Draft 2

Draft 1

Mariachi-dachi (working title) - Kevin Merriman

BETA!! best class ever? i think so.






idea 1 = A Mariachi band is hurled back through time, and they find themselves stuck in ancient Japan.

origin - was doodling about 5 years ago, and then the idea just sorta happened in my sketchbook.

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idea 2 = All wishes made at special locations are linked and can only come true if two wishes fulfill eachother.

origin - walking past some Mom telling her kid to make a wish on something he through in the pond thing next to the MOA while on my way to this very class a few days ago.. and then bouncing this experience off a friend, in regards to time travel and Mariachi bands.

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THE BIG PICTURE:

(1) a dormant wish is awakened and hurls an unsuspecting Mariachi band back through time to ancient Japan.

(2) mariachi band members struggle to hold on to their identity and play their music, since all music throughout the land has been outlawed by an evil Shogun music critic.

(3) the band discovers they must quickly end the Shogun's tasteless tyranny in order to fulfill the wish and return to their own time, before it's too late!!

(4) while the clock ticks, the individual band members scattered throughout the land must fight through all the various Shogun henchmen in order to find themselves and reunite for the final showdown with the Shogun.

(5) while defeating the Shogun, the Mariachi band witness the fulfillment of their own wishes by receiving an additional member(s) to their team, thus completing the missing components to their to-be legendary Mariachi band, thus restoring balance to the universe and the time continuum as we know it.

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STORY:

(1) a shogun-thug with anger issues is beating up some innocent villager when suddenly, a mariachi band appears out of thin air, landing on the shogun-thug and temporarily stunning him...

(2) the shogun-thug comes to his senses, enraged. he quickly summons his underlings and challenges the band to a fight in the middle of town...

(3) the clueless band, surrounded by onlookers, come to the conclusion that a concert is in order, and immediately break into song and dance in typical mariachi fashion. the shogun-thug believes he is being dishonored, and angrily charges at the band with his henchmen.

(4) the mariachi band unintentionally defeat the badguys with foregin hip movements, exotic instruments, and an unconventional/haphazard fighting style...

(5) the villagers rejoice, the bad guys are defeated (one however, runs away out of fear). many wish to become disciples of this new powerful fighting philosophy (but really, it's just your run of the mill mariachi band). though victorious, the mariachi band is somewhat confused and begin to feel a bit out of place.


thanks for all the help guys!!!

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style test and stuff

(a) This is a heavily driven event story (time travel is essential)

(b) Primary Conflict - Whether the Mariachi band will fulfill a wish made from someone in ancient Japan or not.

(c) Theme - Helping yourself by helping others.

(d) Major World rules and limitations: (currently refining) time limit in time travel, nature of wish making, language/culture barriers and willingness to break through, consequences of complete and incomplete wishes,

Jake Parker

One thing I took away from Jake's lecture was his writing process.

Iteration is something emphasized in visual development/character design... all that good stuff. I noticed Jake was creating multiple iterations of his ideas IN WRITING. what a novel concept (pun mostly unintentional...) breaking that down, I pulled three main things from that part of the presentation which I thought were being iterated. Comment please if more come to mind:

-Iteration with world creation and ideas revolving around that (also another pun mostly unintentional..)

-Iteration in story and how character's personalities could potentially conflict or harmonize

-And once the world and story were set up, he went into script. General to Specific - a classic design principle. And it's quite possible he went through different iterations of script as well.

Blue Pills - Kevin Merriman

1. Analyze:

(f) Falling Action

The main character falls in love with someone who has HIV. The more compelling part of the story for me was how the main character comes to terms with the entire situation while you’re there with him experiencing all of his emotions. Before the big reveal about HIV in their relationship, this is just a typical love story told in an interesting way. However, once the falling action begins, we have ourselves a unique (and quite real) story WITH great story telling.

2. Rating: R. frontal nudity, sexual content pgs. 96 and 105. Brandon’s post elaborates a little in part 3, I think. Worth reading.

