ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL NARRATIVE / TASK 3 & 4: GRAPHIC NOVEL & FINAL PROJECT
Luisa Audrey / 0348741 / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Task 3: Graphic Novel & Task 4: Final Project
LECTURE
3 ACTS STRUCTURE
Central Theme
The theme is what the story is really about. It’s
the main idea or underlying meaning. Often, it’s
the storyteller’s personal opinion on the
subject matter. A story may have both a major
theme and minor themes.
Major Theme: An idea that is intertwined and
repeated throughout the whole narrative.
Minor Theme: An idea that appears more
subtly, and doesn’t necessarily repeat.
Conflict
The conflict is what drives the story. It’s what
creates tension and builds suspense, which
are the elements that make a story
interesting.
Characters
A story usually includes a number of
characters, each with a different role or
purpose. Regardless of how many characters a
story has, however, there is almost always a
protagonist and antagonist.
Central Characters: These characters are vital
to the development of the story. The plot
revolves around them.
Protagonist: The protagonist is the main
character of a story. He or she has a clear
goal to accomplish or a conflict to overcome.
Although protagonists don’t always need to
be admirable, they must command an
emotional involvement from the audience.
Antagonist: Antagonists oppose
protagonists, standing between them and
their ultimate goals. The antagonist can be
presented in the form of any person, place,
thing, or situation that represents a
tremendous obstacle to the protagonist.
3 Acts Structure
1. Setup: The world in which the protagonist
exists prior to the journey. The setup usually
ends with the conflict being revealed.
2. Rising Tension: The series of obstacles the
protagonist must overcome. Each obstacle is
usually more difficult and with higher stakes
than the previous one.
3. Conflict: The point of highest tension, and
the major decisive turning point for the
protagonist.
Resolution: The conflict’s conclusion. This is
where the protagonist finally overcomes the
conflict, learns to accept it, or is ultimately
defeated by it. Regardless, this is where the
journey ends.
HOW TO MAKE COMICS
Everything starts with a goal. An Idea!
Ideas come from your experience and good ideas never come from browsing google aimlessly.
How to come up with ideas?
1. Brainstorming
2. Mindmapping
The more stress on Finding the Ideas, the more it will stray you.
Art is a form of communication between the artist and the world.
We need to find Ideas that win the audience, how to execute them?
Pen it down! Aim for simple keywords!
Great and Meaningful Ideas are born from the greatest, most influential inspirations and passion.
MAKING COMICS WITH SALGOOD SAM
Moment to moment
One of the most common forms, metaphorically think of it as a blink or two between seconds of a
lm, it can be used to slow down and draw out action, but be aware, if over utilized it can make your comics dull and laborious to
draw and read.
Action to action
Next most common I’d guess, and a workhorse of superhero comics, is Action to Action. Really it’s more or less a less nely sliced
version of Moment to Moment, and typically focuses on significant events. or movement from panel to panel, and over larger intervals of time between moments.
Subject to subject
A cut between to related moments, but focusing on a different subject in the same scene. Think conversation in a restaurant, or a
shift of focus onto another actor in the scene.
Scene to scene
A Scene is a series of events that happen in one location, and continuous period of time. A change of location or significant jump in
time between panels is considered the end of a scene and the start of a new one.
I think I use Aspect to Aspect a lot myself, it’s a favorite. It can be an interesting way to jump around a scene, taking in key details or
letting the characters focus wonder. It’s also a good way to introduce their environment to a reader, though the players eyes perhaps
or inviting them to wonder away from the players a bit.
This of course had to be added to the original list of Six, being a cartoon mainstay. You see it a lot in various forms, partial montages
depicting the contents of a ash back or inner dialog
INSTRUCTION
In this project, we were tasked to make a Horror webtoon and then animate it.
At first I was confused on how to make a good horror story since I dislike horror and I'm too scared to look for references. I was also having a hard time picturing a scary face, so I thought I would make a story that has no scary faces, more into psychological horror.
At first I got an idea of doing story about a stalker. However it didn't work, so I changed the story again into a doll story.
