Final Treatment (c) Christina LeBaron

Continuation of THIS POST.  

Here are the edits I've made to the comic so far.  Not at all completed but it's getting a little better.  

Thanks for the awesome class Jared.  I learned a ton!  If you decide to start up some sort of comic club please let me know. =]  I'll keep following the blog.

Making Comics - Nausicaa

I felt like Nausicaa demonstrated excellent world building, which is what I read about in Making Comics.  The world is established and expanded on.  It isn't always explained, but instead is left up to the readers to figure out, which is very appealing.  It seems to add believability to the story

Nausicaa - Christina LeBaron

1. Analyze: Milieu - Secondary
Even though milieu wasn't the main driving force of the story, it still played a huge roll in moving the story along.  This world in which Nausicaa lives is so different from our own.  While she is familiar with it, I found myself asking questions, like: why are these people at war?  Why is the lake acidic?  Why is it so dangerous the breathe in the forest?  This world was created but not all of the details were explained to the reader, making it even more interesting as the reader tries to figure things out as the story goes on.  The setting helps drives the story as it centers around these warring civilizations and the forest.  

2. Rating: PG for a little violence.

3. Springboard: As Megan mentioned, Miyazaki would have had to know about aviation and how flying contraptions work. 


That was interesting to me and I actually found out that a real scale model of the Möwe ((メーヴェ Mēve , or "mehve" in the English manga), the German word meaning seagull.  An official scale model lists it as having an approximate wingspan of 5.8 meters, while the design notes indicate it weighs only 12 kg.  (that's the version in the manga.  You need to be specific when you design these things even if it's for a book or a comic)  In 2004, the Japanese-led OpenSky Aircraft Project began attempts to build a real-life, working personal jet glider based on the glider from Nausicaa.  Two gliders with no power source carrying the code name M-1 and M02, with a half-sized jet-powered remote controlled mock up called moewe 1/2 was built.  The designer and tester of the project refused the official endorsement of the project by Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki. noting that he did not want to cause trouble for them if an accident occurred.


4. Apply:  What I really liked about Nausicaa (as well as almost all of Miyazaki's stuff) is the world that he creates but doesn't exactly explain.  I would like to be able to do that with my own stories.  I want to be able to create a cool believable (yet fantastical world) that has history but doesn't need to have all the details about it explained to the audience.  The audience should be able to learn about the world and it's history bit by bit from clues in the story without getting confused

Travis Walton - inking

One thing that Travis Walton talked about was the inking stage of a comic.  He explained that inking isn't just tracing.  If you just trace the pencil drawing when you ink, then you're doing a bad job of inking.  

He explained that when you ink you have to be able to separate the foreground, middle ground, and background.  To do that you use line width, detail, and treatment.  

When you ink you have to make decisions about how you are going to texture things and you shouldn't texture and treat everything the same.

When you ink you need to give things weight.  You can do that by making the lines on the bottom of the form thicker. 

Basically when you are inking you still need to be making good design decisions that help tell the story and make things very clear to the reader.  You can still ink with your own style as long as that style isn't a hindrance to the clarity of the story.  You shouldn't use style as an excuse.

Making Comics - Solanin

I love this page (specifically the top panel) for the body language.  I feel like this comic and this page does a great job of telling the story, and what the characters are feeling and thinking through their body language, which is what I read about in Making Comics this week.  The top panel is especially clear.  The audience knows immediately that Meiko is in extreme emotional pain from her body language while her friend is trying to help her but doesn't really have much power to do so.

Solanin - Christina LeBaron

1.Analyze: character-Primary

Character seemed to play a very large role in Solanin.  The story follows these characters who are at a point in their life where lots of changes are happening and decisions are being made.  These characters are seeking happiness and a purpose to life, while going through character changes in the persute of that answers.  A first big shift in character his the big decisions by Meiko at the beginning of the story to quit her job.  Later on another big change happens when she decides to learn how to play guitar and be in the band.  This decisions seems like a way to not only keep Taneda alive but also let Meiko move on with her life and be happy.  

2. Rating: PG-13 for nudity (a bare breast), a bed scene, and some mild offensive language.  Recommended for older teens.

3. Springboard: The author would have had to know about college life in Japan and life after college for young people in Japan.   The stages of life in Japanese culture would have been important to know, especially the challenge of transitioning to adulthood.  

