Introduction
The explorations project allowed students to explore a topic related to their elective class and improve the skillset required to explore the topic. We had to connect the topic to a specific 21st century skill that we wanted to improve on. My explorations project was to make a short comic, as many of the skills required for comics translate well to skills for animation. What makes comics unique, though, which was something that I wanted to explore, is the panelling aspect. I made a comic about my characters meeting. I wanted to improve upon the 21st century skill of creativity, as I wanted to get creative with my panelling and layout.
Explorations Project
The process of making a comic was a quite fun one. I first researched what went into the making of a comic, taking inspiration from some of my favorites. I specifically wanted to explore panelling and framing, and as a reference, I used the Witch Hat Atelier manga, as the panels are quite creative. I then had to decide on a story I wanted to tell. This was interesting, because I had a limited amount of pages, but I ended up choosing a small scene of some of my characters. The story is of their ‘first’ meeting. I say ‘first,’ because their story is set in a kind of timeloop, so technically it isn’t their first meeting, but they don’t remember previous loops. I wanted them to get flashes of deja vu and half memories that they couldn’t quite place, as I enjoy stories like that. Once the vague idea of the comic was figured out, I made thumbnail sketches of all of the pages to play around with layout.
After the thumbnail sketches were drawn, I moved onto the sketches of the final drawings. I drew them all traditionally, and then scanned them so I could color them digitally. I went in with 2 layers of pencil, one for very rough sketches and one on top for a cleaner sketch to make lineart easier.
After scanning the pages, I went in digitally with lineart. Choosing a brush to use was kind of a difficult task, as I am so used to traditional art that none of the digital brushes felt right. I eventually settled on a rough brush without too much pressure difference, but still enough that it gave the feel of a traditional pen.
After lineart, I colored the comic in black and white. I used a quite textured brush, as I like the look of textures, but I did struggle with coloring everything evenly because the brush was translucent. I am quite proud of the finished product, though, and am excited to possibly make more comics in the future.
Final Comic
I ended up using very little speech in my comic, but I think it works that way.
Reflection
I am proud of what I made for this project, despite my end of year burnout causing me to rush it a bit. If I were to change anything, I probably would have taken more time to carefully color the comic, possibly in full color, as in it’s current state the coloring is quite messy. I am glad that I learned a bit more about framing and timing within comics, which I think will greatly help in any animations and comics that I end up making in the future.
Poetry Production
The other part of the end of year explorations unit was poetry. A poet-in-residence came to our school to teach us about different forms of poetry and led workshops to create some of those forms. I enjoyed getting to play around with different forms of poetry, even if I didn’t use any of the workshop poems in my final poem.
For my final poem, I played around with repetition and spacing to make a poem that reflected my feelings of insecurity and sense of not belonging. I used the theme of an echo, because I feel like I copy people I admire.
In Digital Media, we had to make a production video of us reading out our poems, set to moving text and images.
I feel that my production conveyed the spirit of my poem through some of the animated words. I wanted to make them look like they were echoing, which I think I did quite well. For the image that I used, I decided to use the self portrait photoblog from the beginning of the year, as I think it really conveyed the meaning of my poem, as both were meant to represent my feelings of comparison like my identity is nothing. I decided to make the visuals relatively simple, with some fade ins and fade outs to represent echos. I made the music be kind of melancholy because the tone of the poem is quite melancholy. I value the choices I made and am proud of the work that I’ve done.