Investigation into life in the Future

For me to further my comic’s storyline i really have to create a complete world in the time zone i am looking at.  Im going to try to update this blog all the time with information that helps me understand ideas that are socially, politically and philosophically connected to my world which is set in the future year 2522.

Here are two great videos from tech enthusiest Kevin Kelly who talks about his ideas of  technology.

his talk about the evolution of the internet sparkd new ideas for my story. It got me looking at the internet the way he sees it being. Really powerful and our lives will completely be dependant on it. Everything we use and own will somehow be linked to the net. I began thinking.. yes security would be an obvious thing the internet would control but why couldn’t it also control the Laws of government. It could be a court judge, making logical judgements with outcomes more precise and acceptable than any human would make. And if thinking all of that, why couldn’t it be the government? Everything is connected to the internet so it would know everything!

The reason people wouldn’t eccept it would be because its too perfect. No one could take advantage of the system so there could be no corruption. If this was the case, a sci fi tail with a utopian government would be boring! So there has to be a breakdown somewhere to make conflict. But i am not for the idea of humans against machines because…if the human race didn’t have control, it would throw out all of my ideas, and i want to use this sci fi to investigate how humans would live with technology. Not how technology would live with humans (but that could be debatable in my comic). It would have the twist that Humans still controll the internet ( the rich corrupted businesses) and could still use the earth as a monopoly.

A time line of the internet system of government’s history would be something like this:

Internet government called ‘the system’ made.

followed by a lot of conflict and all of that jazz by people scared of control by machine.

then comes faith in the system for its success.

Then businesses would gain control of the ‘system’ and subtly use it for their own gain. This would soon become apparent to society but it would be totally hopeless to reject the ‘system’.

centuries would pass and it would still be the same. the utopia of the computer ruled world would be long gone and forgotten about in the eyes of society in my comic’s story.

Here is another talk by Kevin Kelly on the evolution of technology

Process of making my final

alright so after all this wonderful research I began my Comic and Finished 2 pages. It not much at all.. but I really could’nt care less. I have such a greater understand of the process behind making a comic. There is obvisously more to learn but i am confident i could keep working on this and with the tools i used on it i could create some wicked shit. (that would come with experience though.)

My process was pretty much the same with every image i made. I would make my background using the polygon lasso tool and the ‘fill bucket’ to colour it. anything i did free hand didn’t work. it was too uncontrolled. hopefully as i get better at this game i will be able to free hand my pictures but at the moment im going to stick with what i can handle and embrace the controlled lines and colours and use them to my advantage to make my own aesthetic quality.

Making loads of digital paintings leading up to this seemed like a waste of time but i really helped me understand colours a lot better. Thats the trick with painting, colour!

When i came to do my second page, i had learned that i need to plan the layout of my page before starting my images.

Here’s an image of my planned page. After  i drew the frames i made boxes like the blue one then extracted that box into a seperate document so i could keep the original page plan untouched. this ppage is of the next page i was going to create but ran out of time.

this is the finished result of the blue box. omg im writing this blog at 4:04 am and it feels if im sitting up really high….

This next image to me F&*kn ages i got carried away so after the background was finished i decided enough was enough. but im real stoked with it, it shows how im progressing with every image.

I would of never thought i could do that city but i did! i took me like 8 hours but ma. I now know how to make a city scape.

i know if i did this city again it would take a quarter of the time.

ok anyway after I make the background i free hand the figure in, (shown in the image 2 above and  below)

I used the Vector Tool to go round the sketched lines on another layer.

after this i just paint fill it in put some shadows on it and BAM!! done.

I really wanted to make my comic pages a unique piece of art so you can look at the page as a whole and love the beauty of it. I know that it doesn’t have the best flow as other comics but considering i picked up on this im sure that will improve.

I am presenting it in a classic manner, the comic book! with a title page and a page inside. It will be highly finished all glossed up like the real thing. I have to fugure out a way of controlling the variation of colours from a computer screen to ink… hmmm.

