Comic Ideas and Development (College Work)

During multiple tasks in college, we had to create our own story by using the tasks we experienced before hand, and making a detailed and understandable idea of a certain concept I would like to create for the final piece. We would do this task and do it in a comic related format with some sort of interactivity or a chosen point and click adventure. I picked the Comic as I felt it really fit with a certain story I had in mind before. From this idea, I built diagrams of the characters, the dilemma in the story (all stories happen to have a dilemma in them in some stage) and the possible animation which I could place into it, to appeal to the viewer.
This story was originally about a girl who is shipped away with a guitar that has important paper work inside, but the idea was scrapped as it was too complicated to make it such a short story. In the end I decided to go with a story called "Himmelblau" (German word; "Blue Sky") which is about a girl who grows up with a park managed by a creature. I thought it'd be a fun story to play around with and get people who are reading it, interested in what the story is intending and what it's clearly about.
I am in the middle of processing and completing this story to it's finished glory, but I am really in love with how much detail I have added to the whole idea of Himmelblau. I believe if I had more time and was able to publish it, I could make it into a German tale some day. The name Himmelblau was based off of a song made by a band called Die Arzte, the first track from the Jazz ist Anders album. This band has been around for many years, (since during the 80s) and have a very good ideal of the world, and this is by picking on certain funny parts of the world, and writing them into song. But in Himmelblau's case, this funny side does show up in certain cases, but it is quite the serious but true song. It's about hope in your life, and everything is achievable some way or another, or that there's other paths to achieving just one goal. 

(This is the sketchy styled background I am working on currently.)

 

The characters will be drawn in flash so I am able to edit them in frame by frame, and the Photoshop work shall be the backgrounds I will copy and paste into the frames them selves. This is the most simple way which I can complete this task, and it will look effective to have two different styles on top of each other, but go well with the whole story in general. I firstly planned to do the background neatly and perfectly into flash, but I scrapped the idea when I thought about the qualities which Photoshop could give me. 

 Comic Idea Sketches

Here are my sketches that I did for my final piece. These were just the guide lines of what I would like to end up with when I have finished the product its self.

Kinetic Typographical Animation (College Work)

A project was set in College, where a certain audio clip is used to create a piece of Kinetic Typographical Animation. This means only using the movements of words and letters to form a piece of animated artwork medium to appeal to a certain subject which the audio expresses. Many people who create advertisement use this style to easily get their own point across easier then just images and actors which could cost more then a simple yet fashionable illustration.

I had decided to do something quite personal to my self, and choose a Musician I have pretty much known all my life. Grant Nicholas is a guitarist and lead singer of a band called Feeder, an Indie Rock band, playing with a bassist called Taka Hirose and the current drummer Karl Brazil. The whole band started their journey on the road in 1990, but were really known during 1991 as they preformed outside their comfort zones. During 2002 a unfortunate accident lead the band to disband for a while, caused by the devastating news they had recently heard about their own original drummer Jon Lee, who committed suicide in his Miami home. So, 6 months on, Grant him self did a interview to say that the band was still around, and they were taking a break because of the unfortunate events, yet still writing tracks for their new album which was yet to release called Comfort in Sound, which was tributed to Jon Lee him self. 

So, here is part two of the interview which Grant happened to do in October 2002, for a Dutch Online Multimedia;

One part of the interview its self I took an interest to was near the end, where he quotes; "People also look so deeply into stuff, you know? And it's completely not how it was. But isn't that great though, isn't that what music's all about?" I took an interest in this because it was I liked how he put forward this simple quote, yet it's quite commonly true for not just music, but for art and other mediums. This would mean everyone would relate to this simple quote in some way with their own hobbies in life. I personally feel that this effects my self, as I also try and interpret what the original lyrics are trying to peruse, yet when an artist or developer happens to comment on it, it's completely different and out of context. This adds to the mystery of artistic pleasure its self, and that is why it's so addicting to viewers, even if they can't see it personally them selves.

To make this into a Kinetic Typographical Animation, I would have to grasp the mood and information, to suit the atmosphere. What I was thinking is use a series of images prosessed by words them selves, to create a shape of an object its self. Maybe shapes of guitars to symbolize music and keep the connection between Grant and his own profession. Either way, to have a connection with my idol is the biggest reason why I would like to do this quote. I believe Grant is a very talented Guitarist, to become like him would be my dream (Yes, there are much better guitarists out there, but to be able to grow up with his music has been an amazing experience). This will add more to the atmosphere if interest is shown.

Typography (College Work)

Typography is a subject and design theory in which expresses itself in words, just like what icons and diagrams do, but in a worded scale. Typographers or Typography Artists manage and ensure that the spacing, colour, texture, and ideal of their own typography image is set out in a giving way, to make sure their own idea is viewed as an "image" in its self. Typography was founded in the late 1800 BC, using concentrated dyes, stencils and punches to create their own work in stone and in paper parchments. These days, we are known to use the printing press for such things, to create a fine and finished products which creates images in our minds; We see these Typography Information Posters everywhere in advertising, it doesn't even have to be on paper, it can even be animated, typography doesn't have to stay a still image. The usage of Typography is quite a broad area, and can be mistaken or not seen as Typography, but it is there.

So, to use the whole idea of Typography and the way it effects people, I created Four images my self, by just using one text block. I used a Haiku poem, which is more then enough to express your own image across, making sure I used heavy font to show the words in which matter, and formed a few words themselves to give depth and curiosity to the viewer. My Haiku was as follows;

Stomping on the ground.

Mr. Dino, will you dance,

Fox-trot, Samba, Waltz?

Managing to use the same font for three, and on the last, expressing detail into a design but by using it as a visual effect.

First Attempt;

I found this one easiest to do, but alignment can really mean everything when you create such a simple Typography image. The italics create emphasis on the word "Stomping" which could entitle that it is a spoken out word.

 

Second Attempt;

I felt much more confident when it came to the second typography image, I really wanted to show the word, "Stomping", off as much as I needed to, since I still found it was quite an important word.

Third Attempt;

I decided to mess around with colour, to at least experience some depth into the image, such as this one beside the text. Stomping is quite a moving word, so I scrambled the letters slightly to show a shaking effect.

Forth and Final Attempt;

This final image was the most fun to play around with. The detail I was able to accomplish to make a coloured picture of a Dinosaur, which was funnily enough part of the font which is skirted on the line art of the Dinosaur image its self, which is quite the establishment. I started to play around with opacity to make it have a rough look, as well as using font which looked rough in the first place.