Graphic Novel- Decisions

Storyline

For my novel I have decided to use 2 characters one with the power of water and the other with the power of electricity. I chose this combination to depict away from the traditional combinations of fire and water etc... 

The character with the power of the water ball will be the villain as he/she wants to take over the world by flooding all electrical systems and cause a global power cut. As he/she is growing a water ball to then throw into electrical systems the character which the electrical powers sees her. The villain is then confronted and both characters come across one another to fight which is where the other character discovers he/she has the power of an electricity ball. At this point the character with the electricity ball power realises how they both won't benefit from this fight as water and electricity will cause an electrical shock. 

Location

Originally my images were meant to be taken by Townhill so that I could capture some of the scenery like the city and sea area. Due to the bad weather I had to resort to taking them indoors and adjusting my scripting to go along with it. This came to my advantage when it came down to the storyline as electrical systems can't be flooded outdoors as they are specially designed for bad weather etc... 

Images

I have displayed details of my images below:

Image 1:

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 2:

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 3

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 4

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 5

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 6

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

Image 7

Aperture: f/20

Shutter Speed: 1/3s

White Balance: As Shot

ISO: 1600

I chose f/20 for aperture of my images as any other number higher or lower than that was too light or dark for my images. These are one of the challenging factors I found when shooting with artificial lighting. I chose a slow shutter speed as I only wanted to capture still images although I then found that this shutter speed was too slow and caused some of my images to come out blurred. 

Photoshop

In photoshop I adjusted some of the features of the images when I opened it in raw format such as the temperature, tint and white balance. All the images have been adjusted the same, below I have displayed the changes that I made in raw format:

Temperature: 3850

Tint: +26

Recovery: 42

Image Sharpen

For each of the images I sharpened them in photoshop to enhance the detail and make it look more graphical instead of realistic.

Selected the background layer

Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen- 30.6pixels

Crop

Many of the images had extra space so I selected the crop tool and removed all the unwanted extra space from them.

Power Effects

In the images I created some effects which were the characters superpowers below I have written all the steps I did to create those effects.

Water-ball

Created a new layer

Set the foreground and background to black and white

Selected the elliptical marquee tool and drew a circle

Selected Filter, Render and clouds

Filter, Blur and gaussian blur- 5.3 pixels

Filter, Blur, Motion Blur- Angle: 90º, Distance: 85º

Filter, Artistic, Plastic Wrap-  Highlight Strength:15, Detail: 9, Movement: 10

Layers- Hard Light

Water-Ripple

Created a new layer

Set the foreground and background to black and white

Selected the Elliptical Marquee tool and drew a circle

Filter, Blur, Radial Blur- Amount: 35  Blur Method: spin  Quality: good

Filter, Sketch, Bas Relief- Detail:3, Smoothness: 15, Light: Bottom

Filter, Sketch, Chrome- Detail: 5, Smoothness: 10

Filter, Blur, Radial Blur- Amount: 2  Blur Method: spin  Quality: good

Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur- Radius: 2.0 pixels

Image, Adjustments, Hue and saturation- Hue:210, Saturation: 20, Light:0

Layers- Hard Light

Opacity- 60%

The water-ball layer is placed underneath the water ripple layer, both effects are combined together and you can see the water-ball effect as I lowered the opacity of the water ripple layer. 

Electricity

Selected the Gradient Tool and drew a line across the circle whilst pressing the shift key

Render, Difference Clouds

Image, Adjustments, Invert

Image, Adjustments, Levels

Image, Adjustments, Hue and Saturation- Hue:52, Saturation: 20, Lighting: 0

Layers- Colour Dodge

Duplicated the layers 4 times, rotated and resized them

Once I placed all the images together in one document I created thought bubbles to show what the characters were thinking and to give it a more graphic novel effect. 

Thought Bubbles

Created a new layer

Set the foreground and background to black and white

Selected the ellipse tool and drew a circle

Blending options- Drop in shadow

Text

Created a new layer

Selected the text tool

Font-Style: Myriad Pro: Sharp

Font-Size: 33pt

Font-Alignment: centre

Bang

Created a new document

Selected Custom Shape tool- Selected a star

Choose Fill Colour- #F6A10D

Font Style- Cracked

Font-Size- 100pt

Font-Alignment: centre

On each of the images I took there was graffiti on the wall behind the characters, to hide it I used the brush tool. The steps I took are displayed below:

Paint Brush Tool

Created a new layer

Selected the Eyedropper Tool on the background layer, clicked on the background colour 

Selected the Paint Brush tool- Soft Brush, Size: 13pixels

Script and Images

Image 1:

(character realises he/she has superpowers as they are holding a water-ball which will be used to flood.)

