Illustration brief Blog

The sequence anew and mini evaluation.

2008-05-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

So here are the redone images, all 6 of them pencil rendered for storyboard or development use.

I was unsure of them at first but looking over them now, for their purpose I think they are more then workable. Not too bad for a quick job.

I have to say that I prefer the first image because it shows my attempts to capture light refracting off the tentacles underwater well and although its maybe a bit over shaded for my previously stated 'hatching' efforts, it's a pretty strong image.

3,4 and 6 look a bit wooden to me. I have added more energy in the waves of 3 but the pointing finger on it's own seems very.. relaxed. I think if I had some more time, then adding more people overall and just more.. OOMPH! more action, more twisted and hurried movements in the poses shown to really get across this sense of danger and suspense would be necessary. Or if not more, then just focusing the image on these elements instead.

I would like to see alot more atmosphere in 6 especially because again, although the boat is being torn apart a little more ferociously than previously had been, the character rowing away appears from his stance that he couldn't care less about what was taking part in front of him.

I really need to spend some time talking and studying how to bring emotion into pieces and poses. Also, as I'd mentioned earlier, tips on making a picture just LOOK better, so that someone might want to actually look at them. I know that these images are meant for developmental purpose but still.. like in 4 especially I think, they look really rough and duller as a result.

In number 2, I'd brought the hands down so that they appear to be more natural to the positioning of how your hands might pose in that situation. This had been mentioned in the crit so.. I went ahead and rectified it.

I still wish that I had taken a lighter and much less form of both drawing and drawing style to make a storyboard more along the lines of the one shown below and had I had the time in these last 2 weeks, I would definatly would have made some attempt to get close to it. The vibrance and simplicity of the flat harmonious and mood-giving colours make this little narrative a real work of art in its own rights and I would love to do something like this as soon as I can find a window.

Under water view development sketches.

2008-05-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Yeah, here i'm trying to rectify the problem of people not being able to percieve what the first image in the sequence is by making it more obvious that you are looking from 'inside' the central view of a cephlapod. So, lots of tentacles everywhere whilst trying to work with the composition of the image and figuring out how a tentacle would look if it came from under your eye line and out in front of you.

I also redrew the 'descending' image completely to rework the perspective on it so that I could get the tentacles really popping out of the image but.. its very messy and difficult to tell whats going on. Like I mentioned before though, I'm pushed for time in these two weeks so unfortunatly this is going to have to do so I can move on.

I've added bubbles to the image to spark off the idea of water and movement but they're difficult to percieve in the mess.

More influences and such

2008-05-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here are more examples of image sequencing, storyboarding and general image making that have influenced me through out this brief.

NOTE: NONE of the work in this post is mine, just stuff that made me cry with envy. Most of the work are from Deviant-art.com artists such as Fealsey and Vontoten but unless the image tag itself has the name of the artist in it, then I'm afraid I didn't record who's work it was at the time that I collected it. For that I'm sorry and please contact me if you don't want me to display your work.

What's the purpose?

2008-05-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

I hadn't understood this question since Ollie had asked me earlier. My 'audience' had just been anyone really, the images are meant to be very.. involving.

But in a professional context, it hit me. I may have mentioned this earlier but to clarify, I'm working these images in the strain of developmental work. I had made some attempt at this using photoshop to colour but.. because I confused what time of the day it was in all the images, hadn't used colour and apparantly just arn't that good at photoshop, the images didn't feel right.

After seeing some of Ollie's work on a Reebok ad that he storyboarded, my sense of direction strengthened and I decided to just use pencil to create the 'stills' I was making; as if they'd come from some large storyboard. (Sorry if you didn't want me putting these on here Ollie)

So hashed strokes to indicate colour fills all round then. (Except, I try a couple of other methods as well to varying degrees of sucess).

2 More Weeks?!

2008-05-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

So.. rather than just ending, we were assigned two more weeks to further develop our projects. Hmm.

