TASK 3: Reflection/Analysis

Narrative structure: 

The narrative structure of my Manga is very non-realist meaning it doesn't heavily emphasis reality as well as the narrative is also an open narrative meaning that this narrative does not have an definite ending. The reason why to I chose such narrative style is because I want the target audience to concentrate upon the humor and visual aspect of the manga rather than the narrative it self. One major utilization of a narrative component was the opening component where the male character is firstly introduced via reaching out his hand, this then reflected in to a component of conflict as the male character turned into a stone due to the touch to the female protagonist after which an enigma component is achieved as the girl unfreezes the boy and apologises but the boy calls her a "weirdo" due to her supernatural powers making the girl mad, enigma is achieved due to all of a sudden event taking place as the boy freezes to a stone expectantly.  

TASK 2: Final Completed Manga

Production Context:

The graphic narrative shown above is a Manga graphic narrative, The reason why I chose to create a manga was because I was intrigued to how anime was created, after researching I found out most anime's were made due to the source material being a manga, this inspired me to create my own manga in order to see how narratives look like in a manga format.

Health and safety:   

Creating manga requires a confined and restrained environment hence health and safety is not a major issue, However one must always prepare for the most unlikely worst case scenario no matter how impossible it may sound.   

Hazard: Pencil

How it can be potentially harmful: Can poke into someone.

Prevention method: Always keep on desk on visible surfaces.

Hazard: Pen

How it can be potentially harmful: Can leak or poke someone.

Prevention method: Always ensure a cap is put on after use and Always keep on desk on visible surfaces.

Hazard: Electronic devices such as PC.

How it can be potentially harmful: May catch fire if over heated due to intense uses. 

Prevention method: Always keep an fire extinguisher And know your fire exits.

Hazard: Fire

Prevention method: Always keep an fire extinguisher And know your fire exits.

TASK 1: Narrative storyboard Plan

I will utilise the conventional Black and White colour scheme for my manga page as well as I will also use the conventional manga splitting layout where the narrative's is divided into boxes or any other suitable shape in order to mark different stages of the story.

Firstly I had created the character design in order to familiarise myself with how the characters will look like and their anatomy.

After being confident with the story line as well as the character design I started to sketch the manga in order to digitalise it once I was done with it. These were the sketches of my manga pages, in the digitisation process I will colour correct these images, make them bolder, enhance the borders as well as add some text in order to pursue the narrative.

MANGA STORYBOARD SKETCH

CHARACTER DESIGNS

CHARACTER DESIGN INSPIRATION

The image on the left is the character Levi from attack on titan anime/manga series, as you can see that the style of the eyes of my male protagonist was heavily inspired by this characters look with the small pupils within the eye signifying a serious look.  







The image on the right is of Maka from the Soul Eater anime/manga series. The female protagonist in my manga series follows this similar facial structure with both wide eyes and small nose, this gives the impression of innocence due to the use of big pupils and a big glare on the pupils.







Considerations:

Target audience:
I have considered my target audience to be from the age of 13 and above from any ethnic backgrounds, my manga will not have any explicit content nor have any sensitive topics regards to any beliefs, it will simply be a light comedy manga series. The genre of this manga series will be comedy as reflected by the story-line.

Codes of practice, or legal considerations such as any potential copyright infringement:

My manga is an original idea by myself hence there would not be any facing of legal issues as no one can claim this content to be theirs.

Type of Graphic Narrative:

I will be creating a manga type of graphic narrative.


Narrative ideas:

Idea 1:

My narrative story will begin from a character waking up into a fantasy world.

Looks up at the sky

Confused to where he is he discovers a person walking down a path.

He shouts to grab the persons attention.

The person did not here him.

He gradually catches unto the person.

The person turns around.

