Posts Tagged ‘ comics ’

Bubbles and trains

train comics

Encapsulate our words in baloons above our head.

Adaptaion

apesketches

This week in Comics, we adapted T.C. Boyle’s short story, “The Ape in Retirement” into 6 panels of comic book form. It was a challenge in figuring out what to keep and what to take away and my process has resulted in this.

While on the train, I sketched out scenes that were important and significant in moving the story forward. Even the it was told through the eyes of the female protagonist, Beatrice. The actions all belong to Konrad the ape.

apesketches

This is the final sketch in panels. I chose to focus on the face of Konrad for his ability to express emotions similar to humans. Though my sketches are crude, I was making an attempt to show how Konrad was reacting to the events around him. Given more time I would narrated it through Beatrice’s words but Konrad’s actions.

Moments in panels

This week’s homework examines on the different ways we can combine words and images.
comicspanel1interdependent
Interdependent

comicspanel1wordspecific

Word Specific

comicspanel1parallel

Parallel

comicspanel1picturespecific

Picture specific

Personally, I preferred the picture specific method in this particular story of me crashing my bike. I think the the ability to convey the story using images conveys more emotion. I leave it to the imagination of the reader on how painful the crash was or the feeling of your life flashing right before your eyes. No words can properly explain that.

The self image

This is the second time in my entire academic life that I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a comic book class. The first one was taught by Professor Emil Flores from the Department of English and Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines which was mostly a writing class and that was almost twenty years ago (gasp!).

I’m not a natural born artist like other people. But through time and peserverance I could actually draw or paint some stuff but nothing that would get me published anytime soon.

I based my self portrait on my Mii profile. The Nintendo Wii and 3DS have built in programs that would allow the user to create a 3D avatar of yourself and (if supported by some games) be included in the action. Microsoft and Sony also released a similar avatar creator for the Xbox and PS3 but sadly it isn’t cute.

The Mii creator actually simplifies the process by letting you select from pre-exisiting templates and start from there. Some people have easy faces to draw on but somehow, my face has proven to be difficult. Difficult in a way that there’s no given set of images that suit me.

After a while I’ve finally settled down on a particular image for myself.

Comics

The image on the left is the avatar I created using the 3DS and the one on the right is the image created on the Wii. My sister argues that neither look like me. From here I started sketching myself.

Comics

I’m really out of practice at this stage.

comics

I noticed that my glasses the shape of my face and my hair are the most noticeable features of my face. My eyes aren’t that significant unless I take off my glasses, but that would be something else. It’s hard to draw myself when I can’t see without my glasses. But it’s a start.