Black and White

While I experimented with colour earlier in development I have moved back to a black and white 'woodcut' style illustrated style for the development.


The two real reasons for this decision are my own inspirations and the inspirations of  Lovecraft himself.

My own interests in comics do differ from what I would consider the norm of comics lovers - I do not really like the works of Marvel or DC, and I am generally rather apathetic about the whole superhero genre. I found my inspiration in the comics I enjoyed as a child, mainly 2000AD


A wholly British comic, 2000AD was my main comic to read growing up, my favourites being the mystery related 'Future Shocks' (Self contained stories that were similar to the twilight zone) and more fantastical adventures with moral backing, such as Nemesis the Warlock. These stories were always created with an eye on mood rather than splashing around colour- it was cheaper to print monochrome in the comic's earlier days, and the choice to keep them with their original style stayed through their run, even when colour printing became the norm.

The other side is the illustrators of the time when Lovecraft was alive -several of which he named as inspirations. The woodcut style is something I wished to capture in my work.

Gustave Doré, one of Lovecraft's inspirations

Much more of this artist work can be seen here.

Filters

A recent trial has been into using filters to add mood to the scenes themselves. As these would only require re-rendering scenes (Something that will need to be done anyway) it seemed like a good avenue for experimentation without changing the pipeline of creation.

As usual, Dropbox link -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tmt3m083o3ui48o/NewTownSceneFilter.mp4

Progress -

Here are some scenes showing progress on the project and further character designs. As the series does start out slow I'm using this time to nail down character designs and keep them consistent.

This is the ticket inspector who first suggests to the main character the possibility of visiting Innsmouth.

As usual the compression on blogger kind of kills the detail, so here's a dropbox link.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9yh0lsirbleie1/Scene_15.mp4

The main character himself has changed slightly (He only appears in a few frames, and I wasn't sure about the initial ideas of basing upon the look of Lovecraft himself)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0fte47nrndvzlr/Scene_14_3.mp4

He also lost his hat. I didn't like it.

More XKCD!

XKCD

http://www.xkcd.com/1350/

It seems whenever I write a post about a comic that's inspired me to think outside the box it's XKCD - the stick figure comic based webcomic created by Randall Munroe.

This has to be one of his most interesting experiments yet - earlier I've written about 'Click and Drag' (A comic that let you explore a vast world through a single panel) and 'Time' (A comic that progressed as time did, each panel lost after the first and only kept by other readers saving panels as they progressed) - his latest comic is called 'Lorenz' and allows the user to control and shape the story as they click through, with each panel leading to a new path for the story.

Each reader gets their own story based on their own actions, and new actions are added through the forum by posting to the author directly. When I first viewed this comic the first panel only contained two choices - with a huge variation later - and now it contains four. This is a comic that will grow as it's audience suggests and contract as people subscribe to certain viewpoints.

More Artwork

Detail on an important item in the first chapter - the Tiara that the main character studies. I think it still needs to be tightened up though.

 And the closer to final scene based on the earlier posted image. I think it need contrast beefed up more though

Scene 1, complete. Other scenes are still being worked on to retain this level of quality. If you can't stand the awful Blogger compression head over to my Dropbox for the full version.

The Doom That Came to Sarnath

As his work is in the public domain, Lovecraft's stories have been adapted and re-worked many times before. This is an example of one work I found, and it continues the black and white grainy style that I feel works so well in these horror stories.

Personally I like the styling of this one, but the author's use of panels to help the flow of the story really make it work.

Storyboards

More artwork

Some more work, experimenting with colours and paint types

Using Maya to create backgrounds to move the camera in for a consistent look to the scenes

I'm not great with oil paints but I feel they fit the mood well

3D

So I've managed to make myself a rudimentary 3D viewer, using a couple of simple zoom lenses and a mobile phone. Initially a fun project for myself, it became a way to explore further into the augmented reality delivery of my motion comic - 3D content could be displayed as a side-by-side 3D image and displayed on any device that could play the movie.

It was an interesting way to further explore the delivery of the content to devices, especially with the constant development towards 3D content that has been going on for the last couple of years. It could be seen as a way to put the control of the story back into the hands of the creator

Delivery Methods

My thoughts have turned to delivering my motion comic lately, as this seem s to be something that has been looked over. In most cases, motion comic are treated pretty much the same as films - this is actually advantageous as this allows the use of the many different methods of sharing movies that already exist, such as YouTube.

But my comic was to also take the form of a traditionally read work, with text replacing the speech for larger displays - here are  few examples of ideas:

Standard tablet display - iPad or similar. This would allow the work to be viewed full page like a comic, while retaining motion through development.

Mobile phone display. Due to the smaller screen size text would not really work on this display, so this version wold work on full screen frames for the viewer to watch and would move forward like a traditional motion comic.

Audio only. This would be the soundtrack alone, to be used with mp3 players or the like, as an audiobook.

Augmented reality. This is an idea that has come from playing around with various apps available for free on the android market place, as well as the current push towards wearable computing. an example is the PlayStation WonderBook, which allows a base book to be viewed as an augmented book on a television display. With the combination of Google Glass (for instance) and a base display, this could become a motion comic viewer for all formats.

This is an augmented reality app I got running iwth a little work, I'll upload another shot to discuss it soon. Also - 3D!

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

While I have been looking into other narratives over Christmas, as well as continuing to look into comic based narratives, when I discovered this film.

Directed and narrated by Warner Herzog, this film is a documentary about the Chauvet caves, recently discovered in Southern France. Although the film itself adds a narrative in the discovery of the cave, and how the team was allowed to film there, the real story is in the beautiful cave paintings discovered there. Over 35000 years old, these are some of the earliest paintings ever discovered and have been miraculously preserved due to a cave in soon after they were painted. The cave itself is completely protected from the elements and isolated from any natural impact, keeping the paintings in the most unbelievable condition.

part of the incredible discovery, apart from the incredible detail and skill in the images, is the use of rudimentary communication in what they present. Several images show use of tone and shadow – and a few even show attempts at movement, with several images laid over each other. This truly is the birth of art and the use of images as a form of expression, and at the same time it is the birth of sequential art, showing them to have a similar timeline. Before even language had been developed by humans we were able to communicate via the use of laid out and set images, with motion and depth shown in them.

These images are still understandable, despite some of the animals being extinct for thousands of years. One image shows a herd of cow like animals faced against predators, chasing behind them with the smudges of coal showing the clouds of dust raised by their flight. I recommend this film to anyone interested in any of the comic based forms of narrative, as it shows the actual rules needed, and how little development there has actually been.