What I chose to do with my time is to take what I could gather from the final crit we mustered up and apply what some people said about my work to the pieces I had presented.

The biggest parts I took away from that crit were that, my photoshop skills didn't work in my favour to present my images with some people actually liking the image in the escape raft specifically due to it's hand drawn-ness. Also that the colour and non-uniform shape of the 'kraken's eye view' image didn't work. In fact, the image itself was pretty confusing; alot of people had difficulty discerning exactly what was going on so I would need to clear this up a bit.

I know that I'd said that I should've gone down the doodle route in my earlier evaluation, but this extra two weeks is taken up with other projects really so.. I don't have the time to twist it down that direction. So, it's another crack at the storyboard approach.

Evaluation (I know! It's in the middle for some reason!)

2008-05-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

Before the hand in, here are a few more influential images to me during this project coupled with some of my own thoughts on the work that I've made (i.e. regrets).

The work that I've come out with in the end looks really.. adoloscent and underdeveloped. I wish I spent more time honing any sort of 'image finishing skill' or maybe talked to someone with some about how I could help myself because this is a serious reoccuring problem for myself. I think overcomplicating images might have something to do with it but.. It's very frustrating that this keeps happening to me, especially when I'm trying to get some sort of portfolio set up :(

In a professional context, i.e. a development enviroment, the only images I would be even close to thinking about showing someone would be the 'plummeting' picture and and 'in the air' image. Maybe just the plummeting one. I say this because these iamges are the only ones that come clsoe to holding a mood of suspense or horror which I had planned to implant into all of the images.

I really wish that I had just stuck with my doodle-y style of drawing because it's one that is instantly recognizable as mine and I'm very comfortable with it; it comes easier to me. I say this because it's only at this point that I've noticed I need some assistance with a more 'serious' style of image rendering.

Final Images

2008-05-06T04:43:00.001-07:00

Here I'll try to be as concise but self evaluating as I can as I show the process of how each image was created. Again, I feel the need to state that these images are intended for developmental and conceptual purposes, like a storyboard, although my execution of them is sometimes so murky and downright confusing that it can be difficult to see how this is so. I think clarity of the message and its delivery style are definatly something I need to work on.

I chose a square format for most of the images because it gives a uniformity to them and would allow them to 'flow' better if placed next to one another.

The first image is my least favourite (I know, start on a downer why don't you?) because it's just really confusing to look at. The initial sketch was much easier on the eyes in terms of colour but the scan quality, as with the other 2H pencil scans in this project is difficult to interpret again because it's really faint. So, for the future, show clear and well defined sketches so that those that need to know can understand what is going on.

The above red image is what happens if you upload a CMYK image to Blogger.

The image is meant to be showing underwater view of what the Kraken sees as the cruise ship passes over. You can tell its a tentacle although the perspective is off but at least I've taken into account that when viewed from underneth in water, objects on the surface become silohuetted so, we have some kind of foreground/background depth with light going on. Although, the way in which I've layered the different tones and lights is confusing the perspective a bit so, it's difficult to tell in alot of areas exactly how deep or shallow it's supposed to be.

Which you can sort of see in the two finalized versions but, there isn't enough definition and contrast to make this a good image. The cutouts on the colour tones are purposely jagged to give a rough and raw feel to the image as this is from the eyes of some feral monstrosity afterall. However, I don' t think that this manages to come out. The image just looks messy.
This is also the only image to have a bit of colour to it and I did this with the intention of it seperating the image from the other 5. This is also the only picture out of the sequence to be in portrait and not square format and this is for the same reason. Although these factors do seperate the image in this way, it's only because this makes the picture appear to be from some completely unrelated sequence or narrative.

So after dabbling with colour in the first image, I stayed well clear of it in the rest and chose to work exclusively with light and dark tones to bring moods. And I believe I did so much more strongly in this one.

