D&AD Briefs

So the D&AD briefs came out today and there's only two that jumped out at me. The first one was the Diesel brief under the illustration category. Their whole campaign at the moment is about being stupid and how this brings forth new ideas and innovation. They want to apply this to music and how bands/artists in 21st century promote their music as the traditional ways i.e 12 inch vinyls and CDS are no longer relevant thanks to digital downloads.
The second brief was under the animation category; something I had stated that I didn't want to do. However, the tag line caught me and now it's buried itself inside my mind: Create a lead character, with heart and optimism, for a narrative-driven comedy cartoon.

I'm going to do both briefs, but at the moment I'm unsure whether I'm going to submit the Disney one to D&AD because one of the mandatory requirements is a 30-60 second animation. (Which I'm terrible at) It may mean that I contact someone on the digital media course for a collaboration.

L'Étranger = The Outsider

So I've been calling the Follio society brief: The stranger. Turns out, they want it to be called "The Outsider". I find this bizarre as L'Étranger is french for The Stranger.

Oh well, this will take me 2 seconds to change.

Crit Feedback

Summarised feedback from this mornings crits that I think went quite well. Will scan in the forms made by Kate F, Chris, Paul and Linds tonight:

• Lots of good development
  
• don't waffle on blog - use bullet points
• Suits the context (book: Stranger brief)
• Where will the comic book be sold? comic shops, supermarkets, book fairs ect?
• Two different styles work well together. My style is adaptable and doesn't pigeon hole me.
• Bit more experimentation with layout outs.
  

Additional comments:
-Readdress the type on the stranger brief. Currently it looks as if it's been badly cropped. There's enough white space to play around with the type to perhaps knock it down a little.

-Would be nice to have a range of possible out comes for the book brief.

Updated Rational

Updated rational. Next stop; re writing the briefs.

Questions for the crit

Questions for the crit:

1. Do you think that the briefs I have outlined so far reflect my rational and inform/relate to my current design practice?

2. Is the November in the North brief a substantial amount of work taking into consideration that it is a 12 page comic not including a front cover. Is there any way I could possibly expand this brief? (The competition deadline was last week; I am now solely focusing on the comic for myself.)

3. What do you think of my type and layout choices for The Stranger brief? Is there anyway this could be improved without completely redesigning the cover or taking away from the initial concept?

The Stranger: Cover 2

This is almost complete as far as a book cover design goes. There are a few things that need tweaking here and there but that's what the crits tomorrow are for. The idea to have it gray scale is because of the novel itself. Life/people are not entirely black and white. There is not a totally morally good person and yet people feel this way. Meursault see's himself as neither good or bad, he just exists. Therefore, he is the gray are represented in the smoke.

Meursault Head

Added in the shadows and made the hair a little longer to correspond with the image on the back of the cover.

Meursault

Image for the back of The Stranger book cover. I'm only thinking of making it one of the 3 illustrations that also have to submitted along side the cover. Tried to dress him in appropriate 1940's style clothing. Braces!

The Stranger

My stranger brief is turning out to be a very quick turn around brief. After divering yesterday and worrying about not being able to illustrate what I could see in my head, Jonny offered to be a reference for me.

Unpolished illustration. A few minor details missing but I quite liked the mood of the character. Meursault himself is unfeeling, uncaring and rather likens himself to that of the universe. That it simply doesn't care about humanity and we're only here for the ride. What annoys Meursault in the end is that people are so angry at him and his lack of empathy when it fact the universe has been doing that to them for century's.

A bit more detail here. I think I'm going to re draw his clothing entire because at the moment he doesn't scream the 1940's at me. But this is a minor thing that I can re adjust today.

Took just the image of the head to see what I could do it and rather liked the idea of smoke forming a question mark around Meursault. This idea that as a stranger/outsider he is questioned by society itself. In turn, Meursault questions them in a brilliant fit of rage at the end of the novel.

Playing around with the book cover design. Completely influenced my DMZ and general Brian Wood at the moment.

With the first unpolished illustration.

Trying to play around with inverted colours. Not quite sure if this effective of not. I think it now looks to much like a photograph and not an illustration.

Working with textures over the illustration and the start of figuring out the layout for the blurb. The idea being that I would have a smaller illustration of Meursault at the bottom.

And with the head shot and smoke. I quite like this one.

With Meursault on the back cover in more traditional 1940's era clothing (which was influenced by the gangster culture at the time.)

Rough Lines

The (larger than average man) thumbnails I did for the comic has helped with the placing of the rough lines. (And also where everything fits inside the comic) Obviously, page 2 won't be printed next to page 3 due to duplex but it helps in the initial stages.

I'll be uploading these one by one as I do them. Rough lines and they're subject to change.

Page 2 and 3. 3 being blank as the reverse is the front cover.

Updated Scipt/next panels

Updated/finished script for the 12 page comic (or 13 due to the DPS) as well as panels August - December.

Brian dressed as Colin Morgan's Merlin and Leeland as an X-man. Because it's Halloween and I can get away with that.

Adapted November page

Calvin and Hobbes reference and I thought it would be an interesting way of ending the comic.

Print Out

Printed out my November page down in the print room this morning. It's printed on a poster paper (matte) type stock and it's turned out really well.

12 Page comic

Draft layouts for my 12 page comic "November in the North" depicting a year in the life of two students, Brian and Leeland. (I say 12 pages, one of them is a DP spread in the middle of the comic.)

The layouts are very rough and slightly crude. They're just to help me plan out for the the roughs and the clean lines.

January - July








Script (so far) :
More months/layouts to come.

Legible

So I re submitted my competition entry. Why? Well, after I had uploaded it to my Facebook, Sam Jhonson (who writes Geek Girl comic) commented that the text would look better stripped back and made black and white. I started to get a little worried because I had already submitted it and when I asked around the studio the response was the same as Sams.

I have never edited something so quickly in the my life.

It's not quite black and white but...It's better than what it was.

Hopefully no one will notice. *cough*

Comic Layouts/Joining Grids

The content of each panel for a comic is of course dictated by the story and so the illustration/design does not always fit inside such strict divisions of a grid.

The story will often call for larger panels for important events, actions scenes, panoramas and other moments where the required composition simply won't fit into the available shape. By joining two or more panels together, larger panels can be accommodated without breaking the overall grid patter,

Nine panel grids allow a large number of potential page layouts and panel sizes.

(Grid layout out made in Indesign and taken over to photoshop to play around with.)

With this, I'll be able to change my November comic to fit with this layout. This is because the 6 panel layout for the competition piece worked well on it's own, yet it wouldn't together with the other pages.