Another Graphic Novel competition, but for many more pages

http://www.myriadeditions.com/First%20Graphic%20Novel%20Competition

Comics Festival 2011

Contest

Tree Time Tales

This is my finished piece for the Cheltenham competition. I think the lithography printing really paid off to give it a nice effect and printing onto watercolour paper made it easy to add colour.

cheltenham Illustration final colour test 2

I personally think the sepia scheme is stronger i tried to be less dramatic and more tonal with the colour overlay this time.

Macbeth page 1

first page in colour, i still have a lot to edit on it, abit more colour to add but it seems to be taking a lot longer to ink and colour than i thought it would.

movie page 1

Page 1 of 2, based off of Japanese film versus / ultimate versus.

This is one of the tasks I've been looking at over the holiday, i think it still needs a lot of work, but its a start, i don't think panel 3 to 4 are clear so I'll have to edit it slightly so it makes sense.

I'll upload Macbeth page 1 coloured tomorrow.

my final entry

Cheltenham Illustration final colour test

Goya was a major inspiration for the piece

The in art on this ambitious piece was very challenging trying to reinterpret the techniques of the old etching masters like Gustave Dore while giving it a personal edge.

I felt some of the finished lines looked flat or inconsistent with the design and composition but this colour dropping I did seems to hide those floors in the work and instead crate a tense surreal scene. 

see if it can work in black and white 

Gustave Dore 

It wont make sense out of context but just wondering what people think of the finishing style? I will upload my full page roughs soon + plus the general story.

Colour and inking Finishes

Following the decent outcome of my last colour test I wanted to try it again but this time on a digitally inked piece.

This is the text I have been using to create this 2-page spread

The Funny Dream

Written by Marie Birknshaw

“Well, I never!” said the turtle.

“Did you see that ostrich Fly?”

“Well, I never!” said the ostrich.

“There’s a sheep in the sky.”

“Well, I never!” said the sheep.

“Did you see that Tortoise run?”

“Well, I never!” said the Tortoise.

“There’s a mole in the sun.”

“Well, I never!” said the mole.

“Did you hear that dormouse roar?”

“Well, I never!” said the dormouse.

“What’s that there on the floor.”?

“Well, I never” said the girl

“I thought I heard a scream.”

“Well, I never” said the girl

“What a very funny dream!”

The context of the rhyme is what really made me think outside the target demographic barrier this story is aimed at. I wanted to mature this simple narrative by setting it in a challenging 

time and idea.

I decided to set the comic in the 50s and make all characters animalmophric Just because of my current interest in to the quality of Juanjo Guarnidos colours and designs in the comic series BLACKSAD.

The middle image of the first page of Blacksad volume 3 i found really eye catching with the over dosing use of sleazily mucky yellow and brown that similar scheme is   found in my experiment. 

I used a lot of the horse photos as a guideline for the running panels and also copied some of the existing compositions in to the story to aid me in my visuals.  

Also drawing horses and individual anthropomorphic characters was something I had a lot of trouble with so that’s another reason why I choose to do this quite twisted obscure story on something that’s really innocent fun.

Outcome

I feel slightly more positive about this three-coloured experiment I believe it does more justice to the period it’s parodying its not too dark or lighthearted it has the right amount of tension from my point of view. My second goal was also not to copy the oblivious Junanjos style I mean. There are connections to his work and mine but my limited palette makes this feel a lot more personal than a rip off of an existing formula.

  

What worked?

• ·      Using a digital method of inking leaves more free space and time to alter the original pencil lines and looking in to the depth and distance of characters and objects both foreground and back.
• ·      The merging of the mucky green and light orange scheme shows that vintage timeless feeling petty well.
• ·      The darker shadows display the crowded squashed scenes decently this is contrasted by the cream coloured highlights of the actual race.
• ·      The exploration of camera angles and subject to subject shots show intendancy with the characters and there horses.
• ·      I really adore the 2^nd page last panel perspective on the body and the spotlight effect
• ·      I feel most of my character designs including the background figures show action and life but also fear and excitement within the spreads.

What did not work?

• ·      Even though I stuck two three colours the colour seems to put slight more variation in the crowd scenes just does not feel as there’s a delicate consistency.
• ·      Certain thick inked lines look out of place with the rest of the focused subjects on the. panels example the roof girders and lamp on the 2^nd page last panel
• ·      The over all finish is not slick or structure so not all marks are restricted within there requested lines. 

Conclusion

This comic feels like its pushing me in to the correct path it seems that these two experiments have made me realize the importance of colour schemes in your work.

That being said I would like to continue discovering more relevant colour schemes as well as developing on my line quality.

Comic finishes tests colour

Apart from sending countless hours on creating Gustave Dore etchings for my Cheltenham submission and developing and refining my early RVJ experiments.

I have been using my time as well to explore my colour theory as others have always considered a lot of my colouring too be confusing or flat.

So to prove these individuals wrong I tried out a Photoshop tablet colour test today.

I used a really quick rough 2-page spread depicting a scene of tension for this test. 

i hope that this helps me discover what sort of atmosphere I want to show through the use of three or five colours.

