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Helen Capewell
OCA Learning Log
Student Number: 522802
Degree: Illustration
Current Level: 2

Assignment 5

Updated: Oct 13, 2022

Your Graphic Fiction



Before deciding on any comic storylines throughout part 5, I had 2 very vivid dreams. There are 2 exercises that involve creating your own comic (the photography exercise treated separately) this one, and the mini-comic. I had decided early on which dream would fit where, leaving this one to be the complex story. As I began with the mini-comic, the story that I had set out and planned took a different direction than anticipated. The pages became slightly more complex, which I felt wouldn't have worked well at such a small scale. As I was sketching out the page layout, I decided I was going to switch them. I enjoyed this idea more and so it became the final graphic fiction.


The story.


This story is set in the early evening, it's Autumn so it's getting back to being dark earlier. 3 friends heard about their local swimming pool being closed down, a boy had died there a year ago. It hadn't planned to have been permanently closed, however with the police investigation is still ongoing, the pool has been out of bounds since. It is unknown how the boy had died, and sadly it seems as though it will never be known as the police tape surrounding the building is slowly falling apart and with winter on the way, it probably won't stay much longer. The 3 friends had heard other rumours around their school, one guy had even entered before but warned others not to do so. No details given as to why he was warning people this, but he was very scared, as if he'd seen a ghost. Well, they fancied a swim and was tired of waiting. On this evening they packed a few beers and towels, and they set off for the swim. Climbed the gate and and split up to find a way in. They find that one of the windows down the side of the building had been previously smashed and boarded up, maybe it was that guy who is warning others? It was easy to break open enough to climb through. They climb in and settle in, music on, smoking, drinking and having a swim.


They were enjoying their time, wondering what all the fuss was about with the guy at school. The water was clean, and no one was there to kick them out; perfect. Little did they know, the atmosphere in the building had already started to change. The temperature was gradually dropping, and at the opposite side of the pool a mist was beginning to emerge as well as a few bubbles. 2 of them had noticed the change and quickly jumped out of the pool, whilst the other was feeling overly confident, decided to stay in, calling the others wimps. The bubbles became waves, and the waves grew bigger until the water began to rise. Remaining with the shape of the pool, the water was out of control with the waves, it pulsed as it grew higher and higher, pushing the boy left and right, and then pulling him underwater. The others were not doing much better, as the water was rising big splashes would hit the floor, making it impossible to keep from slipping. Eventually they too found them selves in the centre of the pool as they lost their footing and fell straight through the wall of water which was now almost touching the ceiling.


The 3 friends were barely keeping together, pulled here and there whilst struggling to breathe. A dark water form had developed in the water, seeming to be in the shape of a person. It was at the bottom of the pool, appearing to be angry at the 3 friends. In one almighty swoop, it lifted its arms which sent even stronger waves towards the friends. The water burst open the emergency exit doors and poured the friends out, along with their belongings and the rubbish. The water was now just a puddle spread across the ground outside the exit, the friends were spread out catching their breathe. The form that showed itself is now a water snake bending through the exit, a face can be seen at the end. It shouts "stay out!". Its rushes back into the building and slams the exit door behind it. The friends were terrified, in absolute shock. How could they tell anyone what had happened? Did this happen to the guy at school?


The inspiration.


Although the majority of this story was based on a weird dream I had, I did exaggerate the story slightly so that it had a beginning that would help the ending make sense. My dream was from the point the water had risen, none of it made sense though I was watching everything unfold like it was a movie. And yes, the face at the end of a water snake was the most vivid part of the dream! I felt inspired to explore this further with inspiration from Junji Ito, the Japanese horror mangaka. I love his short horror story collections in Sensor and Smashed (only these have I seen so far) with his nightmare themes with weird and eery characters. I felt I could try to summon this in my way.







Interestingly, the other dream that is now the mini-comic also took inspiration from Junji Ito! I would love to be able to turn my weirder dreams in to comics, they're the best source of inspiration if you're lucky enough to remember them!


The planning


So I had a pretty strong idea of the story, it now needed to be broken down into frames and pages! I started with bullet pointing the main actions that happen in the story.