As it turns out, Japan's legal age to become an official adult is a bit of a controversy.  Currently the age is 20 years old, but some think it should be lowered to 18.  The problem with lowering the age is that maturity differs from person to person.  Some people are ready to take on adult responsibilities and privileges, like drinking, marriage, voting, etc. while others are not.  

Another interesting fact: Japan has universal education up to 15 (but 99% of people attend high school beyond that). Full-time employment, also allowable from 15.

4. Apply: I paid a lot of attention to body language in this comic, mainly because it was what I read about recently in making comics and I really like how the artist uses the body language to convey meaning.  Gestures and stances are important and I want to use that to tell what's going on in my own comics.  I also found the panels and everything to be very easy to read and follow.

Story -(c) Christina LeBaron

Idea Stage


1. In the distant future on a planet covered mostly by water (much more covered than Earth) two colonies (an ocean colony, and a land colony) are in a war against each other.
-A Dream I had a couple of years ago.
(There's my sentence but I've actually cooked up a bit more to this idea.  I was going to elaborate more on it but after I finished typing it, well it was kind of long, so maybe I'll edit and add it later so that no one is initially overwhelmed by my post and doesn't bother to read it.)

*Edit 5/16/2011* Okay, here's the extension to the idea above!
In the future Earth has colonized an inhabitable planet that consists mostly of water.  As time passes Earth becomes less and less concerned with it's colonies on the distant planet (Earth probably has it's own problems going on).  The colony eventually grows to be too large for the land and the colony splits into two colonies (water and land).  As earth grows more and more distant the colonies set up their own governments, economies, etc.  Tension grows between the colonies and eventually war breaks out.


A few years into the war (this is where I imagine the story starting) during an attack on the water colony the young son (from 12-16 about) of the chief/king/dictator/mayor/whatever of the water colony is captured by the land colony.  The land colony leadership decides to keep the son (because he is so young) with a general or something, instead of imprisoning him with all of the other adult POW's.  A month or so later the boy somehow gets back to the water colony and realizes after living on the land colony how corrupt the water colony is and how crappy life is for the water colony.  (This makes sense to me because leadership would have complete control over the limited resources and such).


He decides to try and help the land colony win the war by passing on vital information and sabotaging water colony attempts at attacks and a variety of other dangerous exciting things, in hopes of improving life in the water colony. So by doing this he is betraying his colony, people, and family.
*End Edit*

2. Scientists have figured out how to breach the 9th dimension and can now travel to other universes.  Each universe is essentially the same, with only very minor differences.  The characters travel to so many alternate universes that they lose track of which is which and eventually become lost.  They are trying to find their way back to their own dimension and by the end we never know if they really made it back.
-Discussions with my dad, Star Trek, and Inception

3. A geeky, socially awkward boy is cursed to have every woman he comes in contact with (besides family) fall in love with him.
(I never imagined combining this idea with the above ideas, but that is the challenge!)
-Not sure what brought this idea on, but it came to me as I was eating dinner one day.

*Edit- 5/18/2011*
Story Stage(for the shorter story, I think I'll do a sort of "prequel" to the story idea above)
(1)This takes place in the water colony in the midst of a newly begun war with the land colony while times are still somewhat prosperous.  (2)A young woman, who is also trained in witchcraft, is happily being courted by the heir to the throne of the water colony, but finds out she is being cheated on.  (3)She confronts her fiance about the issue but is completely betrayed. (4) She puts a horrible curse on his future first born child. (5) The witch becomes more and more secluded as time passes until she turns truly into a withered old witch.

*Edit - 5 /25/2011*
3. (a) Appropriation & Style test + (b) Short story supplement stage:

MICE Quotient: Character

Primary Conflict:

Theme: Betrayal & Addiction

Major World Rules/Limitations: Under water, limited resources, dark magic requires a price, limited light

Edit

Beta Comic

  It's still all very rough and unreadable but here's what I have so far.  The whole thing is 11 pages, but I don't have much drawn for the last page

  

MEKA - Christina LeBaron

1. Analyze: Milieu - Secondary
While Milieu was not the most dominant feature or drive in the story, it still played a large role in the background.  The author had to construct this world that appears to be not too different from our own, and yet it is either set in the future or in a more futuristic world.  The panels on the first page introduce the readers to a city that appears to be similar to many we have today on earth and then suddenly brings in giant fighting robots.  This not only gives us information about the technology and environment but also about the culture that the author constructed.  It tells us that there are battling factions that disrupt the safe harbor city that we were initially introduced to.

