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
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.