Here are the results

Test 1

Test 2

I looked at Juanjos Guarnido colour work in Juan Diaz Canales BLACKSAD for inspiration and guidance he had shades of certain colours that would show up in certain panels in the 2nd volume i really adored.

What worked?

• ·      I feel both colour tests were varied in success with panels. (examples)
• ·      Guy getting out of car on test 1
• ·      Girl with the head phones panel on test 2

• ·      Number 1 I feel is very momcrome and raw with its use of greies and dull browns but I felt it worked well with the shop interior.
• ·      Number 2 seems more dramatic and filmic with the direction of the sunlight and does the job a little more passionately

What did not?

• ·      Possibly it’s the quality of mark making on both it feels rushed and the sketchy lines can effect the colours purpose as it was all done with pen without any pencil. 

• I think I should try this technique again out on a finished standard spread.
• Could give more depth and understanding of how effective my style will be in future story telling.

In terms of story I am sticking with my initial idea of children’s rhythms and tales and crating my alternative version on them.   

hiho

penciled without colour yet
empty space on top left corner is for title, name etc.

Cheltenham Illustration alternative idea in Progress

I am working an alternative design for the tree time tales piece but looking at the idea of time using mark making achieved by the old masters like Goya and even early 20th century artists like Boris Artzybasheff and then modernizing it with urban propaganda and references to animated shows very suttlery.

The left picture is the rough layout for the piece I have a video showing the image being sketched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKQXxK8YrzE&feature=channel_video_title  and the right is the obvious refined composition starting to ink it in but thinking more carefully about the marks and lines I create so it flows better with the pictures concept

.

Tree Time Tales Competition entry

I will post the watercoloured version soon, let me know what you think of the overall design and whether it makes sense comments are appreciated!

Cheltenham Illustration entry colour theory experiment

I plan to use digital techniques limiting the colour scheme to give it the eerie mood it desires But the source of light is the focal point in the images content.

 and I am also possibly going to try and refine the lines and cross-hatching.  

Cheltenham Illustration entry

Well half the page anyway. If I can stay on track I should be able to finish the other half before May

Original artwork in Paris

found a wonderful shop near Notre dame which sells original Bande Dessine pages http://www.danielmaghen.com
and then it got me thinking about other places that may sell original artwork:
http://www.bdartiste.com/dotclear2/index.php?category/De-crecy/Nicolas-de-Cr%C3%A9cy-S%C3%A9rigraphies

one of my favourites De-Crecy
Now to check if there are any galleries in London? a tad closer to home

another page...

what do you think of this?

btw check this out Making Graphic Novels

Acryilc Colour does it work for me

I am interested very much in working with traditional techniques to broaden my practices use of media to develop this i started doing studies from my own photography and looking in to colour and its tones and shading with acrylic paints.

This is not supposed to be a complete copy of the figure itself but i can see i need to look at limiting my palette to try and crate more realistic atmospheric pieces.

this study took about 2 hours cause of the focus on colour. 

i used a large range of colours for this figure so obviously this study is mixture of colder and warmer than its original source i plan to continue these sorts of studies to further improve on my colour theory and create comics with more personal hands on like Juanjo Guarnidos Black Sad (though he uses water colour and so does French comic artist Luc Brunschwig) than just straight forward digital software which I already know about.  

.

hiho

Hey, I played a bit with colours, what do you think?

Krystian

Inspiration

by John Kenn

a competition i think us illustrators would like

http://www.dandad.org/awards/student/2011/categories/18/illustration

cheltenham-illustration-awards 2011

well worth entering for sequential narrators
http://www.cheltenham-illustration-awards.com/

http://www.graphicsdirect.co.uk/

this is the website for the markers, it has quiet a few things that are useful.

French Publisher

This is a video interview of Juanjo Guarnido he is a Spanish artist who does Black Sad which was introduced to me by Josh. He publishes under a French publisher known as Dargaud, the way they advertise their comics is interesting as they do an animatic of the comic to give you a preview of the comic before you buy it!

Juanjo Guarnido Interview

Dargaud Publishers

Endless talent from Europe

Below Sophia Martineck in "A love story in five acts"

a lot of interesting artists mentioned that can be found in the following links
http://www.electrocomics.com/
http://grandpapier.org/?lang=fr
http://www.printeresting.org/2009/05/15/frederic-coche-auteur/

http://www.chihoi.net/comics/
http://www.ansichten-des-jordan.de/ (check the drawings link)
http://www.marijpol.com/index.php?/comic/strips-/

Sophia Martineck

more of her wonderful work here:
http://martineck.com/projekt.php?number=37

L5 Find Your Publisher!

Find your publisher!

Search for publishers in which

a) you feel your style and content would be appropriate,
or
b) you wish to develop your own work towards the type of work they represent.

my own initial examples are:

Canicola: http://www.canicola.net/home.htm
Grand Papier http://grandpapier.org/?lang=fr

However I will do some more research to find even more inspirational publishers

The Abaddon - by Koren Shadmi

"Koren Shadmi has started serializing a great-looking new webcomic called The Abaddon. Just a few pages so far, so now’s a good time to grab a front row seat."
from http://scottmccloud.com/