2. Rating: PG-13 for violence and brief implied nudity.

3. Springboard:The author would have had to know about the mechanics of robotics in order to make them appear believable. He would have also had to do some research on human driven robots.  


With this in mind, I looked up what kind of human driven robots have been made today and came across a skeletonics robot suit that was developed by some Japanese students.  It actually loooks to me a lot like the robot suits in Avatar. Here is a link to the video: Robot Suit


4.Apply:  I felt like this comic was very visual and how it took very little dialogue to convey meaning.  (This is awesome especially because it's in French and I don't understand any French)  I would like my own comics to be able to communicated everything clearly without the use of very much dialogue like Meka did.  I feel like Meka is a fantastic example of being able to do that.

Making comics - Meka

I felt that Meka did a good job of illustrating the importance of expression that was discussed in making comics.  Since this comic is french and I understand absolutely no French it was really important that the expressions be varied and "expressive enough to convey the meaning and what was happening.  So, even though I didn't understand any of the dialogue, I was able to understand the different emotions behind that dialogue in order to get the meaning.

Jess Smiley-How to get your graphic novel published.

This Saturday Jess Smiley will be speaking at the Salt Lake Public Library about getting published. It's on Saturday (the 21st) from 3-5. Here is the link to the info about the event.

I'm not sure if I'll be going or not, but I thought I'd put this out there in case people are interested.

Jake Parker - Panels and Pacing

Comic Panels and Pace
Jake Parker gave some very interesting, and useful information about panels and how they determine the pacing of a comic.

-The average American comic has 5-7 Panels.
-The reader spends roughly the same amount of time on each panel, so the number of panels helps determine the pace of the story.
-More panels=Slower pace
-Less Panels=Faster Pace

-Not only are the number of panels per page important, but also the size of the panels.
-The size of the panel equals time (bigger=faster) and importance (bigger=importance)
-Large panels can be used to emphasize plot, action, emotion, and thought.

Making Comics: Powers: Psychotic

(intensity)

(Clarity)

Intensity vs. Clarity was interesting to look at in this comic.  As I looked through it it varies between intensity and clarity, but what is interesting in this book is that when it is intense and dramatic there usually isn't just one or two dramatic panels.  The intensity is usually spread across the whole page.  And the same can be said about clarity 

Speaking of variety one particular page caught my attention.  To me this page had a very unique exicution and yet it was still very clear and easy to read.  

"Powers: Psychotic" - Christina LeBaon

1. Analyze: Character - Secondary

While it wasn't primary in the story, I think that Character still played a significant role.  Where I noticed this the most was with Deena's character.  She is a cop, one of the good guys, but a little more than halfway into the book (SPOILER) she murders an ex boyfriend.  Not only does she murder him, but she doesn't turn herself in.  She covers the evidence.  It feels like her character goes through a shift in this story.  The line between good and bad, black and white, is blurred for her.  She learns how to really relate to the villains that she is pursuing.  This is confirmed with the flashback to when she was a new cop and finds that her partner was not really one of the "good guys."

2. Rating: R due to language (mostly the "F word") throughout the entire book, violence and gore, graphic images, nudity and sexual themes.  Even though all of these images are drawn somewhat "cartoony" or at least not realistically, I would not recommend this book to anyone under 18 or to anyone who is sensitive to any of these subjects.

3. Springboard: 

-He would hve had to know about police and detective work.  He would have had to know the process of police investigations, interrogations, etc in a fair amount of detail.  This would include all of the laws concerning the investigations.  Not only would he have had to know about the Justice Process, but he would have had to know it from a cop's perspective.  The Police Procedural probably would have also been important to be familiar with,

-As I did some digging on the process of police investigations I ran across this term, "Police Procedural."  I learned that the term doesn't refer to any real life police investigation processes but actually refers to a type of detective fiction, which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes.  So, even though Powers is about or has superheros in it, I would still say that it could probably be classified as a Police Procedural piece.

Making Comics - Hellboy

In Hellboy a lot of Subject to Subject, action to action, and scene to scene panels are used to keep the story moving forward quickly.  This page is one of many examples of that.  The page consists of mainly Subject to subject panels as the history is being explained and then jumps to scene to scene panels at the end.  This page is a great example of how to clearly communicate a lot of necessary information in a comic book without taking up too many pages or taking up too much time.  This is discussed mainly on pages 16 and 17 of making comics.

Wow - So... You're A Cartoonist?