I took a side step in the process and started sketching a birds-eye view of a pool, one thing lead to another and eventually I created a title page for the story. It was mostly an attempt to practise drawing water, or at least seeing how I would do it.



I then began mapping out the five pages of the story using small A5 pages of print paper and a red pencil!









It wasn't perfectly accurate layouts as the grids I made didn't have a white border separating them, however, it did finally put the story in some form of visual context which I was pleased to have reached. It might look like I knocked this out one sitting, but it did take a while with the eraser at my side.


The clean up


After this I photographed the sketches on the iPad and tried to finalise the concept. I made the pages 6 x 9.5", which according to Procreate was the comic sizing. Of course turning an A5 piece into a different ratio meant making adjustments. This didn't cause me too much trouble as everything was still flexible at this stage.




I think the title page worked less once I had put it on procreate. I need to play with the colours some more and tweak the writing so that it is more readable.









There was a lot that I liked with these sketches, but some that I didn't. I realised my consistency with detail were off through some pages, i.e sometimes there was black trousers, sometimes there was black backpacks, sometimes there was two rows of tiles around the pool and sometimes the windows were different sized. These are all details I would make sure was improved in the final artwork.


The things I did like was the darkness of the pages. Although they are rough, the shading used across the pages gave me the feeling of Jinji Ito work, albeit in a very sketchy version. It made me think that the final would probably be done digitally so I could achieve the textures. However I did also like the idea of making them traditionally. I did also like the layout, and the way the story would flow. It made me excited to finish the comic.


Having already spent many hours working on this so far, I wanted to wrap this up pretty quickly. I decided to take a page from the above and progress at a larger scale, rather than doing them all. I think they still needed a lot of work doing to them for the final final, but with time running out I needed to make harsh decisions.


Larger scale


I printed the page so that it would be A3 size, splitting the picture across 2 A4 pages. Using my Promarker pad I traced out the picture whilst adding other little details.





Conclusion


As much as I love Junji Ito's style, my own piece feels less haunting in comparison so far. The final A3 drawing loses the darkness I had created in the digital sketches, though I do like the way it looks. I'm pleased with the overall composition of the piece, using a full page bleed as the main image and having 2 frames with close up that helps to setup the scene.


I'm hoping as things take a turn in the story, I would be more successful in channeling Ito's haunting style to create a convincing level of weirdness to best tell the story. Perhaps I will work on a page later in the story to give the idea!


Moodboard


I collected a small page worth of images as reference for the swimming pool. I based the front exterior on my local pool, but as it is an outdoor pool I couldn't base the entire piece on it. The dream required it to be indoors, and I had quite a specific view of the two exit doors. I looked at abandoned pools, and slightly less modern in their design. I found the perfect images which came to be very good references.




I also needed some help working out the figure as it climbed a fence. I found a few useful images to get the positioning right.




 

After Feedback


Although I hadn't completed the story, I did believe I had completed this assignment. I thought I had provided all that was required and more. I had taken thumbnail pages and turned them into digital illustrations. I liked the loose sketchy style of those drawings and was worried I wouldn't be able to get better in terms of the texture and the roughness to it. In a way I scared myself out of developing them further, not knowing how I was even going to do them any better. If I made them bigger I feared that I would lose the way details could be left out. Small faces would become more simple the harder they were to read, it was this that I liked about the digital sketches, noticeable in the last double page spread.


The truth is, they are not the final pages I would want in this comic. I think my feedback for this course, albeit very positive, could see through my deceiving efforts of trying to end it where I had. There was still so much work I needed to do for those first 5 pages, that I just didn't have the patience to push them further. I was already getting close to the cut off date, so as did many of the assignments in Level One, I cut it short to meet the deadline.


It was really encouraging, however, to see the positive reaction towards this idea in the feedback. It did motivate me to go further with the concept.


Your “Swimming at Night” narrative is very promising. You did not fully complete it but your thumbnails, layouts and continuity are all very good. Your final finished page has a high level of detail, but your finished faces have a tendency toward the cartoony when perhaps this particular narrative would benefit from being more muted and naturalistic. The narrative is reminiscent of an Alan Moore ‘Swamp Thing’ story, which itself borrowed from Stephen King’s ‘Stand by Me’. Overall ‘Swimming at Night’ is an ambitious and confident project, and it would be great to see how it develops.

