Assignment 4

I started this assignment by looking over all the work I've completed so far and reading through my reflections. I made some notes for each part:

Then I thought about my favourite sketches from previous exercises that I could use as a starting point for my story.

I really loved the way the grumpy girl turned out, it was something about her expression and the way I had sketched it that I wanted to develop further so I went with that. I decided to call her 'Edith' and then began to think about how I could piece her story together using the 'Eight point arc structure' as a guide.

I then proceeded to work out how to break the story down into the 6 panels and the kind of style I wanted it to be in.

In Part 1 where I made several sketchbooks, I had also made the foldy zine and so I found that and used that for the final book.

Here are the sketches I did for each panel in the zine:

Front cover

Back cover

Pages 1 & 2

Pages 3 & 4

Pages 5 & 6

I then proceeded to use watercolours to enhance the sketches. I chose to keep the colour scheme simple and intentionally added more color to the panels where 'Edith' became happier. This technique I learnt from sketching the tv/film scenes on the previous exercise.:

Coming up with the story was tricky, I gave it a lot of thought before proceeding. I wanted to take my grumpy character and turn things around for her in a simple way.
I used elements from my own life like going to the cafe and I chose the Dalmatian because my Husband and I have two Dalmatian's who cheer us up all the time.

I broke the story down into the following eight sections:

Stasis -Edith's everyday normal was miserable, she felt so misunderstood by the world.
Trigger - She's secretly pregnant and desperate to rest at the cafe but needs to queue for her coffee.
Quest - As above
A surprise - The person in front of her in the queue pays for her coffee without her knowing as a random act of kindness.
A critical choice/reaction - Edith's hard exterior starts to soften as she considers the kindness of the stranger.
The climax - On her way home a Dalmatian dog jumps out at her from no where, but Edith isn't scared.
The reversal - The dog's love towards Edith softens her heart.
The resolution - Edith smiles all the way home.

The eight point structure was really helpful when crafting Edith's story, it helped me to think about the twists in the story and how I could fit all this information in just 6 panels.

As I planned out the thumbnails for my story I soon realised that it was quite difficult to express the story purely in illustrations. I realised having no words and still being able to get the story across is quite a skill and not one I have right now so I did use some words but kept it minimal.

Reflection:
I really enjoyed this assignment, along with all the coursework from Part 4. It's taught me the area of illustration I am most drawn to and that I want to further explore using narrative in my work going forward.
I've learnt that I enjoy simple sketches and can capture some wonderful expressions using few lines. I do feel perhaps I need to work on making my simple illustrations more polished and will look to learn to do this.
My imagination plays a big part in the enjoyment I have taken from this work and I've learnt I can use that in people sketches and scenes/nature. This discovery has given me a good foundation to build upon my future work and hopefully my future career.

Using words in my illustrations wasn't something I was keen to do, however when working through the assignment I realised at my current skill level I needed those words in order to get the narrative across more clearly. I think I need to play around with using words more with my illustrations to see if I can find a way to make it work for me.

I loved moving from descriptive drawings to fictional narratives. I found the fictional a lot more enjoyable and felt like I really enjoyed the coursework far more than I had when working on descriptive drawings alone.

The illustrator I connected with the most from this section I think was Brandon J Wallace. The way he sketches scenes from tv and film captured my imagination the most and I felt I could learn a lot from him and his work. I also discovered that Wallace created environment sketches and full drawings which is something I am very interested in and so I think referring to his work in the future will help me a lot.

I really enjoyed part 4 of this unit and feel it has been my favorite so far. I learnt a lot from part 3 and found weaknesses in my abilities to work on and actually was surprised to find some of my people sketches were great to work on further and develop narrative for. This was a lot of fun and gave me a bit more confidence in wanting to sketch people in the future. I'm looking forward to competing the final part of this course and seeing where it takes me.