So I ran across this guy named Andrew Dobson who does little comics about his own life experiences.  I think they're awesome because there so amusing and yet very ordinary.  He does a good job of making every day life entertaining and fun to read.  He's also great at being clear in his comics.

So...You're A Cartoonist Website!

Here are some examples of his stuff:

 

Anyway.  Check his stuff out if you're interested! =]

"Hellboy: Conqueror Worm" - Christina LeBaron

1. Analyze: Character- Primary

I felt like the story was primarily motivated by Character. I was conflicted between Character and Event and which played a larger role in pushing the story along, but I think it is clear by the way the story begins and ends that is motivated by character.

In Hellboy the Conqueror Worm the main device used to show Hellboy’s change is his conflict about killing Roger.  In the beginning he is presented with that conflict.  He shows his disgust at the beginning when he is given the means to easily kill Roger and is instruted to do so if it is necessary, but he still takes it.  As the story progresses he interacts with Roger more and more and when he is faced with the decision to kill Roger or not, he chooses not to, despite the danger.   By the end Hellboy has gone through that change and follows through with his decision and change by quitting the Hellboy “quits” near the end of the book because of how disgusted he is that he was asked to kill Roger if necessary and was given the means to easily do so.  In the story he is faced with that challenge and chooses to be better by not doing so, and then at the end he follows that through by quitting, resolved to make a new beginning for himself elsewhere.

2. Rating: PG-13 This book seems barely enough to be rated PG-13.  There a couple of pictures that shows the naked woman at the end (there aren’t page numbers), although there isn’t any detail and it doesn’t have any sexual feeling to it, she is still naked.  But I feel like the content involving the themes and some violence are PG appropriate.

3. Springboard:

            -Mignola would have had to be knowledgeable about Nazi History and World War II.  Even though most of what is going on in here, like Project Ragna Rok, is fiction, he still needed a basis to go off of in order to understand the Nazis and make it believable.  He would have also needed to know about some Norse Mythology since the name for the Project the Nazi’s were doing is named after the apocalypse in Norse Mythology, “Ragnarok”.  A particular person he would have had to be knowledgeable on his Rasputin of Russia, since his fictional character Rasputin is based off of the real man. 

            -Ragnarok from Norse Mythology is a series of future events which will result in the death of many major figures.  After a series of natural disasters and wars the world will be submerged under water.  After it resurfaces the world will be repopulated by two human survivors.

Jake Wyatt - Editorial Decisions

Something that Jake Wyatt emphasized how important editorial decisions are. While I already knew this, I guess I didn't realize how much you really have to redraw everything in order to get it right. And when he gave examples and spoke he wasn't just talking about drawing thumbnails over and over again to get them right. Many of his examples were large completed drawings that ended up having to be scrapped and redrawn. It can take dozens of attempts to get a comic book page right. But, it’s not just comic book pages, its character designs, settings, etc. Even the story needs to be worked over and redone over and over again.

Along with editorial decisions and drawing and redrawing things he mentioned how ideas are worth nothing. It isn’t until you can draw it that it is worth something. Then, once you draw it, of course, you have to redraw it over and over again in order to get a quality page, design, or whatever idea it is that you are trying to convey.

The point is to not settle for the first attempt, because it is likely not going to be good enough. It will be mediocre if you settle for that first attempt. In order to make something good it needs to be done over and over again, improving each time.

EDIT: And here is a little strip I did quickly to "illustrate" the point.

Okay, so this little strip is also an example of not redrawing it over and over again to make it good, so the result is mediocre, or just plain crappy. But, this strip was just a quick little thing I did to try and make a point and I felt like it was fairly readable. (let me know if you can understand what's going on)


Note: Do not actually throw your drawings away as I do in this strip! (obviously!)

Syllabus - Story

When I first entered the class I wasn’t sure what to expect but after the class discussion and after reading the first chapter in Making Comics I feel like the aspect I am most interested in learning about comics is the story aspect. I am probably most interested in this aspect because it is one that I struggle with myself. I am also curious about how stories in a comic differ from stories in other media like a novel or film. What more is required and what isn’t? I am also interested in learning how the story is told in a comic book in order for it to be understood. How much experimenting can one do before the story is no longer clear? There’s so much I’m interested in learning but story is probably what I am most interested in right now.

Best Coolest - Christina LeBaron

http://visualnexus.blogspot.com/ - (were we supposed to put where we are from?) I'm from Brigham City, Utah