Illustration and Visual Narrative | Lectures & Practicals
LECTURE NOTES
Week 1
In the first class, we were greeted by Ms Jennifer and Ms Noranis warming up the class with an interesting conversation about rabbit feces. We were then briefed on the overall module and the exercises we will be doing. Additionally, we were also shown previous students' works as examples. Our first task was also introduced: the Vormator challenge, which can be found here.
Week 2
Today we learned about what makes a character visually appealing.
Shapes
Ms Anis emphasized that unique shapes help create an iconic character that is easy to remember. She provided an example from Aladdin. A key thing to note was how to balance the shapes to convey whether a character is a protagonist or antagonist. Aladdin and Jafar both had a main triangle shape, however, Jafar's design involved an upside-down triangle, which creates a sense of imbalance, hence, enforcing that he is the villain in the story.
Figure 1.1: Character shapes of Aladdin, Week 2 (3/9/21)
Colours
Colour can help convey the personality of the character and, in pairs of characters, can show how different characters compliment or contrast each other. It was encouraged to search different colour schemes using Adobe Colour. Different colour schemes for a character we are also encouraged to explore which works best with the personality of the character.
Emphasis & Contrast
Choosing a visual element of a character and exaggerating it will make the character memorable. An example given was Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove, with her exaggerated eyelashes. I think Stoick the Vast from How to Train Your Dragon also had a strong contrast, from his small face and a large beard.
Figure 1.2: Yzma's exaggerated eyelashes (left), Stoick the Vast's beard contrast (right) , Week 2 (3/9/21)
Harmony
All the elements (shapes, colours, contrast) should work and complement together, creating a visual hierarchy. The important parts of the characters should be first noticed. An example is WALL-E and Eva from WALL-E, where the emphasis was on the eyes.
Figure 1.3: Wall-E and Eva's eye emphasis, Week 2 (2/9/21)
Expression & Poses
How the characters express and behaves should visually show their personality.
Extra Reflection: Analysing the character design of Toothless from HTTYD aka: an excuse to fangirl.
Figure 1.4: Toothless character design, Week 2 (3/9/21)
Figure 1.5: Character design analysis on Toothless, Week 2 (3/9/21)
Shapes: In general, Toothless has a smoother and sleeker design than the other dragons in the movie, comprising many round-like shapes. This helps convey that Toothless is one of the protagonists in the movie. There is also usage of sharper shapes on his tails and wings which, I think, serves two purposes: to contrast his main silhouette and to also show the duality of his personality. This visual contrast works very well in showing the cute, charming side of Toothless and also the dangerous, mysterious side of Toothless we see in the first parts of the trilogy.
Colours: His colours were inspired by a black panther. The green eyes, red tail, and (in the second movie) blue glow all contrast his black colour. It is a simple palette but effective on both sides of his personality.
Emphasis & Contrast: Toothless' main visual design was his unique ear flaps on his head and his round eyes. Both of these are expressive, especially the eyes where the contrast is more piercing and 'electrifying', as the artbook puts it.
Week 3
Today Ms Anis thought to us about composition. We went through why some photos look good due to the rule of grids, different movement of lines, contrast, the play of light etc.. We learnt about different types of shots and compositions.
Figure 2.1: Types of shots, Week 3 (10/9/21)
Rule 1: To have a balanced distribution of positive and negative spaces, aka light and shadow. This creates a visual hierarchy and ensures that the values portray the mood appropriately.
Figure 2.2: Positives and negatives, Week 3 (10/9/21)
Drawing out a scene in black and white can help focus on different subjects or emphasize what is important in the scene.
Week 4
Today Ms Anis taught us more about composition, more specifically, perspectives. The first known image to make proper use of linear perspective was by a Florentine architect, Filipo Brunelleshi.
Figure 3.1: Masaccio - The Tribute Money, Week 4 (17/9/21)
Another famous artwork that uses good perspective is "The last Supper" by Da Vinci.