My idea here was to realise this image of a murky and dark comms room aboard the vessel, with the only real light coming from the various illuminous devices on the desks. This was purely in an attempt to secure the horror tone to the image and I guess it does end up having some negative mood to it. How to tell the audience what was going on in the image I solved by having the piece of paper and the walkie talkie in the viewers hands so.. the crew member is making some kind of call about what they've detected.

Another picture I'm not keen on is the third on showing the 'arrival' of the first tentacle, with the viewer's finger pointing out at it in disbelief. Or thats what I had intended as I was scribbling but the strength of that idea didn't really come out. I think that the flat and awkward tones I made use of might have something to do with this as they break up the flow of the image a bit but general misuse of lighting here really doesn't do the picture any favours. Also, what is confusing about this image is it's effect on the rest of the sequence as this picture appears to be 'taken' from daylight or at least some other point when there is some sun light, whereas the rest of the sequence either completely lacks any kind of time telling or is very dark.

Now, I know myself that the entire sequence is meant to be in a sense without a specific time so my logic was that some frames should be during the day or without a definitive time at all in order to try and give a different perspective on how the situation would look in different lights; thus giving more power hopefully to the developer of the concept after me. However without this context, the sequence seems very VERY confused.

I constructed the image using these three layers of sketches and then composed them together, allowing me to manipulate how light played off each of them with greater freedom. I was inspired by this image of a cruise ship when it came to figuring out how the balcony should look.

The fourth image is my favourite because I think it is the closest that I get in all the images to capturing the drama and ferocity that I've been imagining throughout the brief.

I had gone a bit overboard (pun) with the sketching out of this image of an unlucky passenger being held high above the scene in the grasp of the kraken, showing the cruise ship (inspired heavily by this image) also in the grasp of the beast.

Whereas I felt I had already managed to get a decent framework and layout of image going, I thought that the image needed more.. anger and confusion to it. More horror. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be caught up in the air like this and I assumed it would be to say the least, a disorientating and unpleasant experience.
So, using the burn and dodge tools in Photoshop, I went about darkening and emphasizing the slippery texture of the tentacles, the sheer height that the viewer was at and how light would splash over the ocean below from the luminescence of the weary cruise liner.

And then the tentacle lets you drop...

The fifth image is in a similar vein really although with a somewhat more grim over tone that I was unable to properly bring out. I think that I didn't highlight the creature that the viewer is falling in towards enough as it appears you are falling into some undefined grey mass but I think that blurring the 'falling destination' really pulled this image out of the fire. A bit. What this did was clearly define that the viewers hands which are sharp, are not on the same plane of perspective as the mass below, which are blurry. I also quite like how the hands seem to be contorting in a manner of trying to stop the inevitable contact with the maw waiting below; adds a bit of horror tension to the image.
But definatly, the image still feels very flat so, contrast is needed.

The last image of the sequence is another that looked alot better in my head and I really wish had had more time spent on it. I think this because I'd had this great idea of the viewer frantically paddling away as the cruise liner is savagely torn asunder and you vaguely get that here. I mean, it is possible to understand that someone is paddling away from the site, but, they appear to be paddling very calmly and orderly away. The ship image which I seem to naturally focus on as I look at the picture also isn't strong enough. Sure, it is a picture of a boat being torn in half by tentacles. But, I don't FEEL that it is being torn. It looks like the tentacles are just waving at the viewer as they lazily flop all over this ship.
This image needs some passion instilling into it and to have the viewers hands, the ship and the tentacles all redrawn if I want to convey the mood that I had imagined. There needs to be desperation in the awkward and frantic paddling motions of the hands, fury in the tentacles and more obvious and explicit destruction on the ship.

Of course, if all of these images represented a dream sequence that I'd had or something, then it would be more excusable to have these surreal ambiguieties of mood. But, because it's meant to be this flowing horror sequence, it is much harder to forgive these flaws.

Now for an evaluation and a round up I think.

