Illustration & Visual Narrative: Project 3 & 4

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6/May/2022 - 29/Apr/2022 (Week 9 - Week 14)
Kim MinJoon (0353248)
Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / COM61304 / Taylor's University
Task 3 + Final Project Motion Comic

INSTRUCTIONS


Task 3

Progression


Firstly, before I started with the drawing, I needed to make a storyline first in order to think about the character designs and whatnot. 

I first came up with a storyline where a man starts his boring day in the office and when he was really excited for one thing on that day and that it was to eat his sandwich in the cafeteria that he brought and put in the fridge, he finds out that someone ate it. He was devastated and when he was about to outburst with rage, someone mysteriously laughs behind  him and unrealistically fight by jumping out the buildings and such. 

But I felt like the story was too bland and that it really didn’t really have an impact for the characters to be fighting for an eaten sandwich. 

I then thought of some other plots that came to my mind. And the first thing that came to mind were those cliché plots that had a relative of the main character be sick so that the main character had a reason to fight, and then the viewers can sympathize him during the adventure (it did not go as this style in the end). It seemed like a good way to start the story so I had the main character’s little sister be sick and he had to travel around to gain medicine for her sickness. I thought that the old Japanese style would fit pretty well for the timeline since it would've been common to get sick during those times. 

I then made started to make the storyline. 


Story (Draft)


Act 1

Once upon a time, there was a warrior cat, which name was ‘Ryuu’.

It was cat-murai, and the last of its kind, he roamed around the mountains and plains to find for the cure for his illness, and to save his sister form it as well, back in the village.

One day, it was the middle of the day, cloudy, but not enough to cover the bright sun fully. Ryuu walked on the dirt road, where all the carriages were pulled towards the nearby village. His stomach growls, as he had not eaten for 3 days straight without sleep. He walked into the village to find a cottage to stay in, and with his leftover shillings, he paid the fees and went into his room to rest.

In the evening, he awoke, and with his gear, he went out for a stroll and sightsee what the village had to offer.

 

Act 2

It is nice and quiet in the village, And Ryuu comes over to an oden shop besides the buildings. It is producing a savory smell that Ryuu cannot hold back, he reaches for his pockets but it appears to be empty. His stomach growls again, but resists himself from going into the shop. As he turns around to go back, the shop owner notices him, and calls him in but Ryuu decides to not take up on his offer and runs away back to his home.

But while on his way, he encounters a black figure, jumping from wall to wall, with a bag on its back.  The black figure notices him, and comes down on the opposite side of the block and gave him a menacing look. Ryuu knew exactly what it was after, the sword that Ryuu carried was forged over 200 years ago, and was an ancestral treasure and a weapon used to kill many of the owners’ victims. 

 

Act 3

Ryuu unsheathed his sword, and pointed it at the figure, and the figure doing the same with his daggers. They rushed towards each other and started fighting, the figure barely slicing ryuu’s neck off and Ryuu coming back with a counter, it goes on, but Ryuu is at a disadvantage as he did not have any food for the past several days, he was losing energy, and the figure was going to stab the back of his head, Ryuu thinks about his dying sister and dodges and manages to have the final blow on the figure.

 

The townsfolk hears the noise outside and comes out to the streets, but all they saw was the dead body of the bandit, and the unwrapped treasures that has been stolen from the townsfolk. They all rejoice, and Ryuu secretly goes back to his cabin and rests until the day renews. Ryuu awoke and he heard many noises coming outside of his cabin. He went out to see what was going on, and all the people greeted him with cheers and claps. He wondered how it came to this and it turned out as the person who was selling oden in the middle of the night followed him and watched exactly what happened and told everyone in the morning. He then gets all the hospitality that the townsfolk gives and with that, he goes back to his sister with a little bit more hope than before.


Story (Final)

Act 1

Once upon a time, there was a warrior cat, which name was ‘Ryuu’.

It was cat-murai, and it roamed around the plains fighting crime and evil.

One day, it was the middle of the day, cloudy, but not enough to cover the bright sun fully. Ryuu walked on the dirt road, where all the carriages were pulled towards the nearby village. His stomach growls, as he had not eaten for 3 days straight without sleep. He walked into the village to find a cottage to stay in, and with his leftover shillings, he paid the fees and went into his room to rest.

In the evening, he awoke, and with his gear, he went out for a stroll and sightsee what the village had to offer.

 

Act 2

It is nice and quiet in the village, and whilst he was taking his stroll, he encounters a black figure, jumping from wall to wall, with a bag on its back.  The black figure notices him, and comes down on the opposite side of the block and gave him a menacing look. Ryuu knew exactly what it was after, the sword that Ryuu carried was forged over 200 years ago, and was an ancestral treasure and a weapon used to kill many of the owners’ victims. 

 

Act 3

Ryuu unsheathed his sword, and the figure did the same with his. They rushed towards each other and started fighting, the fight went on short but the black figure's sword cut deep into Ryuu's arm first damaging his torso up to his shoulder, the blade followed up to his hat, causing it to fall. But Ryuu being able to swing his right arm right before the blade hit him, the swing sliced the black figure's neck causing him to die instantaneously. Ryuu sees the dead body and goes to pick up his hat again and with that, he continues to venture into the unknown.


Progression (Sketches)


I thought about what kind of characters should be in the story. Should it be a human? Or an animal? I asked myself that question and in the end I ended up with a cat, because I thought it would be funny. I made him wear traditional Japanese clothing to suit the timeline and the passed down samurai swordsmanship. 