The thing that is really screwing with my head apart from the lack of sleep is coming uo with a title. I want it to be efficient…if thats the word im looking for. Im pretty sure i want it to start with the year. (either 2511 or 2522) 2522: system earth …i dunno i dont care its too late to. This assignment has been about learning How to make a comic book. Im going to go sleep.

Here are my images from the final comic page:

Layed out for hard copy… colours are a bit different on different computers (which annoys me…)

Investigation into creating a Sci Fi Title page

The title page Mish. i am not searching for a classic starwars styled poster that is showing all the characters heads hovering infront of some sublime image and their best interpretation of their personality on their face. All I can see in my head is a title page like just mentioned. (Surprisingly after typing that i went on google images and could find none with that discription i just mentioned.)

Here are some comic Cover pages:

Comic Book Research

A massive  part of this assignment would have to be researching different comic books. I mean i can’t make a comic if i don’t know anything about comics. I am embarrassed to say that i only just bought my first comic (and read my firs) the 2nd week into this assignment. It was a Mirage Publishing comic called ‘Tales of the TMNT’. Yes I am definately a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles they are the shit, but i bought this specific comic because of the cartoon style. It has bold flat colours (unlike Marvels fully Glossed comics) and sharp fat black outlines. It is not a good example of the cartoon style that i am trying to copy but it was the closest i could find. The text was pretty…..normal, nothing special, it would be good to find a comic with some brilliant writers whch i can reference off. To find them i just need to go back to the comic store and get reading!

It is hard to find many comic books shown online because that would be giving their comics away for free, but i found a few that lets you have a little preview of their comic for adverisement (i assume.)

So these next comics weren’t read for any other reason other than they were the only ones i could find on the net..

Star Wars: Clone Wars Comic ( what a coincidence i bumped into another Star wars : Clone wars except as a differnt media etc. starwars must like me. i like starwars too, we should go out)

This site is acutally a really valuable resource. It is a site with previews of all the comics in the Star Wars: Clone Wars comic series. the Backgrounds in this one is very similar to my style of background i use.

here are some different styled Star Wars: CLone Wars comics

above: Story by Pablo Hidalgo. art by Grant Could letters by Grant could

this cartoon above shows the obvious construction of this comic. the outlines are definitely had drawn on a tablet. very simple. would be a great reference if i decided to draw cartoons with a freehand outline.

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Above: story by Pablo Hidalgo, art by Thomas Hodges Letters by Grant Could

Im trying to be conscious of the lay out to all of these different comics, because not only do they have a different type of cartoon style they each have their own unique aesthetic. (well some look very similar, but that because they have the same people making them most of the time.)

This Comic page has a great layout.

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ABOVE: story by Pablo Hidalgo, art by Jeff Carlisle, letters  by Grant Colud

I also have to look at the font style for these as well. it looks like the page layout is all the same really.. big boxes on a white background.

This has been a great reference. there are 138 pages on this starwars comic site, and every three or so pages you will get a different style of comic, brilliant!! It does seem a bit generic though, all the comics seam to have the same style of page layout…

http://www.starwars.com/clonewars/comic/

I went to google to find some more interesting page layouts…

‘Tribes-  The Dog years’ has that great composition of a image taking up the whole frame with some other images on top. mean.

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I have to say this page layout by George Herriman is the most interesting one i’ve seen on the net so far. colours are great too.

George Herriman

this video is actually funny… its so old, and its got a mouse herling bricks at a cat wat more could you want

i really wana know what Takashi Murakami uses to make pictures like this one. is it done in photoshop? ..it must be. also looks like it has been put into some 3d programme the wat the designs cover the curved shapes.  i should have looked more into this guy for character design..

Development of the Storyline

Storyline is’nt very important for my presentation as i am only showing an opening scene (where the viewer would have no idea what is happening until later on in the story)

But in a very brief and unformal way ill jot down some of my ideas (that probably arn’t very original).

