'Buying time'
Ultra Fine Artline Pen
Permanent Marker
Adobe Illustrator
110gsm Kraft brown art pad
REFLECTION
The comic strip memory "Buying Time" is a snapshot of a scenario where a student manipulates a teacher to get more time off doing work. There are three characters: Me, My Friend and The Teacher in a school setting. This is distinguishable by the clothes the characters are wearing and the way the characters are interacting with each other. The students are wearing identical collared shirts while The Teacher wears a tie (generally a fashion seen in older people or formal people). The plot starts in the 1st frame with two students conversing about an event (this establishes that they might be friends and are equals) and are interrupted in the 2nd frame by The Teacher yelling "I can hear you!". The way the Teacher addresses the students indicates his authority. In the 3rd frame, to get out of trouble, "Me" apologises and looks innocent then asks the teacher how his dog is completely off topic. The Teacher looks surprised and starts what seems to be a long conversation about his dog in the 4th frame. Finally in the 5th, "My Friends" acknowledges the cunningness of getting the teacher to speak about his dog and "Me" continues the conversation knowing they have brought more time.
To begin, I planned out the comic on a artpad, breaking down all the devices needed. I started with the plot and what the charaters would look like. From there I developed side-by-side a script (speech and facial expressions) and what the frame would need to look like (camera angle, setting, props). I drafted up the strip so I could get a sense of how I needed to space out the elements in the frame and got to work on the final comic.
The final comic frames were made using a Permanent Marker, and then I drew the base foundation of the elements in the frames using a pencil. Just drawing the speech bubbles, heads and other objects in the frame first. From there I used a Ultra Fine Artline pen to draw the comic. When it was done, I took a high-quality photo using a Fujifilm XT-4 and ran the comic through Adobe Lightroom to remove shadows and highlights, increase exposure and deepen the blacks to create a flat image with minimal colour differences. From there I was able to put the photo through Adobe Illustrator and image trace the comic to turn it into a vector. I added text in this stage because I didn't trust myself to space the words correctly plus my handwriting is horrible.
Behind the Scenes
EXPERIMENTATION with colour