Figure 3.2: The Last Supper by Da Vinci perspective, Week 4 (17/9/21)
Perspective in art, is to create an illusion and represent the objects the way they are; from a 2D surface to a 3D optical illusion. There are different types of perspectives:
- 1 point
- 2 point
- 3 point
- 4-5 points (fisheye)
- Isometric grid
The number of points represents the number of vanishing points in the picture, with the exception of an isometric grid. The isometric view is mostly used to create detailed concepts of individual elements without distorting perspective or obscuring details.
Week 5
Ms Anis briefed us our second project: Task 2. She then taught us about chiaroscuro. "chiaro" = bright, "scuro" = dark, it refers to the use of light and dark to create an illusion of a three-dimensional volume on a flat surface. It helps create dramatic tension and creates an impactful composition with positives and negatives.
Figure 4.1: Chiaroscuro example, Week 5 (24/9/21)
Week 6
There was no formal lecture as Ms Anis recapped what we have done and studied so far from Week 1.
Week 7
Today we learnt about the 3-Act structure: Setup, Rising Tension, Conflict (and Resolution). We need to know our central theme (in our case for Task 3, hORror :((((( )/ A story can have a minor theme as well, which is an idea that appears more subtly. A story should also have conflict. It is what drives a story forward and creates tension.
The characters involved should have central characters such as protagonist and antagonist. There should always be a conflict between these two (or more) characters. The main character doesn't always have to be good but it has to have an emotional connection to the audience (it doesn't have to be in human form). The antagonist has to consistently throw problems at the protagonist.
Setup
The universe in which the characters exist in. This usually ends when the conflict is revealed.
Rising Tension
The sequence of difficulties that the protagonist must face. As more obstacles are revealed, the difficulty rises.
Conflict
The peak of the tension, a major decisive moment for the protagonist.
Resolution
The conflict's conclusion; whether the protagonist succeeds or fails.
We were also tasked to create a summary of our story by next week compiling the three acts structure.
Week 8
Today Ms Anis taught us about visual transitions. Good ideas often come from experience instead of aimless Googling. Ideas can be done through brainstorming and mind mapping and asking the "4 wives, 1 husband": What, Who, When, Where, How.
Week 9
Today Ms Anis taught us about transitions to keep the flow of the comic smooth. There are a number of ways to transition:
- Moment-to-Moment
Figure 5.1: Moment-to-Moment examples, Week 9 (29/10/21)
- Action-to-Action
- Subject-to-Subject - usually between conversations.
- Scene-to-Scene
- Symbolic
- Rolling Transitions - No specific panels
- Non-Sequitr (more abstract, no clear flow)
PRACTICALS
Week 2
Today Ms Jennifer introduced us to the basics of Adobe Illustrator. Quite a number of students, like me, did not have Adobe Illustrator yet as it was promised to us (but given that their email sounded clueless, I decided to go down another route to obtain it..you know who you are).
Ms Jennifer designed a cute chameleon-like character and showed us how we could do the vormator challenge on Illustrator with our own character. She showed us how to lock layers and how to create the vector shapes of the vormator challenge with the pen tool. A direct selection tool can be used to do minor tweakings to the vector shape.
Week 3
Ms Jennifer went through creating gradients to make our character pop up more. She also went through how we could create our card design with Illustrator and walked us through step by step. The knife tool can be used to create smaller 'cuts' within a shape to add more details. Watching her go through the process of creating the card design really helped visualize what I should be able to do for the card design.
Week 4
After the card design, we can improve it by adding different textures and 'noise' to make it more interesting. Ms Jennifer showed us how to improvise our card design.
Week 5
Given that we were introduced to our next task, Ms Jennifer showed us how to create a minimalistic movie poster with the tools we have learnt so far. She shared her process from sketch to finish while also giving tips on how to use perspective grids.
Week 6
There was no formal practical today.
Week 7
Ms Jennifer showed us how to do a basic animation using Illustrator and Photoshop. She created the frames in Illustrator and copy pasted the objects as smart objects in Photoshop.
Week 8
Ms Jennifer showed us the process of her sketching her horror comic/webtoon.
Week 9
No practical
Week 10
Ms Jennifer showed how she imported AI files into After Effects to create simple animations for her panels.
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