Assignment 1

I realised I have not been updating my blog recently! Here's an update on my first assignment and later on on my 2nd assignment. I will probably update on the class exercises later.

Our first assignment was to use 5 panels to tell a visual story. Here's mine:

Revenge of the Cans

I hope the story is still understandable! It is basically about a person drinking from a can and tossing it away and the other can 'buddies' witness the atrocity. The cans got mad and went to take revenge on the person, eventually causing the person to fall to death.

I've gotten this story as an inspiration of a photo I found on deviantart.com by ~msgonzalez

I've gotten quite a bit of critique from the class:

• The table used should be opaque
• Need for more cans to give a threatening aura
• Placing some cans on the steps of the stairs to give a sense of 'chase' 
• Frame 3 to focus on can

Looks like I'm going to have to get more cans for the reshoot! :)

***Update

I finally go round to redoing this assignment. I replaced the beers with coke though. There was no way I was going to purchase large quantities of beer! Also, coke cans are red, so I thought it'll be good to signify rage as well.

I have decided to use color flash technique this time round, hopefully to bring more attention to the cans. Also to emphasis some figure and ground. 

I hope the story is clear. Yes, cans don't attack people, but I hope artistic license applies here! :)

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CE2: Apply Panel to Panel Transitions

 

For class exercise 2, we needed to apply the 6 different types of panel to panel transition on a comic strip by Scott McCloud. Our group chose the 5 panels highlighted in red to tell the story.

1-->2 :  Subject-Subject
2-->3 :  Moment-Moment
3-->4 :  Action-Action
4-->5 :  Scene-Scene

Having a headache now thinking of a concept for the first tutorial. It's visual storytelling using 5 frames. This is identical to one of the assignments I did in NM2208 and I had a pretty rough time with that. Think I've pretty much expired my brainstorming capacity that time and I'm running out of ideas for this time!

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CE1: Defining Sequential Art

So we had our first NM3228 lecture today and we were introduced to what sequential art is. 

Prior to the lesson and the readings, I conceptualized sequential art as frames of images in an order, like storyboards! Turns out, something closer to the idea of sequential art is comics though many other forms could be counted as sequential art as well. 

So with so many ways of defining sequential art, the class got into groups to come up with definitions based on some images provided by Jing. Basically, my group felt that it has to be in an orderly sequence in which removal of any part of the sequence would result in the story not making any sense. There should also have a recurring detail in the sequence that could prompt viewers to relate and link a story together. And of course, it has to be narrative. 

So this, 

is considered sequential art to us. And this,

isn't, because we could remove any one body in there and it still makes sense. And there isn't exactly a story either, more like a development.

Then again, the other groups had other ways to defining it. A group had mention that a orderly sequence wasn't necessary as long as we can still figure out the story.

I guess its not going to be possible to give a really clear, undebatable definition of sequential art but that's just as well. If it's definable, it wouldn't really be considered art now would it? :)

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