Monday 10 December 2012

Hart's Desire Comic

At this stage, rather than developing a storyboard and animatics I have been creating a comic of my deer-man story.
Having cited independent comic book artists as inspiration, and while writing an essay on the relationship between animation and comics, I decided that it might be interesting to initially develop the narrative in comics form. My hope was that this process would help me to develop a more considered approach to the composition and 'scene-craft' of the story that may have been lacking if I had dived into creating an animatic for motion.

Here are a couple of pages from the comic, which I have titled Hart's Desire (get it? A Hart is a name given to stags... aha ha ha, how terribly clever). I intend on building up the artwork a bit with shading and perhaps subtle colour. Click on them to enlarge.



One thing that I have noticed is that I have found it difficult to completely let go of the animator in me: in a great deal of the comic there are only small changes from panel to panel, meaning that I am trying to control the motion and show the reader/audience exactly how things are moving. When I look at other comic books there seems to be the potential for far greater changes in image from one panel to the next (especially in action packed superhero comics) while still creating the sense of a coherent and flowing story. 
Having said that, because this is a 'silent' comic (as there is no dialogue) the story relies even more heavily on the imagery and I think that there is a greater need to ensure that the audience are able to understand what is happening through the sequencing of action. Also, because there is no time prescribed in the reading of comics unlike in animation (when the audience does not dictate the pace of the action), the artist must try to take some control over how somebody interprets the pacing. One way that this can be done is by only changing things subtly between panels to suggest a slower, more delicate flow. The comics of Jon McNaught, one of my favourite comics artists, are often 'silent', 'delicate' and well considered by using this technique of subtle changes. Here's an example of his work.

What strikes me about McNaught's work is that it shows a very considered and effective, highly designed approach. I think that this is what attracts me to it most: a remnant of my architectural education perhaps, as I can't help but think of McNaught as a comics designer rather than a comics artist. I think that my Hart's Desire comic shows some level of this attention to design... because of this I think that it has been a worthwhile sub-project as I'm not sure this would have developed in an animatic. I hope that I can now take pieces of what works well in the comic and filter them into my approach to the animated film.