Illustration and Visual Narrative - Final Project: Animated 1 Page visual novel

26/6/2023-16/7/2023 Week 13- Week 15
Ng Jia Ern 0363033
Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Final Project: Animated 1 Page visual novel

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CONTENT

Assignment processes

Final reflection

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ASSIGNMENT PROCESSES

Instruction:

I decided to work with the first plot of my triptych:

Reference:

I look for others The Tell-Tale Heart comic on Google.

Sketch:

I've divided this page of the comic into three main frames, and in the last frame, I've added small frames to draw close-up details, because the third frame is a long shot, I wish the details of the old man's eyes and narrator expression can be brought out.

I start drawing in Photoshop, which I find is more efficient for me instead of using Adobe Illustrator. Because I found that in Ai, using pencil tool hard to adjust the width of the strokes, or using pen tool takes a long time. So I chose to draw with Ps and trace images in Ai.

First Attempt:

I like to go with black and white style and use some colours to highlight the important elements. For this first attempt, I found that the light is too strong if using hard light blending mode, so I changed it to multiply. Moreover, I also felt that it had less texture, so I found some comic texture on Pinterest and apply it to my comic page.

Final Digitalize comic:

plan how to animate this comic page

First, I recorded myself saying "Who's there" sentence to help me animate the old man's mouth. 

draw out the mouth shapes on different layers, and use a photoshop timeframe window to create a frame animation.

then export it into gif file using media encoder

then import it to Adobe After Effects and align it with the old man's body

for door open animation, I create a rectangle mask and add keyframe for it to move right to left to achieve the door open effect

I separate the old man's pupil into different layers and add wiggle-position effect from AE's self-contained effects & presets

then I also add a paper texture to the final artwork

Final animated comic page:

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FINAL REFLECTION

I am really excited about doing this project because it is my first time drawing comic page. I am quite unwilling to draw people because I am not good at it. But I know I need to overcome it in future too, so I challenge it this time. I find lots of references to help me out with body proportions and facial expressions. Though out this project, I found many useful websites and applications such as anatomy360, bodies in motion, posemaniacs, line in action, magic poser app.