The show is called 'Once Upon a Time' (Wikipedia) and I would recommend everyone to catch it. The remake of the stories are really quite interesting and they sticked very closely to the characteristics of the fairytales.
And yet for some reason, it was so difficult for me to come up with an extended ending for fairytales. It isn't the same as reinventing the fairytales because the premise is already fixed. This project is more open-ended and it could go anywhere.
Our group, after analyzing many fairytales, decided on the story of Hansel and Gretel. Here's a brief summary of the story:
Hansel and Gretel lived together with their woodcutter Father and Stepmother. The family was very poor and it was very hard for Father to feed everyone. Stepmother then instigated Father to get rid of the children so they would have less mouths to feed. Father, although reluctant, had little choice and agreed to do so. The first time Father led the two children to the woods, hoping that they'll lose their way home. But Hansel was smart and had left trails of pebbles to mark the path and hence, got home safe. When stepmother learned about this, she locked up the two children and only gave them crumbs of bread before attempting to get them lost in the forest again. This time, Hansel used bread crumbs to mark the path but unfortunately, birds ate up the crumbs. So Hansel and Gretel continued on the path only to find themselves face to face with a gingerbread house. Famished, they intruded the house and ate whatever the could get their hands on, only to later realize the house was owned by an evil witch. The witch caged up Hansel and fed only him in order to fatten him up so she could eat him while poor Gretel was left to do chores for the witch. The witch had bad eyesight, so she would often feel Hansel's arm through the cage to find out if Hansel was fat enough for consumption. Hansel, being smart, always put out a bone to trick the witch into believing that he was still as skinny as a bone. Later, the witch got impatient and decided to eat Hansel regardless and instructed Gretel to open the oven. Gretel feigned naivety and asked the witch to first demonstrate how to open the oven. When the witch leaned towards the open oven, Gretel pushed the witch down and the witch thus, died. Hansel and Gretel then ran back home to their father. Their stepmother, in the story, died a mysterious death.
This story isn't the most well-loved unfortunately, for its quite a depressing tale to tell children with all this negative image. We thought it'll still make a rather interesting plot to base our extended ending on.
For the first assignment, we had to come up with a comic using the mad scientist approach as described by Scott McCloud. Web comics have this advantage of limitless borders and hence we needed to try to maximize this potential in our comic. Our group decided to explore varied possible endings based on the type of genre. We had horror, comedy and drama. I took on drama while SiewTing did horror and Jiaying worked on comedy.
And here I present, my mad scientist Hansel and Gretel story! I don't think you can see it clearly here, but the final copy will be uploaded on ivle.
This is terrible drawing really but since we're not graded on that, I decided to spend more energy on organizing the panels. I will elaborate more on sketch 1 in my next post because this one is getting a little too lengthy for my taste. : /
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