COMIC NARRATIVES
ONE WAY TICKET ON A SHOOTING STAR
SYNOPSIS: A group of runaways live on a refurbished steam train that has a star, stolen from the sacred skies, in the heart of its engine. The conductor can’t let anyone find out what is fuelling the locomotive, lest they attract unwanted interest in the power contained within the star. Such concentrated energy would be devastating in the control of someone the conductor is desperately trying to shake from their tracks.
(fantasy adventure)
comic book series
COMIC PAGE:
WORKING 9 TO DRIVE
SYNOPSIS: A girl who hates her office job but loves to visit every souvenir shop on her travels, meaning she has to spend a lot on fuel money too. She spends most of the time driving in her thoroughly decorated car, kept company by all the knickknacks she collects which become sentient once put in the car.
(magical realism)
zines, maybe a future longer comic project
CONCEPT ART:
8-PAGE ZINE:
SPACE RACE (working title)
SYNOPSIS: An underground street racer makes a reappearance on the scene after an accident, that left more than just her bike broken, very much in need of a mechanic. The abandoned transport track is perilous as it leads into open space, once protected by tunnels that are now shattered. Racers need working grav-lock and sealed oxygen helmets if they want to even attempt competing.
(1950s street racing in space)
stand alone graphic novel
CONCEPT ART:
MANOR ZOO (working title)
SYNOPSIS: (not quite fully figured out a plot for this one yet) Edwardian manor house setting, divide between the staff and the residents, staff are anthropomorphic british wildlife and the residents are all the same pedigree dog breed.
some kind of comic format
EVALUATION
I am very frustrated I wasn’t able to finish more of the final pieces I had planned for this module (I got very ill over christmas that lost me two weeks of just being asleep due to a respiratory tract infection), I think I definitely could have finished them if I hadn’t lost all that time. Instead I prioritised finishing my ‘Working 9 to Drive’ zine and concept painting, while my other narrative’s concept pieces remain in the sketch stages still (I intend to finish them after hand-in as pieces for my portfolio).
I spent a lot of the time for this module trying to develop a practical workflow for the many-step process of making comic pages. Deciding on what media combinations would work for my process, using layout paper, finding software to collate research and writing, creating a shorthand for planning pages, improving my drawing speed and art fundamentals like perspective and figure drawing. With the process of making the ‘Working 9 to Drive’ zine and the ‘One Way Ticket on a Shooting Star’ I feel I am in a much more comfortable place for making comic pages from start to finish than I was at the beginning of the project as I’ve figured out a process that works for me. That progress is invaluable to me as I now have a logical path forward whenever I start planning a page, as before I would spend so long floundering that one page would take me a week or I wouldn’t start at all for fear of how to approach the whole process.
Something I’ve also been trying to work on, but feel still needs more experimentation, is developing ways to create more stylised art and comics. I have a tendency to just automatically draw and colour according to realism but I am trying to move away from this to create more unique and efficient artworks. My ‘Working 9 to Drive’ zine has been a stepping stone to achieve this, with the stylised colouring, but I still feel I could take it further and want to bring that kind of approach into my regular artwork. I also want to bring in more of my textural and experimental traditional work into my final pieces for a more interesting use of media combination.
I am still undecided on which narrative I want to take forward into the extended study module, but I am happy I’ve managed to flesh out the other ideas I’d had so that I can actually make that choice between different options. I think ‘One Way Ticket on a Shooting Star’ and ‘Space Race’ are the main contenders as they’re what I’m most interested in developing in some capacity. Whether that may be some kind of pitch bible for the fantasy comic series or working on planning and finishing some of the street racing graphic novel.
sneesbee 