Final Sketch 1: Mad Scientist Approach (part 2)

Okay. Let's start from where we left off in the last post.

I got the inspiration for my story from Toy Story 3 (I love my cartoons). In Toy Story, a toy bear got left at the playground after its owner fell asleep and her parents brought her home without realizing they had left her toy bear behind. The toy bear eventually found its way home but later found out that its owner had replaced it with an identical bear.

I followed a similar plot in my story, that is, Hansel and Gretel ran home after the ordeal with the witch and saw their Father with a baby in his arms and presumed that they have been replaced.

Following how Scott McCloud presents his comic, I've also used connecting lines between frames to guide the readers eyes in following the sequence of the comic. Besides the use of connecting lines, I've also used the artwork itself to lead the readers eyes from one panel to the other. This is to break the monotone of simply using lines to connect panels. Many a times, I try not to constrain the artwork to the boundaries of the panel but to use the panels creatively to contain the artwork. 

For example in the first figure, panels are used as pathway for which Hansel and Gretel run on. I thought it'll be more interesting that way. Aside from the interesting factor, I wanted to show that the run home was a long journey. One way to show this would have been to make a long panoramic panel to show the length of time. However, an effect of a long horizontal panel could also show how time is slowed down and I thought this is not accurate of what I'm trying to portray. While the run home is a long one, time has not slowed down. In fact, time has sped up because the children were running, eager to get home. Hence I thought of using multiple panels as the path for them to run on. Many panels indicate a stretch of time because traditionally, 4 panels could have been used to illustrate many things but here, it all only shows one event: the children running. However, we also see the children skipping panels when they run, indicating the speed of which they are running. Though I'm not sure if this works to what I intended for, it's an attempt nonetheless. :)

In the second figure, the panels becomes the glass windows. Hansel got angry at the prospect of Father replacing them with a new child that he threw a stone through the house windows. Hence, I showed the panel breaking like how a window would break when a stone is thrown through it. This is how I tried to show a moment-moment transition though I personally feel that it is difficult to use the mad scientist approach to show a moment-moment transition properly because of the need to scroll through the panels. Moment-moment transitions are meant to be fast paced but due to the reliance on readers to scroll through the panels, the transition might lose its significance.

In conclusion, though it is interesting how the mad scientist approach brings about new forms of representation of comics, I personally do not prefer this sort of representation. The need to scroll through the webpage greatly inconvenient the transitions between panels. Also, very often, I find myself having to intentionally organize the story to fit the nature of mad scientist approach. As a result, I feel that it is a very contrived method. Of course, this is a personal insight. It could very well be a lack of skill on my part. :/