3. Springboard:

In order to tell this story, I think the writer definitely had to know 2 things. 1 – He had to know about HIV and some of the medical treatments/effects and so forth that come with it, and 2 – He had to know about his own life, and how he felt about everything he was expressing or else the story wouldn’t be as clear or compelling.

So, I did some light research on the man himself – Frederik Peeters. I was reading some interviews linked on his website, and one of them talked about his sketchbooks vs. his comics. He views a sketchbook more as a place to experiment, do exercises, and have fun. While making comics, he says that the drawings serve the story and must be as easily read as possible, so drawings are more of a tool instead.

4. Apply:

In every sense of the meaning, this guy drew from LIFE. He’s using is own personal experiences, and the people in his own life to tell a story about his life. One application I thought of was how much sketching and practice he did to be able to draw these short-hand versions of himself and his loved ones. This is a great example of how to implement what you know from life into drawing – granted he does this in a much more factual and realistic way, but the principle still applies.

Making Comics - Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind: vol. 2

On page 15 of "Making Comics," we're introduced to the 6 transitions. While reading Nausicaa, I noticed how large the scope of the comic was (lots of stuff is happening, across large locations).

In the parts of the book where there's LOTS of characters interacting with each other (which leads to some panels getting VERY detailed) I feel like those action to action transitions help pull us in and see what really matters, and the aspect to aspect transitions help us swallow all the detail going on (and sometimes, it's quite a bit.)

Above, you can see a little example of this pulling in and out with action to action and aspect to aspect transitions in a large battle - pg. 46 and 47.

Making Comics - Nawlz

On page 36 of "Making Comics," Choice of Flow is being talked about.

McCloud mentions something I find very interesting - if the flow stops (gets confusing) you're no longer immersed in the world of comics, because you have to stop and figure out what's happening in order to get back into the story. This reminded me of *NAWLZ!!

Nawlz is really interesting because there's a mixture between music, animation, and illustrations to help immerse you in the world. The way the panels cycle through or pop-up, the way music fades in and out, and how you navigate is all part of "Choice of Flow," and I think it's worth checking out really quick just to see what's possible with flow - to see what's working/what's not for you, etc.

again, here's the link - http://www.nawlz.com

*I've only gotten through half of Season 1, but just as fair warning, some F-bombs get dropped. Other than that, it's a pretty cool little subconscious trip. Not sure what kind of content shows up later, since I haven't read through all of it.

Tout Seul - Kevin Merriman

1. Analyze:

(c) Character – primary

This story is about a character in a lighthouse. After thinking things over, if the character in the lighthouse doesn't exist – nothing else in the book really happens either. All the characters you see, all the images, and the story itself all revolve around this character in the lighthouse... which I find interesting because his nickname means “all alone.”

2. Rating:

If you don't read French, I think the book gets a PG. No over-the-top violence, no nudity, no strong themes children couldn't handle..

If you do read French, I'd personally bump it up to PG-13. You'll notice a couple vulgar terms used in the beginning of the book, and VERY crude insults exchanged around pg. 200. There's also that weird creeper moment Paul mentioned around pg. 207

3. Springboard:

I looked at a couple different things, but specifically to tell this story I believe the writer had to have a good understanding of what imagination is all about.

One thing I wasn't aware of was how important imagination is in the learning process. In the visual arts department I've heard the words like “creativity” and “imagination” used enough times in an abstract sense that it's easy to forget all the cool stuff thats been researched about these things in the academic world.

4. Apply:

Words represent concepts and can carry huge weight. If I'm using words in comics, I should put a lot of thought into how I use them, and how they effect my characters (not just in dialog and plot, but conceptually... if that makes sense.) It reminds me of a quote somewhere from Mark Twain that said something to the effect that good writers should find it very difficult to write.

Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind: vol. 2 - Kevin Merriman

1. Analyze:

(b) Idea – primary

From what I've read, I really feel like the idea of "man vs. nature" is holding the entire story together. There's this huge toxic forest with all these nasty bugs pushing humanity back into these little corners of the earth as they fight for resources and push back against the forest. This over-arching idea of conflict between man and nature is the main point of interest in the story that drives all the characters to act the way they do.