Image 2:

Villain: "muahahahahaha Im going to flood all electricity!!!!"

(character thinks of an evil scheme as the water-ball is increasing in size.)

Image 3:

Hero: "Gasp!!"

(other character spots the villain wanting to flood electricity, they try to stop the flood)

Hero: "Get away from there!!!"

Image 4:

Villain: "Gasp"

(Villain is surprised at being caught)

Image 5:

Villain: "You'll Never stop me!!!"

Hero: "Gasp"

(Hero realises his/her power and is ready to fight the villain.)

Image 6:

Hero: "We'll see about that!!"

(hero realises that their powers aren't a good combination as water and electricity will cause both of them to get electrocuted. 

Image 7:

(Explosion)

I chose to use similar images for my novel as looking back at the research I did it is common in novels to have repeated images. These images tend to be cut into different sizes etc... I added thought bubbles to the images to add irony to the characters especially because they aren't very smart.

I mainly used photos because the novel is based on those two characters although I combined some landscape images to add variety as many graphic novels have portrait and landscape images put together. I used thought bubbles in the images to show what the characters were thinking so that not only would you hear what they had to say but also see what they were thinking.

Sound

The characters in the novel are played by girls although I decided to have male voices in my sound. I chose to do this as my characters were already pathetic therefore the combination of male voices with female characters makes the novel even harder to take seriously. I adjusted the sound files in sound booth, below I have displayed what I did to each sound file.

muahahaha.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 100%, Pitch shift: 13.7

i'mgoingtofloodalltheelectrics.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 109.4%, Pitch shift: -6.3

Get Away From There.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 97%, Pitch shift: -6.8

you'llneverstopme.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 88.2%, Pitch shift: 4.4

electricity.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 100%, Pitch shift: 11.7

we'llseeaboutthat.wav

Selected Pitch and Timing- Time Stretch: 100%, Pitch shift: 10.9

I chose a very deep pitch for the voice of the villain as it is common in cartoon, comics etc for villains to have a deep voice. I also did this to shock viewers as no one would have expected male voices in the sound as my characters were both female. To contrast from the villains deep voice I chose to have a higher pitch for the hero's voice, this way viewers can distinguish which character is speaking at that time. The high pitched voice also adds humour to the novel as viewers will not take the hero seriously.

Evaluation

My images could have been improved further if I would have taken them outdoors and not indoors because of this I was restricted with the amount of space I had to take them. I also had to adjust the SLR camera to the lighting of the room, working with an artificial light was challenging. I had to adjust several features in photoshop in order to make the image less yellow, I did this when I opened up the images in raw format and altered the temperature, tint etc...When shooting my images I should have adjusted the shutter speed to be quicker as 1/3s is too slow which resulted in some of my images being blurry.

In photoshop I could have edited the images further y adding a background, or even some electrical appliances to go with the storyline. I could have also adjusted the colour of the images and made them brighter which would have given them a more comic book effect.

 In terms of the sound it could have been improved. The editing I did to the voices weren't accurate so all the voice files were different from one another, this will result to viewers being confused on who is talking at that time especially if they don not have the image in-front of them. I could have also added extra sound in the background. The explosion effect I extracted of the internet couldn't be used as  premiere would not read it therefore my end product didn't finish how it was meant to.  

Overall my end product could have been a lot better if I would have managed my time properly for each assignment. There are many improvements to be made which I will tackle from now on in order for my next assignment to be better. 

Graphic Novel- Planning

Planning

Before deciding on the storyline, location, characters etc I made some spider diagrams with ideas in order to make my decisions easier. 

Digital Graphic Novel- Research

For my Audio Visual assignment I am required to create a graphic novel about superheroes or super-villains using the skills I have learnt in Photoshop, Premiere, sound recording and SLR cameras. The novel has to be an extract from a story which I need to come up with that describes what is occurring using images and sound. I also need to look at effective ways of setting out the layout etc...

