Conceptual Design of Blake Revisited

This is the conceptual design of Blake revamped. I gave him some dreads. I don’t know if this is the final design, but it’s pretty damn close to it. It may need some tweaking. Also, the image lacks personality and emotion. Better get on that, as well as some full body shots. A profile shot and a 3/4 shot.

Blake is the type of guy who likes to keep to himself and does not like to be disturbed. If he were to use one word to describe himself it would be “seeker.”

Asterios Polyp

I just finished reading David Mazzucchelli’s first graphic novel called Asterios Polyp. It was a really great read that explored concepts of duality, the intersubjective space, and religion. But not only the content the form and styles that Mazzucchelli used throughout were incredible. Depending on where Asterios, the main character was, the color palette would change to take on the personalities involved. Asterios’s color was a cyanic blue. The dominant color for Hana, his ex-wife, is red. When Hana talks the speech bubble is round and organic. Asterios’s speech bubble on the other hand is always square with hard edges and lines. The graphic novel is in many ways about two lives

The Cide

I came across this yesterday. It is an experimental, interactive web comic called The Cide. There are currently 4 episodes. It was created by Videns Pictures bringing together the creativity of designers, screenwriters, photographers, programmers, sound engineers, musicians, flash animators, editors and actors.

On their blog they describe a little of their process in creating it.

There is also this interview:

I like how they use photographic stills for each panel and manipulate the images to look graphic style. I especially like how on pages 23-24 of episode 1 the TV in his room is playing an actual music video in real time and as you’re reading through you can still hear the music video playing on the TV until the main character turns it off on another page.

In this comic animation, sound effects, or music is incorporated on every single page. For instance, when he’s walking you can hear footsteps. On pages 89-90, while he’s driving in his car in one panel you can hear him flipping through radio stations and then finally settling on a song.

Navigating through it is pretty easy because all you have to do is turn the page like you would in a physical comic book.

The episodes end the way movies do, with a triumphant song and rolling credits. It’s impressive how many people it took to create it.

The only thing is that because it is experimental, the story isn’t the best, but you can get the idea of what this way of creating comics could accomplish. Talk about an immersive experience.

Potent Images

I have just finished reading Joe Kubert’s Yossel, April 29, 1943. I picked up the graphic novel for the sheer force of the images alone, struck by the artist’s sketchy rendering of the images. It was like they had materialized at the narrator’s behest from the darkest corners of his memory as specters haunting the living. One thing to note is that some of the images are left more sketchy than others, which calls to mind the struggle inherent in recalling dark episodes buried within the dark recesses of the mind to conscious memory. Some memories are easily recalled and are clear, whereas others take longer to recall and remain hazy and rough, no matter how hard one may try to fully flesh them out.

I like how Joe Kubert didn’t contain the images within panels, like in most comics, but allowed them free reign. Images are not bound by a sense of time, unless they are bound by a panel border. When you stare at a great work of art time is suspended and you receive the image instantaneously. When a sequential artist uses a bleed it is to create this sense of time being suspended within the pages of a comic. Words on the other hand have everything to do with time since they can’t be understood instantaneously like images. I found it interesting that Kubert bound the text within boxes. At times throughout the graphic novel he did not, which leads me to wonder as to what went into his decision making process of whether to bound the words in boxes or to give them free reign.

And the storytelling was fantastic, as soon as I started reading I couldn’t put it down. The images and words went hand and hand in telling the story. The images were allowed to do what they do best and the words as well.

I would say that Kubert not using panel borders and leaving it in pencil both contributed to the potency of the juxtoposed images on each page. It is like if Kubert had inked up the pages the reader would not have received the emotions of the characters with the same immediacy, I don’t think there would have been the same level of reader involvement. It is almost as though the inks would have acted as a barrier or rather an extra middle man between Kubert’s telling of the story and the reader. By keeping the pages in pencils he was able to get the story quicker to the reader without sacrificing the nuance and subtlety that would have been ruined by the inks.

I am thinking that in my graphic novel, instead of using panels, I want to give each page a collage-like feel.