How I'm answering the brief

2008-05-06T03:24:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be difficult to pick this out of the blog even if you fine tooth combed the entire document so, I'm working up to creating 6 images which detail the attack of the Kraken upon a cruise liner. The twist on this concept, to make it interesting for the viewer is to have each of the 6 images as a perspective shot; a person-eye-view of a crew member or a passenger or even the kraken as they witness the different stages of the attack.
I'm not sure at this point but I think a murky look would suit this best. One that is quite dark and heavily blurred to try and highlight the terror and confusion of the situation although maybe 6 different styles of rendering would show clearly that these are 6 different perspectives.

Because I have a very sketchy way of drawing usually, my intention for these images would be for use as concept or developmental artwork for a film or video game or even a much better polished sequence of images. Like the piece above for a recent 'Kirby' game from Nintendo, only I expect my work to be of much lower quality.

Anyway, this idea came to me as I drew from this image by James Jean which deals with the subject of alcoholism by replacing it with a metaphor about a drowning sea creature (that is, a sea creature which drowns people, not itself).

What spurred me on about this image was the terror that I could imagine a tentacle like this emerging from the sea just portside of a vessel. My vision from here was to render all six images with the care and skill that had been poured into this drawing but.. already I could see that this would be a very time consuming task. Because I had abandoned simplicity at this point in the sake of creating an involving image, I had the feeling that like other projects that my conclusion was too complex for the time involved and my inability to compromise and try something simplier would result in hurried messy pieces.
And yet I didn't stop and think about it there. I really wish that at this point, I had looked at Jeans work and considered 'You know, it takes him a couple of weeks to make an image that powerful. I don't have that time but if I consolodated all the images into one, then maybe I'd have a shot'. Fearing the vague 'equivelent of 6 images' phrase from the brief though, I stuck stubbornly to this idea that I had to crack out 6 high quality images rather than one larger piece.

Anyway, here are sketches for the pieces that I would work on to create the final works for this brief:

Kraken's View under the ship.

Navigation crew member's view after detecting something on the sonar.

These two images combined make for the portside view of a passenger who witnesses the emerging of the first tentacle.

The perspective of an unlucky passenger who is snatched away by a tentacle and held aloft.

A passenger who has made a break for it in a life boat witnessing the destruction of the ship with an earlier sketch of the 'caught' image above shown below it. This particular shot was a difficult one to imagine clearly as I couldn't figure out exactly what it would look like to have a tentacle wrapped around oneself. So I just drew myself into the image from the neck down and then used that as a frame.

The intended audience for these works I guess is anyone. I know this is a bit of a copout as it suggests that I havn't really considered who I'm making this for but my true intention for this work was to try and involve people, not exclude them. There are no inside jokes in the images, just.. my interpretation of what you might see if you happened to be on the ship on the wrong day. However I should say that my choice to not have any other people visible in the perspectives of these witnesses other than themselves is quite alienating and isolate. This was a mistake I feel because it cuts the audience off from the familiar surroundings of their peers and gives a kind of nightmarish feel to the sequence as the viewer stumbles about the scene alone and confused.

Now to see the finalised images and descriptions of how they came about.

Drawing on other's examples and general layout stuff.

2008-05-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

In a strict break from the cartoon element, I started to design a more visceral and alien-looking interpretation of the Kraken. I wanted the creature here to look as unnatural as possible so I gave it a hard carapace but with fleshy sacs on each side and a head which split down to allow the mass consumption of.. whatever got in its way.

In this variation, the creature has many more eyes along its top side and only one bulbous sac. Honestly, I'm uncertain as to why I left this design alone. I think that what I was doing just evolved away from this design but I would like to see this creature taken further as if concealed and positined correctly, I feel it could be quite frightening.
I guess it is possible that because the creature is of unrecognizable form, rather than just being a giant cephlapod, that this lack of relation could make it harder to be frightened by it.