2. Rating:

PG-13. There's fighting, but no gore is depicted. It's mostly explosions and people being knocked out. Occasionally there's a little blood and the violence gets a little more intense (people die, and are killed by other people) but I think it's done in a very tasteful way.

3. Springboard:

Miyazaki indirectly borrows both from Greek mythology (in "The Odyssey" there's a princess by the same name as the main character/book title "Nausicaa") and according to Wikipedia, an ancient Japanese story "The Princess who loved insects" which is about a girl who loves nature more than getting caught up with things that can seem more superficial in life (like courting, and putting on make-up, etc.) I think Miyazaki must have had some understanding of Environmental Science to create the layers of evolution from dead insects to overgrowing fungi forests (way cool!) found in this book.

-Also, while reading up on a version of "The Princess who loved insects," it mentions that one of the things this Princess refuses to do is die her teeth black. Sounds gross, but apparently it (Ohaguro) was a real custom done back in the day. The significance of blackened teeth changed slightly over time and is still practiced today in some areas... also, it prevents cavaties!!

4. Apply

If I decide to go with an idea that's heavily influenced by culture, it would be wise to do LOTS of research on that culture. I wouldn't necessarily incorporate historical facts of that culture, but just being aware of these things would better inform details of story, and even could possibly genereate more layers to the story. (in reference to the whole thing about black teeth.. lots of little interesting ideas could be pulled from that)

I'm seeing that the more I research I do on something someone has made, there's more research to discover from them that went into making that thing.

Jake Wyatt - Kevin Merriman

trying my best to add, not repeat anything that's been covered already.. was thinking a little bit -- got some Kung Fu Panda/Bruce Lee Philosophy to throw down in relation to comics and stuff. makes sense to me, hope it makes sense to somebody else. here we go:

-i thought it was fun how when asked if Jake followed any template or something when dividing up panels and stuff in his comics, he said he just made it up as he went along.

this taught me of a couple things and how they relate to comics:
"there is no secret ingredient."
when making comics, you're responsible for the information you present or don't present in a story.. no amount of templates or style guides can tell your story for you. Jake talked about doing "what's best for the story." some compositions/drawings may be "cooler" choices, but hurt your story telling. likewise, following "cool templates" or other processes you find will do the exact same thing if you're not thinking about what you're trying to say, and how you're saying it in the language of comics.

this leads into something else i was reminded of, never really thinking how it applied to comics before.

"using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation"
this was a personal motto Bruce Lee had, and it was written on the back of a medallion he wore. the idea was basically that anything is possible. there are no limits - but as soon as you develop a routine or style for doing things, you're endangering yourself from progression and create your own limitations on what you're capable of doing or expressing.

this is really cool to me in the aspect of making comics and drawing in general. there are many different "styles" or "ways" of creating a comic or drawing. we can learn from these different ways others have already found, but as soon as we adopt one of these ways, the possibilities of creating our own unique expressions are limited to that one way.

so basically, as we speak the language of comics - it takes good old fashioned hard work and practice to use that language and have the unique expression that is yourself come from that.

Syllabus - Story!!!

I’m most interested in learning about the story aspect of comics.

More specifically a couple of things I came up with:

What have/are people doing to tell stories well?

-from panel to panel, page to page, cover to cover, etc.

-with style of art and style of page layout

-some of the more creative /unconventional (yet still effective) methods

I haven’t been exposed to many comics, so I feel like there’s a bunch of story devices going on in the panel itself to a more global scale of the entire comic book itself being used that I’m not aware of… I would like to become more aware of what’s going on with this story thing, so that I can use these concepts and perhaps even make innovations on my own comics.

I actually VERY excited for this class. I’m planning on doing a 10 page comic for my Illustration BFA project next year, and I’d like to get as much development and application from this class into my BFA project as possible.

Best Coolest Kevin Merriman

Here's mine!!