As the final project for the pathway stage, we looked at sequential imagery by making one thing follow from the other. I chose to create a storyboard around the theme of love as it was around Valentine's Day and seemed appropriate.
Following a workshop by Kerry and Edie, I looked at creating characters formed from random scribbles.
I used different types of media for this activity such as: felt pen, watercolour paint and fine liner. I particularly liked the bird characters and thought these would be a cute addition to a storyboard with people.
In particular, the idea of a penguin appealed to me. I experimented how this could look; with and without facial features. I decided to go without because this made them seem more secretive and vulnerable.
Stephen Cartwright:
As a child I loved reading Usborne books. I thought the illustrations were lovely and I was always excited to fine the hidden duck on every page. I liked this idea. This is why I wanted to include the Penguins in my storyboard.
I began drafting little ideas for a love storyboard.
I also began making some character designs of the male and female that would be the main characters in my sequential imagery. To do this I used pencil and fine liner. I found that fine liner created much more finer and intricate lines.
I then began drawing the two characters quite often to get used to the style I had created and to see how they worked as a couple. I think this was successful and I was pleased with how they were working together.
Whilst creating my characters, Suzanne Woolcot was a big inspiration. Her illustrations interest me because her characters have minimal facial features. This made me decide that I didn't want to make my characters too complicated. Simplicity is sometimes better. In particular, I included the oval shaped eyes and the rosy cheeks.
In addition to the character design, I also practiced drawing type so that my drawings could have captions in some places. I think these work well and the fineliner enabled me to draw precisely.
Now it was time to draw the different storyboards. I chose to create different style frames to make it a bit different. I used fineliner to draw the different scenes as I felt that this was more appropriate. I also experimented with different backgrounds using watercolour, pastel and crayon.
However in the end I decided to either look at doing this on photoshop later on or with pro marker. I really liked the effect of the oil pastel but this wasn't practical because it was really hard to keep into the lines as it is thick and smudges a lot.
I made more type drawings to make it look like text messaging on a phone to place at the beginning of the storyboard.
I then scanned all of my drawings in individually on photoshop and using the crop, magnetic lasso, fill, shape, type,
contrast and move tools, I merged all of the different scenes together as one. His is the digital version which doesn't have any background colours so it is very plain. I felt it was too white, so when I printed a copy i coloured parts of the background in a light pink pro marker pen.
This is my completed storyboard. I think the pink works well as a background colour. Overall, I think this project went well and I am pleased with my outcome. I think the images follow on from each other well, the negative space on each scene works just right and the characters look good as a set. I also like the two penguins working in the backgrounds of the storyboard as they add an extra, cute, humorous effect. If I was to improve what I have done for this project, I would have liked to experiment with more colours, possibly a different theme and have done more artist research where appropriate (storyboards).