The splitting head was inspired by the design on this creature in the Silent Hill video game. (Apologies for the poor picture quality, this is a photograph I found of someones hand made replica of the creature. It is otherwise basically impossible to see online)
I chose to take inspiration from this creature because although you get to see it fully and thus ruin the fear of meeting it that the game works to build up through terrorfying tension, it's appearance is so alien and hostile when the thing lunges, trying to swallow you whole that it's almost as if what the creature actually looks like has managed to trump what your mind could ever concieve.
Still, the concept of visualising an 'unimaginable horror' as Lovecraft put it is a dangerous one because you really have to push the boat out on unexpected creature design. I don't have the ease of having my reader just imagine what the creature looks like by hiding them behind imageryless text like he did though.
Or do I? If I hide most of the creature that I display or just hint at it's existence, I think I will make for a much more human experience. Something that feels more real as the viewer is left to fill in the blanks.

To help me get a better grip on drawing the parts that I would reveal, I took sketches of other works on the Kraken.
This piece by Bob Eggleton caught my eye due to.. well.. the eye of the creature. Eggleton seems to have clicked onto the same stream as myself in that the eye of the creature, although harmless is a powerful tool of dominance and he utilizes the tentacles in the image to draw you into it.

This is the idea I was thinking of; concealing most of the creature so that the viewer deals primarily with only its terrible apendages. So, you can see why I would want to sketch off a little of this Pirates of the Caribbean concept art, though the name of artist eludes me.
What I like about this image I found is that the tentacle completely fills a quarter of the screen and is bursting out of the boundries that the picture provides, hinting at a larger size than actually seen. The artist has also made good use of a murky palette and mist to give a more hostile feel to the piece. If the Kraken attacked during the middle of a sunny day, it would probably LOOK less threatening than if it did when the rest of nature was also against you. I say LOOK specifically, because I know that if I was on a ship on the nicest day weatherwise in recorded history and we were attacked by a Kraken, that I would still have a heart attack very quickly.

And I chose to draw from fellow deviant artist 'Fenster' on his interpretation of the Kraken because he made it look so decrepid, beaten and down right unpleasant to look upon. This sickly beast with it's decomposing head and beady pearl-black eye are another good example of 'If you're going to show a creature, it might as well be the most disgusting mess of a creature that anyones ever seen'.
I've noticed what I've been trying to take away mostly from these drawings isn't the look of the creatures in them so much, but the positions in which they move about. I was trying to capture what as many artists as possible felt was the most natural LOOKING way in which this thing held itself in an image.

This is me just messing around with different looks for the creature and experimenting with how tentacles 'work' and coil and pool. I quite like the big tentacles shown here actually; their positioning makes them look convicing.

On the advice of Ollie, at this point I took a look at the work of Gezfry and their style of image making. By this point I was beginning to get a bit saturated with interpretations of undersea creatures so I just focused on trying to absorb information from their work on composition of images.
I went about this by very roughly sketching out a few of their pieces and then labelling using numbers where my eyes had fallen first, second, third and so on, showing the path around the image that my eyes had taken. I also took care to note if my eyes kept being continually drawn back to the same position due to a highlighted or centre-focused layout.
I apologise for the scan quality as its very faint here and also for the constant underlining in this paragraph. I messed about for a good few minutes trying to find someway to turn it off but Blogger has this annoying habit of believing it knows better than you what you want to appear on the page..

Above you can see how I considered splitting one large image into a triptych to emphasize the sheer scale of the creature I was trying to bring about. I quite liked this idea but I didn't feel that in this state, the concept was answering the brief of modernising a tale. It would be presenting elements of it sure, but not bringing it into this time.

So, with these lessons on composition fresh in my mind, I moved into the endgame stages of the project..

Developing from the board and considering the brief.

2008-05-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

My immediate reaction to the crit of my storyboard was to make this image using a photograph reference. I was heading for realism in my efforts but became bored eventually as usual.

By the way, my pieces keep getting this blue hue to them when I upload them and I can't figure out why. So.. my point about trying to maintain a sense of realism is essentially destroyed by this. Thanks blogger. I guess I can try to keep coloured images out of my posts.