What is a graphic novel

A graphic novel is a story book mainly made up of pictures (usually cartoons) although there is some text which will be presented in speech bubbles (dialogue) or text boxes (narration). These novels are long and normally complete a story from start to finish unlike comic books. Graphic novels are suited for all age groups although some are not suitable for children i.e. Frank Miller writes graphic novels full of violence and sexual behaviour. Many graphic novels are inspired from Manga (known as Anime created during World War II), this graphic novel relates to many cartoons, comics etc. 

Anime

Anime is an abbreviated word for animation, this word is used to refer to Japanese animations because of the art work being distinctive to others from across the world (i.e. different features and themes). Over the years Anime has become popular across the globe and is now translated into different languages and used as inspiration for western productions (i.e. film Avatar was originally inspired by Anime characters).

Example Layouts of Graphic Novels

Now that I looked at what graphic novels are I researched on layout techniques etc...Below I have displayed some examples of layouts of comic novels which will give me ideas on how to set out my own work. 

This image has been extracted from: http://www.artbabe.com/exercises/images/exercise/superhero.gif

As you can see in the image above each cell is a different size which therefore makes the layout more interesting to look at. Some of the cells have been cut multiple times with close ups which highlights certain areas more than others. The speech bubbles are coloured differently for each character therefore the reader can identify who is saying what without having to look at where the speech bubble is pointing to. Not all the cells are contained in a box or rectangles shape, the one on the lefthand side comes out further than the rest of the images therefore that particular cell is not aligned with the rest and makes it stand out. 

This image has been extracted from: 

http://www.comicbookbin.com/artman2/uploads/4/Captain_Easy_first_Sunday_1933.jpg

In this comic novel theres a lot of text (dialogue and narration) describing the scenario. Even though there is quite a bit of text the font size is small therefore it doesn't distract the reader from the actual images. The layout of this comic novel is similar to the one above as the images are also set out in rectangles and squares with none of them being aligned with each other. The text boxes overlap more than one image just like in the comic novel above this gives me an idea of how most comic novels are set out. 

This image has been extracted from: 

http://evanstonpubliclibrary.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/macbeth1.jpg

In this comic strip the layout is set different to the others as there are only 3 sections to the story. Instead of being in squares or rectangles the story has been set up in different shapes which are slanted and uneven. The text in this comic novel is similar to the one above as there is quite a bit of text but the font size is small. This novel is similar to the first one as there are close ups of the characters faces which emphasises their expressions on what is occurring in the novel.  

The image below has been extracted from:

http://www.airworksart.com/ILLUSTRATIONDISC08.JPG

In this comic novel the images are quite dark and have the same colour scheme. The layout is aligned even though each image isn't the same size or shape. There are also close ups just as some of the others which I have looked at, this technique is quite effective and seems to be common in comic novels. 


Now that I have looked at different layouts of comic strips I need to decide on the story line, characters, location etc...

Sound

For my novel I will be creating sound effects to match the storyline therefore if someone where to just listen to the track they would know exactly whats going on without the need to see the images. 

Sound Room

To record my sound I will be using the sound room, this is to allow me to control and avoid unwanted ambient noises. The program I will use in the sound room to record these sounds is Audacity, this program also allows me to edit the sound effects. All sound files will be exported as WAV files in order to work properly in Premiere.

Portable Sound Recorder

To record sound I am also able to use a portable sound recorder this is a good tool to record ambient noises or sounds in different locations. 

Images

SLR Camera

To capture the images for my novel I shall be using an SLR camera I displayed a diagram below to recap on where the different options for the camera are displayed. When taking my images I will make sure that I have adjusted the shutter speed, aperture etc... All images will be taken in raw format in order to then edit in photoshop.

Below is an image extracted from:

http://media.wiley.com/Lux/71/286671.image0.jpg

Software

Photoshop 

In photoshop I will open up the images that I have taken using the SLR cameras and open them up in raw format. This is where i'll adjust the tones, temperature etc of the images before adding any effects to them. 

Premiere

In Premiere I will put all my images and sound together in order to create my novel.

Sound-booth

In Sound-booth I wil edit the sound files in terms of volume, pitch etc... This program is where I will add all the extra effects to my sound recordings. 

Now that I have researched on graphic novels and the equipment (hardware/software) that I shall be using to create my project I will start planning the storyline, location etc...