Idea 2:

The manga starts off of a boy approaching a girl to hand her something back as she dropped something, the girl springs with surprise as he approaches her, little does the boy know the girl has the ability to turn anything she touches and sees into stone hence the boy was frozen into a stone. The girl unfreezes the boy from the stone state expecting him to be impressed, however the boy was very shocked and ended up calling her a "weirdo" making the girl feel very unhappy.

TASK 1: Case studies

Osamu Tezuka:

Osamu tepuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, animator, film producer, medical doctor and activist. Due to his revolutionary work he earned the title as "the father of manga", "the godfather of manga" and "the god of manga". Furthermore he is also considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney to whom he looked up to as his inspiration  His most notable works were Astro Boy, Kimba the white lion, phoenix and Black Jack.

Tezuka triggered a revolution for animators and this was known as the "Manga revolution" with his "New Treasure Island" 1947 publication. 

In 1960 Tezuka entered the animation industry in japan by founding the animation production company " Mushi Productions" which helped him to broadcast his "Astro Boy" in animation form derived from the manga in 1963. This was a huge innovative model for animators as this was the first successful animation production. Infant it was such a success that this animated series was the first Japanese animation to be dubbed for American audiences. Another Tezuka animation called Jungle Emperor Leo reached astonishing a milestone by being the first japanese animated series produced in full colour.

In the 1970's Mushi Productions collapsed due to financial difficulties, the fall of this studio produced other influential studios including Sunrise Studios. Tezuka later found Tezuka productions and continued to pursue hi career.

Tezuka died of stomach cancer in 1989 which had an immediate impact on the japanese public. In respect of Tezuka's revolutionary work a museum was created in his memory. Due to Tezuka's death the final chapters of Phoenix were never released. 


Manga:

Manga are essentially comics created in Japan, the style of manga was developed in Japan in the late 19th century which links in to a long and complex pre - history of Japanese art. Manga outside Japan is referred as Japanese comics whereas in japan it means both manga and cartooning. Manga is read by all ages and consists of nearly all genre imaginable for example action-adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, historical drama, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, sexuality, sports and games, and suspense, among others.

Manga conventailly has a black and white colour scheme however some manga's in colour do exist. Manga also have traditional reading direction's like shown above.

Unit 55: Graphic Narrative Production

What is a graphic narrative? 

A graphic narrative is when a narrative is shown through graphics. Graphics can vary from hand drawings to photos depending on what its being used for for example for manga hand drawings are utilised whereas for film production story boarding narratives can be shown via pictures taken from a camera.

Research and explain the differences between the following graphic narrative styles:

Manga:

Manga is a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as well as children (source google) . Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white, although some full-color manga exist.

Graphic Novels:

A graphic novel is a a novel in comic-strip format (source google).

Comic books / strips: 

Comic books are a periodical containing comic strips, intended chiefly for children (source google).

Photo-story:

A photo story is a strip cartoon with photographs in place of drawings (source google).

Children’s books:

Children book is a book containing a lot of drawn cartoons with text to read for children.

Task5: My Animation Evaluation

Evaluation

After animating I have to state that I have successfully achieved what I intended to achieve which was a stop motion animation drawing of an an anime character (Goku from Dragon Ball) . You can clearly see the effort and layers that are being utilised to create life in this drawing. The whole drawing process took about 2 hours however in the stop motion the whole process was condensed to merely a minute.

Before animating my stop motion I had carefully practiced some drawings as demonstrated in my previous posts. As well as I had strong inspiration from this stop motion drawing youtube video:



I planned my stop motion video very well as well as I was well prepared to start my stop animation, however when I started my stop motion animation there were few dilemmas, one was the camera placing to capture me drawing as well as the lighting. To solve these two dilemmas I firstly placed the camera on top of a box and I drew under the box in my art book so the camera was able to capture the whole drawing, whilst drawing under the box the lighting was too dark, so in order to get a well lit image I utilised a lamp for the lighting, with these two solutions I was ready to animate and my results were impressive in my opinion. At the end of my stop motion animation you see a glimpse of my digital version of the final stop motion image. I digitalised this via using photoshop to colour and shade the image. I practiced digital drawing I'm my previous posts on photoshop so digital drawing this was not difficult and felt more easy to do due to practice.