I should have taken this as a sign that maybe I could've developed more cartoony ways of developing this theme like I'd shown in my avatar and doodlings earlier but for some reason I always end up down this shady looking realism attempt that never gets finished and lacks a certain gleam.

Anyway, I drew more and more cephlapod family creatures, to a fairly cartoony style actually, in order to get a stronger grip on how one moves and should be drawn like.

Looking back on it, what isn't important is being as realistic as possible. What is important, is conveying the ilusion of reality in the suggested movement and weight of a subject. So in this sense, a cartoon could 'feel' more real than a very realistic but 'lifeless' drawing of the same subject.
I have achieved neither pinnacle so far with these drawings and I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why I felt like this..

So here we have 3 frames taken from the story board: Before creature, during creature and after creature rises. The sequence is very sudden and shifts moods rapidly from placidity, to shock, to comedy, though you might skip the first frame altogether because it is so short and placed too closely to the second one.

This sequence was ok and could've been helped with a bit of refining like general tidying up and claryfication of what exactly is going on in the third frame but if I'd have been in a comedy frame of mind, this sequence could've been untilized.

After this I experimented a couple more times with the 3 image sequence of just a ship, then a squid then a reaction or nothing, rising and risen. I didn't particularly feel anything for either of these experiments so I began to dabble more with the power of a single image as I had been doing in the larger doodles besides my comic-like plottings.

Something I've always found disturbing about monsters in films, apart from sheer scale, are the eyes. Or both. A huge awkward looking eye is very frightening to me, kind of like the one shown below.

Although here in an otherwise amusing and cartoony situation, the stark stopping power of the eye is more apparant to myself. How could a disney/Jules Verne tribute stamp be so scary? The way in which the squid is positioned with it's horrible whip-like tentacles not only means that it covers roughly 70% of the space on the stamp but that your eyes follow the tentacles constantly back to the body and onto the eye. In a metaphorical sense, you're caught and pulled in like Donald is here and drawn into the terrible hungry core of the image, just by making contact with any of these dangling tendrils.

I immediatly felt with this drawing that I had crushed the whole storyboard I'd previously done (without the love bit) into a single image. This -mid action- freeze frame describes the movement of being submerged to surface-breaking creature, dwarfing a comparitivly tiny cruise liner. I should point out at this point that, the point of the brief is to MODERNIZE a tale of some kind, and I'm doing this by simply placing the situation in our time. Which I would guess if the 'event' occured out at sea and away from cannon toting navy, marine-swarming army or a nuke dropping air force, then the outcome would be very similar to if the Kraken attacked during Tennyson's time.
Maybe showing the use of radar or something would bring us into the modern era.

I'm aware that this might come across as a very 'tacked-on' approach to the modern theme but, I guess what I'm trying to get across is, given the right circumstances, a ship full of people is going to get obliterated regardless of the era if an ill-meaning sea creature deems it so. Which I think is something quite frightening thinking about it because I'm personally very accustomed to hiding behind my technology as a method of protection or source of food or income; my survival. So to think that something could just swell up and essentially absorb me without any of the governing bodies I've come to trust as my guardians being able to stop it... Blood chilling.

What I like about these single images is the pure power they can display. You're forced to convey a fair amount of pace and narrative in this one shot so you end up with some pretty dramatic scenes. I think though that you miss out on alot of the story in this picture because it seems to be dealing with the aftermath of the inciting incident of the arrival of this beast, rather than just before or during it. So, you're left feeling like you just missed something big.

Anyway, I think I need a better look at how other artists have rendered the mighty cephlapod.

Workshop Assignment

2008-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Between the second and third lessons, the class was told to illustrate a fairy tale/myth/legend using a genre of film like action or horror and then to do all that in a media context like a promotional poster or a comic strip.

It took me a little while to get to a suitable legend for myself so I looked at another example of fairy tales in print.

The true story of the three little pigs', illustrated by Lane Smith is a book that I remember really vividly from earlier days. I was specifically drawn towards Smith's use of simple shapes and complex, tactile textures in her work; I remember imagining that I could smell what was going on in the images, that I could taste the characters and their enviroments. The book was very involving and encapsulating as an overall experience.
The storys themselves were subverted fairy tales, written by Scieszka as either completely new tales about princes made of foul smelling cheese or reversing the roles of archetypal tales like 'Three little pigs' by telling the story from the perspective of the wolf and his troubles.
The reversal of roles and the involvement of the reader are two factors that I would take away from this example as being very important.

Anyway, after clearing my thoughts by doodling various characters and shapes....

.. I was reminded by a scribble of an octopus of my anxieties of under water creatures. I used to freeze if I stepped on seaweed and hated being underwater in a pool or the sea incase an unseen entity devoured me whole or drowned me. So, I decided this would be an interesting area to share with anyone stupid enough to pay attention.

From this point I decided that mystery and the unknown murk would be a paramount part of expressing this tale. Mystery as a horror device I learned from Ridley Scott's 'Alien' is very important in the way in which in this first film, you barely see the malevolent force. And yet.. your mind morphs it into the scariest murderous horror imaginable. I'm not expecting anywhere near this result but it will do me well to take heed of this path.

Researching the theme of underwater mystery brought me to the legends of 'Slow Down' and 'Bloop', two seperate incidents of ultra-low frequency sound detected by the USNOAA (United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) at two points in 1997 and 1999.
To quote Wiki on these mysterious incidents influences on popular culture:

'Because the Bloop noise originated near the location of the fictional sunken city of R'lyeh from H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu", the Bloop has been linked to Cthulhu by Lovecraft fans.^[2] In the alternate reality game promoting the movie, the Bloop was also linked to the monster from Cloverfield.^{[3]

Proving to be excellent source material, I developed further with research into the phenomena of 'Globsters'. They're not particularly pleasant to gaze upon and they're infinetly horrific in their amorphous forms.}A globster, or blob, is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water. It is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, and by creating controversy as to its identity. Globsters may present such a puzzling appearance that their nature remains controversial even after being officially identified by scientists. Some globsters lack bones or other recognisable structures, while others may have bones, tentacles, flippers, eyes or other features that can help narrow down the possible species. In the past these were often described as sea monsters, and myths and legends about such monsters may often have started with the appearance of a globster

The last picture in particular is disturbing because it is believed to be the only possible evidence of a Lusca, a behemothic octopus estimated to be around 200ft in total length. That something this huge may or may not exist under the unexplored depths is something that terrorfied me in my youth and still kind of does. This mystery of the unknown depths was something I would definatly try to use.

So because I have a sketchy style of working and tend to think in storyboards more or less, I decided to make a horror based storyboard. I wasn't into the idea of writing my own legend but felt I needed something with more substance than the vague 'bloop' or blobsters so I discovered 'The Kraken' by Tennyson.

In this (sort of) sonnet, Tennyson describes a terrible beast which arises from the depths of the ocean to destroy the world of man.

Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides; above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber'd and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Because I was just starting to play with this whole underwater creature concept, I took the safe option with this assignment and decided to just try and storyboard Tennyson's sonnet as close to the letter as I saw feasable.

Here is the evidence of me planning out the storyboard:

Not all of the 13 Lines are accounted for with seperate frames but thats because I felt that some lines could occur within one other, such as fish and sponges in the same frame or particularly lengthy desrciptions on the detail of the Kraken's body.

To play around by subverting the expected outcomes assumed by the reader, I set the ending tone to this originally tension filled scene to one of love and humour.
Apart from the low quality of the drawings and rendering, I don't think that this board really works. Some criticisms I've recieved focus on the overall length of the boards; suggesting I should try to take out as many frames as possible whilst retaining the overall message of the piece. Others pointed out that the ending seemed a bit pointless; Ok, so he's in love and I wasn't expecting it but, the twist didn't have enough impact.
It's for those reasons that in the development of this story, I try to cut out the 'subversive' stuff until I learn how to present basic themes and I think about presenting the narrative in short blasts. I theorize that in this way, I maintain interest with short and to the point bursts of action.

