ILLUSTRATION & VISUAL NARRATIVE - FINAL PROJECT

(12/11/18- 7/12/18) Week 12-Week 15
Dk Nur Reem Rashah Pg Mohammad Apri (0336605)
Illustration & Visual Narrative
Final Project
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INSTRUCTIONS:


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Final Project: Front & Back, Back & Front

Initially, I was planning to go forward with my animated comic for this final project. Though, I decided against it when I came across a poetry anthology, 'Ariel', written by Sylvia Plath. Within Ariel, Plath wrote a poem titled 'Nick and the Candlestick' with intentions to describe her deep emotions as a mother towards her son, Nicholas Hughes. I found it interesting that within the poem, we as readers do not see 'Nick' as a person. Instead, he's addressed as an embryo. 

In my work, I decided to use the imagery of an embryo as well as the candlestick as a motif in order to reflect the poem effectively as it portrays the poem's title and the symbolism used in the poem.

Fig 1.0 Plath's 'Nick and The Candlestick' - poem

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 Analyzing the poem

I've extracted some ideas from specific lines in the poem that I felt would sum up the overall sentiment of the poem:

• "I am a miner. The light turns blue."

• From this line, it suggests she's yearning and searching for something in this time of despair. Although it was meant in a metaphoric way, I decided to make the main protagonist in this motion comic dressed as a miner as she navigates her way to find something.

• "Old cave of calcium - Icicles, old echoer"

• Here, I knew I wanted to set the motion comic in a mysterious cave found in a regular house setting. From my interpretation, I felt like Plath was describing the moment as though she's revisiting a room filled with old memories of her son. Hence, the "old cave of calcium."

• "O love, how did you get here - O embryo"

• As I mentioned before, 'Nick' is addressed as an embryo. I decided to play with that idea and make it a prominent motif within this motion comic.

• "You are the one - Solid spaces lean on, envious, You are the baby in the barn."

• I found it interesting that Plath used this idea of "solid spaces". I can visually just imagine solid shapes when I read this line. I decided to attempt to bring this idea to the motion comic by surrounding 'Nick' with unknown rounded forms that seem to mimic his embryo shape.

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Storyboarding - Rough sketches

Fig 1.1 Rough sketches - storyboarding

After getting a rough idea of how I want my motion comic to look like, I started to take my ideas into Illustrator. I decided to do a different style of animation compared to my animated comic for the previous project.  Previously, I did an illustration style that heavily relied on the element of lines. For this project, I wanted to use a style that relies more on shapes. 

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Progress - Illustrating panels for webcomic on Illustrator

Just like from our earlier exercise on Vormator, I mainly created my illustrations by using the pen tool and the shape builder tool. 

Fig 1.2 Progress - Screenshot of panels done in Illustrator

Fig 1.3 Panel 1

Fig 1.4 Panel 2

Fig 1.5 Panel 3

Fig 1.6 Panel 4

Fig 1.7 Panel 5

Fig 1.8 Panel 6

Fig 1.9 Panel 7

Fig 1.9 Panel 8

Fig 1.9 Panel 9

Fig 1.9 Panel 10

Fig 1.9 Panel 11

Fig 1.9 Panel 12

Fig 2.0 Panel 13

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Transitioning from Illustrator to Madefire

Before using Madefire, I made sure to prepare my layers into transparent png files in order for the parallax to work. 

Fig 2.1 Progress - PNG files separated into folders in the order of each panel

Fig 2.2 Progress - Transitioning from Illustrator to Madefire

Fig 2.3 Screenshot of the first page of my web motion comic on Madefire

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Final outcome

Link to my motion comic:
http://content.madefire.com/s-90562f12584d48058cd5cceafb70ad62/index.html#

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