Rough Outline of Story ( Ideas on paper basically)

OK so it is set far into the future. so far that everything from the 21st century are either in books or in museums (year 2511). obviously Technology is amazing and the way people live their lives through technology is a major influence in designing this world. It will be based on a character who is forced to hide his identity because his parents were both genetically engineered.His parents were created for the military along with millions of others (for a cold war or something) and were labeled Advanced Human Defence Soldiers and owned by powerful companies and hired in bulk to what ever country paid the most(US was the only conutry to hire them). They were made faster, stronger and smarter than a normal human being. Society didn’t like this, they were threatened by them. A law was signed almost straight after their creation that stated no G.E humans were aloud reproduce and if they did they would be killed along with the child. This law was’nt enough to satisfy most people and 12 years after the birth of the A.H.D.S they were ‘dismantled’. Of course this started an uprising from the G.E humans and they managed to take over military bases and held countries at gun point warning that if the law wasnt dropped they would Fire off nukes. But they got dominated, the military’s computers were hacked into and disabled any chance of a nuke firing. Robot Soldiers then went in to take down the resistance. They were only successful when they overwhemed the A.H.D.S with numbers.

governements don’t exist anymore ( well they do, just a tad different( even more corrupt) and they’re known as ‘systems’

It was almost impossible for the A.H.D.S’s to go into exhile because they were constantly being tracked by the mechanism that was born inside them. But it wasn’t impossible offspring of the g.e humans.  (this comic is set when there are still organisation of the systems hunting them down.)

security: it is law to wear a ‘secure’ bracelet on your arm. these work basically like barcodes. you are constantly being scanned when wearing one. every door will scan you as you walk in checking to see if you are a threat or not. this obviously would lower crime and all that jazz. but crimes are still at large. crims ( well anyone not wanting to be caught) can update their secure bracelets with fake i.d codes but they usually need to get them updated regularly because system departments use updaters to track the fakes (obviously im etting the idea from computers, something that i will always do when looking at this sci fi) . Since the G.E offspring wern’t registered when born they have to deal with this ‘secure’ issue all their life.

‘gangs make money out of selling fake secure id codes, it is an easy business for the  debt collecters because the clients can’t afford to not pay because they wont get their next id code which would result in ‘dismantlement’ by the system.

i could go on. i really could, i will metion one more concept.  Humans terraforming mars(making it livable for humans) but it is just recently colonised so there is millions of people a day immigrating to mars(because earth is an dirty unkept overpopulated planet). this brings in the idea of smuggling. but i also have an idea that it is a compalsery on-way-trip so if you go you and your family will never see earth again. (except for wat is shown on the meida.) this would mean the system would have complete control of communication and information between the two planets. this idea creates a lot of different scenarios that you could apply into this sci fi story. eg. a massive cover up; earthlings not knowing that there is a massive war going on on mars. all they hear is “mars is a paridice, come join us!” and when they get off the ship on mars BAM!! they are chucked into slavory or something (i dunno…)

ok enough talking shit…

Research for Story

my Project Drawing research last year helped me a lot. But apart from that i feel too hesitant to research any sci fi stories because they all just seem to be different verisons of mine. If i ever want to develop this firther im going to have to do some research that involves learning about sociology and systems of government. technology seems to come when you think logically. But yes with the story and with the more detailed stories (an episode) i will have to intensly look at comics for examples.

The story board of my comic:

This storyboard is about an insignificant character refered to as ‘Mr. Crow’,  this scene is basically showing the viewer that this comic is full of excitement! leaving them wanting the answer to why was mr. crow killed..

after creating my first page i realised how hard it was to compose the images into an interesting and effective page. I learnt pretty quick that it is really important to make a layout plan of the page before making the images.

these two are just the storyboards above dislpayed in a final page layout(minus like the last ten comic strips).

Character Design

For me to have any pride in my comic i knew i had to be at a certain level of drawing skill. not only that, but the comic will have to have a pleasing and unique aesthetic to it. I need to lock down a cartoon style before much more can be done. And the style of animation that captures me the most is the work of Genndy Tartakovsky.  I bought the two dvds of Star Wars: Clone Wars and began to draw a heap of pictures of the figures paused in the dvd episodes. Ofcourse i dont want to copy this style and have no original characters of my own, but my style will come over a long period of time and wont happen in this assignment. It is important to just draw and draw and draw. I need to become confident at drawing cartoon figures before making up some unique formula for them of my own.