Next I'll show experimenting with sequences influenced by this board.

Second Lesson

2008-04-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

In the second lesson, we finished watching 'The company of wolves', we talked about the componments of a narrative and then illustrated the 6 angles that a typical narrative will take.

I'll just post up my notes from the lesson.

We talked about the different stages in which a narrative typically moves, appararantly first noted by Aristotle. We have the introduction, the 'inciting incident', the journey, the 'middle point', the overcoming of the middle point, and then equilibrium. I added in the overcoming of the middle point.. er.. point, because it seems to be a more sensical way of looking at the narrative system.

Anyway, using this material we made a version of the 'exsquisite corpse' in groups of 6 by making 6 drawings using the above narrative system.

So, in mine we have the introduction of some kind of bunny with ice cream everywhere, then the inciting incident of noticing a particularly large and beautiful ice cream spaceship, then the plan and assumed journey to make its own spaceship, which is challenged by the 'middle point' when the creature finds it's really expensive to make such a fabulous craft. However, this is overcome in the 'overcoming of the middle point' when the creature simply sticks a pair of wings a giant ice-cream to make his own spacecraft and then in the equilibirium, we can see he's enjoying himself once more, albeit this time with a nice spaceship to party about in.

Next, teh homewerks!

What we did in first lesson

2008-04-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

So the first task we had was to make a representation of ourselves so that Ollie could get to know us and how we worked. And, this ghost dog from the toilet is what I chose to represent myself. Cause, I'm will and i like dogs. and.. the toilet?

There is another scrawling ghosty character but.. I think I get compared to a dog more than anything else. I do float around like a ghost most of the time though so that explains that theme. I think the toilet is just to make the image a bit weirder than it would be otherwise.

We then watched 'in the company of wolves', directed by Neil Jordan who also directed 'Interview with the Vampire.

I could see Ollie's intention for screening this to us as it deals very much with the telling of the Lycanthrope fable in several different ways and as a teaching tool in how to use symbolism in a story but I found it to be a bit dated and.. well.. boring to be honest for my taste. I say dated, because the film showed its age in it's use of special effects which wern't that convincing sometimes and really worked to break the sense of disbelief in parts. I'm thinking of the film's special effects in terms of films that came out at similar times such as 'The Thing' which still has special effects that put the CGI of today's cinema to shame. Also, the acting in numerous sections of 'The company of wolves' was just terrible, making it difficult to maintain interest.

Anyway, onto day 2.

The brief

2008-04-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Erm, since I've rather cleverly managed to misplace the brief, I'll probably have to edit this post at a later date when I get another copy but I'll do my best to give a summary of my objective now.

From what I can remember, the purpose of this brief is to take an indepth look into how illustrations and narratives are formed through a series of excercises and readings, culminating in a final production of 6 illustrative images or the equivelence of such. The brief is based around the notion of the 'Fairy Tale' or legends and myths and wants us to 'modernise' one in a manner appropriate to the brief.

Illustration Module Blog

2008-04-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

So, as the title of the blog has doubtlessly informed you, this is the blog I'm using to record my work in my Illustration optional module class doodad.

So, I hope reading it is a nice experience for you Ollie (Olly? Oily? Oy-Ee? Its a short name but there are a couple of ways to spell it so.. I'm stumped for now with that one -.-") as I'm trying to forgo handing in physical sketchbooks and maybe you won't find this such a smooth transition into the world of paper-less journal presentation. Or maybe you will, maybe you're actually very experienced with this. Regardless, here it is, so... go for it.

I'll start by posting up some of the stuff we've done in the few lessons we've had so far, after I describe the brief in general.