In this story, I was inspired by Indonesian horror movie called "Sabrina" also a story that I read but I forgot where ;-; Here is the original story that I wrote:
My name is Anna, I'm just a middle aged women who's really busy. I feel like I've been spending my time too much on my work that I forgot about my dearest daughter Evelyn. She's not the most cheerful kid but she is honest a very sweet girl.
I decided that I'm gonna take a week of holiday to spend my time with my Evelyn. I have talked to boss and have finished my work for the whole week, now all I have to do is to make her happy. On my way home, I found something looking very flashy for afar. I took a closer look, n I saw a new looking doll sitting in the garbage bin.
"Oh what a poor beautiful looking doll. Why are you thrown away? Let me adopt you! I bet Evelyn will be very happy to meet you!"
I went home and cleaned the doll for a bit before I called out for my daughter. "Honey! Look what I have for you", I said to her. She's not a very happy-looking girl like I said, but the moment I gave her the doll, she looked really happy. I thought it was the best decision I could ever make. Maybe I can fix my relationship with her too.
Day 1:
Today visited Evelyn's room and found out that she was enjoying her time with the new doll. I sit beside them and smiled. "Hi sweetie, are you enjoying your time with the new doll?" I asked. "Her name is Alice mom" she answered with a straight tone. "Can I join the tea party?" I didn't think much and I tried to move the doll so I can be beside Evelyn, but she suddenly got mad at me. I flinched abit, thought they wanted to play alone, so I left.
Day 2:
Evelyn already went to school, would be nice if I can clean up the house. Everything was okay until I found Alice in the living room sofa. "Ah why didn't she clean up her toy properly". I went to her room and put Alice in her toy rack and closed the door. Just before I walked away, I heard a music box. I don't remember turning on her music box though? I went back inside to found that Alice is no longer in her rack. I diverted my eyes to Evelyn's bed and saw Alice was sitting nicely there. I quickly turned off the music box n closed the door, trying to get the negstive thoughts out of ny head. "Maybe I really did put it in the bed"
Day 3:
Evelyn is getting weirder. Today I found her wearing the same outfit as the doll. I don't remember buying her that kind of outfit, so I asked her where she got it but she sould glare at me n kept on playing with Alice.
Day 4:
I was starting to get sick of seeing my daughter playing with that creepy doll. So I went to her room and planned to get off her attention from Alice, until I saw the door was opened for a bit. I heard noises from her room, so I tried to peek, but I couldn't see them because they were at the other side. I heard Evelyn's laugh. A few secs later, it changed into a scared voice, "please don't hurt me.. please go away" Evelyn said. I shivered a bit and started to crouch as I heard more of the conversation. Evelyn then began to cry. I thought I should've gone there and help her, but I couldn't move. Until I got shocked by Alice's eye right in front of me. I jumped and fell back because of it. The door opened and I saw my daughter holding Alice with a weird look on her face. I frozed for a second and found something off, I realized that Alice is now smiling. Right at that moment, I tried to gather all of courage and took Alice by force. Evelyn was screaming when I took the doll. I quickly went down and threw the doll at the bin where I found her. I went up and tried to calm Evelyn down. "Don't worry, I'm going to buy you a new doll soon okay? Do you want a bigger doll or fancier doll maybe?" After I calmed her down for a bit, I started to smell something that is unpleasant. I realized the smell came from Evelyn. "Honey, it seems like you haven't showered for days, lets go take a shower, shall we?"
Day 5:
Today right before I was about to bring her to the toy store, I saw her playing with Alice again. How? I threw it away yesterday? Did she take it on her own?
"Evelyn! Why are you playing with the doll again?!" Right after I faced her towards me, I realized her eye color has changed. It's the same eye color as Alice! "Give me the toy! You're not gonna play with it again!!" I grabbed the doll by it's neck and saw that Evelyn was grabbing her neck gasping for air. I didn't think much and just quickly went outside and close her door. She's still screaming uncontrollably, I just ignored her and quickly went down. I looked for a match and brought it with me. I threw it at my garbage bin and saw the doll with a sad face. I quickly burned it. But it looks like this doll is kind of hard to burn, it took longer than I took. Until I saw a smoke coming from my daughter's room. I ran back and opened the door. I screamed and fell to the floor. I saw my daughter's body is half burning, she looked at me with a disappointed look, "Why did you burn me? I thought you will adopt me?"
Until she turned to ashes.
I realized this story is too long, so I shortened it.
Act 1: Cursed fate
This is a story of one innocent mother, hoping to make her daughter cheer in joy. Whilst looking for a present she came upon a doll, which she named Alice. A beautiful looking doll that she hoped to be the right present for her beloved daughter, And Indeed she liked what her mother gave her.
Act 2: Change
Soon enough her daughter only spent time with Alice, playing house, and having tea parties. And she would hug her with this beautiful smile... That slowly became a wide grin. Something was changing, bit by bit something ominous kept appearing. She shivered at the sight, and time wasn't so kind to her.
Act 3: Ashes and smoke
She noticed the ominous change that kept getting more obvious. Her daughter's smell, clothing, personality. Like a rose that withered, like wood that turned charcoal, like Alice. And like how charcoal is burnt, so did Alice by the mother's hand. Unbeknownst to her, Evelyn too will turn to ashes and smoke. She only realized when it was too late.
After I'm done writing the story, I tried to divide the panels.
For the drawings, I searched for several references and I found Junji Ito's comic very scary yet great.
At first I thought I would be creating a black and white webtoon, but I got an idea which is to color it with 1 color only, which is red. I thought it would be nice to color the eyes only so the doll would come out as iconic.
After that I tried to design the character. Since the main character here is the doll, or Alice, I tried to get references from dolls movie. The first reference is Annabel and the second one is also Sabrina Indonesian horror movie.
Here is the look of the main character.
Here is how I made the rough sketch:
FEEDBACK
REFLECTION
I named her Alice because I thought the name Alice is pretty creepy.
Before moving it to Adobe Illustrator, I did the rough sketch from my tablet first and then traced it in Illustrator.
Here is how I made the rough sketch:
As for how I did it in Adobe Illustrator, I did it per page instead of copying the artboard in the same file.
I realized my art is a bit complicated, so I decided that I would mostly use brush. Although the whole webtoon still consists of shapes and pen tool, majority are brush lines. I noticed this will be a difficulty later once I'm going to animate it. I came up with a conclusion by covering the back with pen tool so I can still save the elements as png and animate it instead of using layers in Illustrator.
After I have created all of the pages in black and white, I decided that I would add grey colors to make it look more interesting. Lastly I would add the red for the eyes.
Here are the end result:
And here is the link to the webtoon:
After finished creating the webtoon, I animated it using 2 soft wares which are After effect and Premier Pro. Firstly, I would create simple animations in After effect and then I would insert them in Premier Pro to be finalized.
Here is one of my simple animation that I created in After effect.
And for the audio, I searched for free audios in Youtube and combined all of them.
After several days of struggle, this is my final result:
Here is for the youtube link:
FEEDBACK
According from what I saw in my friends' work, we need to make the story as simple yet as interesting as possible. Also it is important that the audience understand the flow and the story we are trying to tell.
REFLECTION
Experience: Personally this is the hardest project not only in this module but from all of the modules. I would say the project would be more enjoyable if the theme wasn't horror, because I hate horror, and I suffered a lot when I was trying to look for references :"). However, in the end, I enjoyed the process and realized that creating the stories and the webtoon was more interesting than I thought. I think the webtoon came out pretty okay. Although for me, the animation could be better. Overall, it is still a fun but deadly project.
Observation: I realized that making a story that is interesting and clear is important, but it is also important that we draw our comic in accordance to what we are trying to tell. Because in the end it would be bad if the audience don't understand our story. I also realized that we need to make the main character stand out in order to be iconic and to be remembered easily by the audience.
Findings: I find creating webtoon is one interesting yet hard work to do. Unlike normal artwork, we need to pay attention to angles, paneling, flow, etc. It also consumes so much time that I realized we need to appreciate authors that create comics more.
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