Figure 1.1: Character Reference (07.06.2022)



Figure 1.2: Character Design (09.06.2022)


I started sketching the panels to align with the storyline and to not go over board from the capped amount of 65.

I started to draw with the software 'Photoshop', then when I stupidly forgot to bring the charger for my laptop, I switched over to physical drawings so that I can later trace over them when I draw it in Adobe Illustrator. 

I drew out a semi-realistic version of the main character onto paper, then traced it onto photoshop to digitalize it. I knew that it was going to be extremely difficult when I had to draw these out for every panel so I thought that I could just make them mini versions of what I drew them as. or more like a chibi version with less detail, and when it goes intense and when it was necessary, I would make them look life sized and realistic.

I used the method of line art to draw out the panels and the story from the imported pictures that i had drawn out in real life and on photoshop onto Illustrator.

The first sketches are the ones that are just done to be traced out and be improved later on. 


Figure 1.3: 5th scene sketch (17.06.2022)


Figure 1.4: 5th scene Digitalized Version #1 (20.06.2022)


Figure 1.5: 5th scene Digitalized Version #2 (22.06.2022)


I have made 2 digitalized versions for each sketch and the scene so that it was easier for me to trace out the characters in illustrator and then when I had completed tracing them out, I could delete them to fit the background.


Figure 1.6: 5th scene Finalized (22.06.2022)


After drawing out these concept timeline frames / panels, I realized that there were not enough rooms for the actual fighting and that it only has around 10-15 panels of action. So I decided to cut out some of the bits that are useless and has no real value to the story to make sure that I had enough for the whole purpose of the manwha / manga.

So what I had for the story was now that the ending would be the fighting and would end after defeating the bandit / thief. And I removed the oden shop for the story since it took up about 3-5 panels and that is a little too much for me to fit in the rest of the story.


Figure 1.7: Discarded oden scene (17.06.2022)


There were parts where the character line arts crossed the panel border but that was okay since I was going to use the fill option to cover it up.

I decided to use greyscale for the color pick to give the dramatic effect of the past. This kind of reminded me of the animation that was created by a Japanese animator for the Star Wars series.


Figure 1.8: Character Designs from an episode of 'The Duel' (10.07.2022)             


Figure 1.9: Main Character from an episode of 'The Duel' (10.07.2022)


With all the sketches done I started with the progress of task 4, the animation of the motion comic.


Progression (Video)


I first began to move the files to After Effects, but when I did it, I immediately ran into a problem as I did not have the background and the characters in a linked layers in Illustrator. This was a huge problem for me to deal with as I had really no time to be fixing when the due date was around the corner (I messed up pretty bad and learnt a valuable lesson). 

I tried everything I could by searching up what I can do to animated it without having the layers, it was too hard since I also did not really think about how I should structure my layers and that really messed up the flow. So, to make up for having no way to recover for the video in after effects, I moved on to premiere pro. 

I placed all of the images in, and positioned them correctly, as well as scaing the panels to fit the screen correspondingly. I made the clips around 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds depending on what was in the panel. 


Figure 2.1: Premiere Pro timelines (05.07.2022)


When there were panels that were all clumped up together in a singular direction, I could see the borders in the video and it was not looking very neat. So I decided to mask it out by creating a shite box and overlapping them and adjusting them so that it blocks out the unnecessary parts of the video. This can be seen in the figure above, as the different purple boxes above the lowest line of boxes. 

Where there were need for transitions, such as a dramatic effect, I gave a cross dissolving effect to between the clips. However, even if this sounded like a good Idea, it wasn't very effective as this meant that the clips were not transitioning to a darker color and coming back, but reducing the opacity and uping it again to 100%. This made the masking layers not effective and have a weird transition to the main video. 


Figure 2.2: Video Editing Issue (05.07.2022)


So I used a different effect to give it a transition. I ended using 'dip to black' as it made sure that the clips were reduced in color and not opacity. Even thought it wasn't great at transitioning as there were still a few flaws, it worked the best out of the options I had. 


Figure 2.3: 'Dip to Black' transition (05.07.2022)


For the sounds of the video, I found non copyrighted music and sound effects that matched with the theme of the video, well, "Tried to". 

Even though the outcome wasn't as good as what could've been with after effects, I still think that it was an okay job despite having nothing to animate. 


Results


Webtoon Comic - Here

Google Drive - Here

Figure 3.1: Final Motion Comic (12.07.2022)

Figure 3.2: Finalized Video (12.07.2022)

FEEDBACK

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REFLECTIONS

Experience

Throughout these weeks, I felt very uneasy on the task since it felt like as if it was rushed. I don't recall getting lectured about using after effects for this and this made it tremendously harder to finish this task off. I still don't really have the experience for the software, and although there probably was a way to actually fix my issue, I couldn't get my head around it. 

The 60 panels were also a tiny bit too much for me to handle. I get that it is a fight scene and all but I found it very hard to make a good flow out of these panels. Now I understand the hardships of being a webtoon artist. 

Observations

I found myself pretty tired from trying to get this work done in the time period and I dozed off pretty often. I knew that I was going to be rushing this project when it got closer to the final deadline, but I didn't quite manage my time very well and it really backfired towards me. I hope to fix this habit of mine in the future.

Findings

I found the task pretty fun though, despite all of the tiring bits, I found myself enjoying the little things such as illustrating vector images in Illustrator. I couldn't get to properly use after effects this time around but I definitely will try to get a hang of it during the semester break.

The whole experience of IVN was a blessing and I wish to learn more even if there are going to be obstacles along the way.

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