets saved by a kind clown woman. I will continue with the freak show idea when i'm done with the button phobia one.

For those of you who haven't been to the meetings, I thought of things that could be the beast, so I thought about a documentary I saw about strange phobias. One of them was button phobia which really effected people in their daily lifes.  They screamed, jumped up and down and started crying because of buttons. The phobia is the beast!

My story is about a woman that is terrified of buttons and I tell how her phobia developed.
I started all over again with my character design and focused on facial expressions. Also what expressive traits each character will have and which style suits my story. (Scott Mc Cloud's Making Comics)

I did some research for my character. the button phobia woman is either disgusted, or absolutly horrified of buttons.  Fotos by Hitchcocks films helped me to work on the facial expressions.


Marijpol inspired me for the style. She uses strong contrast through her shadings. (The shadings follow the object or the figure which creates dynamic). 

As you can see above I used strong shadings for my story. The character itself was way too "cartoony" so I changed to a more realistic style. Still I felt like something was missing and I disliked the neat and stiff look of my character. To break out of my comfort zone I continued to work with pencil. I haven't done anything in pencil in ages, but figured it will help me to get more lose and create a different style. The artist below uses pencil for his story. Also the unusual style for a graphic novel inspires me a lot.




I kept the hair in strict lines which is another contrast in style. It also stands for her compulsive way/ fear of buttons.

I will post more this week. Don't want to bomb you with my work. Thanks for your time and I'm always thankful for feedback.



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2 comments:

Chiu said...

I actually loved your third picture down - the one I think you see as being too cartoony - But hey, you are here to explore different visual styles, and of course develop the one that you feel the most comfortable with.

Check out some of the people on my facebook - not the mma, or bjj ones, but the french and german alternative press publishers, and artists - I'd like to see you build up a network, and try to get stuff published :)

19 August 2011 at 14:01
Christiane Matz said...

Thanks for your feedback. Really would like to get published and build up a network too. I had a look at Bengamin Monti, Alkazz Gargel, Dominique Gobiet and Céline Guirchard.

I think my next step should be to draw down the story and then see how the style works.

20 August 2011 at 08:49

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