I appreciated the point about the characters being perhaps too simple and cartoony for this story. For a while I had been toying with the idea of trying to push this as a style I could illustrate with, but deep down knew it didn't fit me. There are elements that I like in this cartoon style, but perhaps only in stand alone illustrations, and only then would it depend on the brief. So to have this highlighted did give me a kick to let it go. Not that I am sure what the style should be, or whether there is another way I would find comfortable that doesn't seem childish, but I was willing to try. I thought about the comics I had grown to like during this course, and found that many of them were with characters that were somewhat muted and naturalistic as mentioned in the feedback. I just don't know if I know how to draw like that in consistent way for a comic.


I had a go despite my worries. After several frustrating late evenings researching and trying to redesign the characters, I still couldn't get there. I managed to develop 3 characters, however the problem I faced is not knowing how they would look from different angles. I drew nice faces and couldn't move them or change their expression.









The final image was the closest I had gotten to a more naturalistic style in the characters. I then attempted to sketch those top 3 characters (in the black ink brush) in a way that I would manage redrawing them in all angles. I hated it, and gave up. Perhaps it was just at that moment I wasn't able to get past it, or it's a style I feel to be exploring unfamiliar territory and so struggled to go further. I don't know why, all I know is I haven't been successful in creating distinctive characters to lead this story - yet.


to give myself a break, I returned to the narrative. I had this visual of what was going to happen, however I had the visual as if I was watching a live action movie, I wasn't sure how to translate this into drawings in panels. How was I going to lay out the pages, the panels and how was I going to draw the swimming pool level rise, but still retain the shape of the swimming pool as it would grow closer to the ceiling.


Before answering all of those questions, I opened up a new blank canvas in Procreate and very loosely sketched out the next 6 pages as if drawing them on a napkin, channeling the Pixar method. I didn't think too much about the layout, though I did throw panels together just so I could try and visualise the action as a comic. I gathered I could change the frame size, shape and order once I worked out what was going to happen and how.













Here is a smaller screenshot of the panels side by side.



In the second to last panel, I had my first shot at exploring how the water will look as it reached the ceiling of the swimming pool. I could decide what would be the best angle to draw this, and how much of the rest of the room should I include to show how the water holding the shape as if surrounded by glass walls like a fish tank. As roughs go, I actually didn't mind the way it looked. Some panels with waves would need attention, but to get the idea across I think they do the job.


As I was still unsure on an overall style, including how the characters would look, I decided to step back from the narration and create some coloured concept art to help get a sense of the space this story was set in.


Starting with one of the panels above, this was my first attempt of being under the water.




Despite it being a terribly stiff drawing, both the water and the character, I could see that somewhere deep I was beginning to chisel out the potential the more I drew this idea. So I gave it another try.




Still very rough, and still unsure what the final look would be for the comic, neither of which really mattered as I really liked where it was going. I liked that with more room showing you were able to get the full sense of what was happening. I wondered if I still needed to step further back so you could see the full swimming pool, but I left it there for the time being.


I was inspired with the colours, the texture and with the feeling of real progress happening with this story. I enjoyed drawing the water, getting the light reflections in and the distorted lines of the swimming pool floor. So I did another concept piece as I still had question I wanted answering. Such as, how do all three boys end up back in the pool if the water retains its shape? So I explored the idea that the water, before rising, had began making strong waves that flooded over the edges, making the floor surrounding the pool slippery. But how could this look in a drawing?




This illustration was made to be more refined compared to the other two. I wanted it to be the icing on the cake that would bring this story to life. Though the space around the pool has been left without detail, I did focus on what those colours could look like after being left closed for a year. I'm quite pleased with the final concept. I am able to get a sense of the pool, the water and perhaps how I would go about drawing for the comic. The only questions I was asking now was, will the final piece be in full colour, limited colour or no colour? Would this change the nature of the story, or could it help emphasis this?



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