November In the North Boards~

Open publication - Free publishing - More november

November Product Shot

Product shot of the comic (back and front) in the sleeve accompanied by the small trade back volume.

Additional Covers

Standard comic size:

Poxket size volume:

Printed today and mocked up in context, all I have to do is photograph them this afternoon and place them on my boards.

November: Web Comic Presence

I thought the best way to promote a comic like November in the North would be with a web comic presence. This would generate interest long before the comic actually goes to print. It also means I would not have to work solid on the comic and could essentially release the pages one at a time.

(Ha Fanart, as if there ever would be.)
There's also space down the left had side for sponsors and an advertisement banner.

Cover~

Front and back cover for my November in the North comic. It folds along the fence so the sky overlaps onto the back. The blurb is short but it covers everything in what is actually quite a short comic book. I've been a bit worried about being behind with this brief but I'm positive the presentation boards will be up to scratch on Thursday and the rest of the comic will be finished!

Air Guitar!

I had no full body pictures of Brian and Leeland for this project and I'd feel like a cheat if I had used previous one's. I also wanted some illustrations for the back cover and the best I could come up with was the pair of them air guitaring.

February Finished!

1 down, 11 + front cover to go. I'm satisfied with how this has turned out and I'm hoping that all of the pages turn out just as well. I am planning to have the majority of the comic done by Monday evening and printed by Tuesday. At a push, Wednesday which makes allowances for any problems.

February Gray

Comic page progress. I really like how this is turning out so far but come crits tomorrow someone may have a different opinion. They may be able to help me improve it.

February Lines

February page for the comic.
To do:

• detail
• 2 colour (+ stock) choices. I'm still partial to this being gray scale.
  

Clean Layout

The 'clean' layout of the previous post with both white and black backgrounds. The white one was annotated through my own concerns and from the response of people in the studio whom I roped in to looking.

• Make line-weight on the boxes lower (or the line art inside the boxes heavier to compensate) Going to make the line weight smaller. - and consistent.
  
• Address Leeland's massive eyebrows in the 2nd panel.
  
• make mouth black.
  
• additional detail.
  
• re draw the scissors 'Land is holding as they currently look like chop sticks.
  
• Don't use stenciled typeface, try a condensed bold that compensates the Lafayette font.

A good idea proposed from Will was to take away the box from the last panel, blow up the image and have the colour from the wall be the background colour.

I felt the artwork was lost amongst the black background but that's not to say this technique won't work for other pages.

Rough Layout

Another re composition exercise and this time with a full page. Now I know exactly how I want it to be positioned and what needs to come next.

I also asked around the studio, holding up the page, where peoples eyes traveled on the page. The general response was good and that the eyes followed the panels correctly (in the right order)

Re-Composition Exercise

In my tutorial with Lorenzo, he suggested that I printed out a some what finished (in this case, line art) of a panel and either blow them up or cut them out. I decided to do both and printed out 3 at a4 and 3 at 13, cut them all up and re positioned them all on a new piece of paper. I also decided to add the panel borders just to see how well they could be framed.

This is the original panel (sans border)

Here, the door has been made central instead of Leeland (the boy with the scissors)

Re-Composition 1: In this piece I used an a4 sheet to cut out the characters and placed them accordingly. I wanted to see what an unconventional panel would look like.

Re-Composition 2: Brian and the door-have been made smaller and Leeland slightly bigger. The way they have be positioned gives a greater illusion of perspective.

Re-Composition 3: This one does not work as well as the other 2 i feel. Leeland looks to close too close to the door. A door which looks massive in comparison.

New panel:
This has been a really effective exercise for me. I know the steps between the first panel and new one looks quite simple but I needed to get a better feel for the layout and step away from the media I was using to create it.

Edit: Brian's eyes...need fixing.

Expression Sheets

25 expressions for the two characters for the 12 page November in the North comic.

Just some rough sketches to begin with. The angry face needs re working (It's aged him, rather than made him angry.)

Leeland:


I really enjoy doing small exercises like these. They're helpful to establish the character and their traits. What works for one character won't necessarily work for another.

Brian To come.

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.