There are many improvements that I could make such as use better lighting perhaps a soft light on the paper as well as I could have also used better stationary for example using a greater variety of graphite pencils for darkening the the edges, outlining and for shadow, this will further enhance the viewers viewing experience as there will be variety in terms of shading and texture on paper.

Audience Evaluation Feedback

Audience research 1 (feedback from my class):
After the audience feedback I have had a overall positive response as the drawing it self was impressive as well as the stop motion drawing was not very conventional hence it was very original as mentioned in the audience feedback. The major improvement that I was suggested was adding a sound track, I didn't include a sound track so in my animation the auditory element was missing as I was to concentrated on the visuals.

Audience research 2 (feedback from Youtube Audience:

I have had 2 positive comments on the platform of YouTube referring to my work. I have had one comment by the user Marco Freecss highlighting the similar issue of adding a soundtrack like the feedback from my Audience research 1 (feedback from my class), I will certainly be very aware of the sound aspect in my animation work for the future in order to prevent such mistake from happening again.

Task 4: Stop Motion Video

Task 3

These are some of the few practice runs I have achieved via digitally via drawing on the computer. I have drawn some scenery as I plan to do, I have utilised a one point perspective technique to create the sceneries shown below. I have used the software Photoshop to create the scenery.

Example of what I similarly plan to do:




As you can see from the video above the artist used stop motion animating to demonstrate the drawing coming to life, at the beginning we don't know what he is drawing however as the stop motion continues we as a audience begin the unravel the drawing coming to life and this is similarly what I will attempt to do.

Storyboard:

My animation does not include a narrative However I do intend to show my animation in a chronological manner where I start with a Blank page, I built up on my drawing frame by frame and conclude my animation with a full digitally coloured drawing, due to this chronological structure the animation has a mild sense of a story line.

Modeling: 

My subject of this animation will be Kid Goku from the anime series dragon ball, I would be drawing illustrating him in the format of stop animation and will attempt to bring his image to life.

Apparatus:

 I will be utilising my Samsung galaxy S7 Edge at 1920 x 1080 resolution/frame rate in order to capture my stop motion, The phone will be set up on a card board box acting as the stand while I am capturing the stop motion.

Attempt 1:

Firstly I started off with a blank 1920p x 1080p canvas as this will be the stop motion videos resolution size.

 





I then draw the horizon line (horizontal straight line) to create the 1-point perspective outline.








Next I Build up upon the outline, I placed the sun and the sky on top of the horizon line, under the horizon line is the land and the eroded road.







I then place the grace on the sides of the roads using the 1 point perspective lines as the guide for where the grass would be placed.






Finally I place the trees as a mock up design to view how a 1 point perspective view forest would look like. The black box in the middle of the horizon line is there to highlight that an potential object can be placed there like a building, car and so on.




This his my mockup/practice design first attempt.


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Attempt 2:

In my second attempt i use the same principle where I draw the horizon line to make the 1 point perspective view.



























I then draw the backdrops gradient where the sky would be bright yellow with the clouds and the anything under the horizon line would be dark brown as it is the ground.








Next I use the 1-point perspective guide to colour the road in and place grass on the sides of the road.




Just as an experiment I made new guide lines from the horizon line to draw a building and see how it would look like in the image. It was very well done in my opinion and I could have made it look even better if I wanted to , however I disliked the use of a building in this scenery as it spoils the authentic look of the scenery.







                                   --------------------------------------------------------------


These are the two results I came up with making this scenery, I colour graded the images with a tint of yellow with a faded mild vignette of yellow around the edges. The only difference between the two resulted images is the sky where in one I used more clouds and in the other faded some of the clouds via the sun.



w/clouds






w/fadingsun