So here are some Images from my mission to learn the art of Tartakovsky:

Having a nearly unlimited amount of still images to copy fom ST:CL it really pushed up my skill, I began copying the images a lot faster than i could in the beginnning.

But This doesn’t mean much when your trying to create your own original comic book. The next step was character design.

When creating characters one would agree that you would have to have a detailed idea of the main story etc. I didn’t. I knew what my comic was going to show, a snippet of the overall story.  I know the major events that will unfold in this comic but not the pieces in between if you know what i mean. Don’t get me wrong, I know my characters that i have created will fit into the overall story fine.

here are some character design…

Uniforms is something i didn’t have time to completely design. i really have to figure out what the style etc. would be like in the future (the year 2511) I hope to sit down sometime soon and go through the social, political, enviromental, technological situations in the year 2511. this will definately help creating a detailed story.

Influences of Cartoon animation

ok i should of got onto this blogging thing earlier but i have always liked doing my research in a book, it just looks more appealing. but when half of your research are videos and pictures you find off the net,  the digital notebook seems to make more sense.

To start off, i will talk about an animator/writer/directer who was responsible for getting me so passionate about animation. i have always loved to draw but as soon as i saw this guys animation i really wanted to get a job in this sort of thing.

His name is Genndy Tartakovsky. He is known for creating, writing and directing the animated series Dextor’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack. I remember watching samurai Jack for the first time and thinking man the colours used on this are ugly. but like every aesthetic Tartakovsky uses it grew on me very quickly and I can’t think of another cartoon that has a more interesting colour pallet.

the pastelly colours are great, and the style is amazing…

in 2004 Samurai Jack won an emmy for:

“Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour)

Genndy Tartakovsky:

Star wars- Clone wars

In 2003 a cell animated starwars microseries came out titled star wars – clone wars.

Originally the episodes were made to be quick 5minute action scenes for ad breaks. It was so popular they made a second season of full length episodes which went on to win 3 emmys..

Tartakovsky produced, directed and helped animate this cartoon with arts director Paul Rudish. the style is very similar to Samurai jack. rich flat colours, bold strong outlines, and visually amazing backgrounds.

It is the most smoothest highly finished pieces of cell animation i have seen. Simply amazing! ( gee im talking this man up)

Tartakovsky has really influenced me with my drawing, i am constantly drawing his style and am always coming back to his images for reference if im stuck on a pose etc. to draw. He will be one of my major influences for character design and the style of animation i will use for my comic. For comic layout, and everything else that comes with making a comic i wil use a variety of other resources…

Digital Painting.

last holidays i was on a mission to learn how to digitally paint backgrounds for my comic. I used a tablet and photoshop and tried to make a landscape painting everyday. I used the many videos on youtube that show people making their digital paintings or concept drawings. i needed to learn the tricks of the skill mostly. i knew the rest would come from experience eg. the colours (i still don’t have that, it will prob take years until im satisfied)

Heres a few videos that helped me out….

Brushes and opacity of the brushes seem to be a skill in digital painting  that really counts..

i became hypnotised by these videos

the video above is an example of brushes being a huge advantage if used sufficiently. this guy looks like he has pre-made shapes that look like the top of city buildings. i have tried to customize brushes into different textures but never figured out how to make a paintbrush a specific shape.

Here are some of my digital paintings i made. (not very good at all..)

this was my attempt at a city landscape. Im glad that i got a lot better at this for my comic..

I did progress (very slow) to find out a wee trick to making good trees. and my colours are getting better, but still very limited.

Another reference i have to include for examples of great digital paintings is scenes from Star wars: Clones wars (2003 animated season ). I really want to find out who was the dude behind the landscape in the animation because they are amazing.

Some scenes i tried to replicate as close as possible;

Some more amazing concept designs by SW: Clone Wars: