Reviewing over the project.

To start with, I was very glad that I could extend onto the first project as I had originally planned out a lot more than what I could have done in the original time frame. I would have needed to cut back on the pages or simplified the artwork.

Coming up with the plot for the narrative came to me surprisingly quickly. I knew I wanted the artwork to be realistic, to an extent and the aim for it to be liek a thriller, horror. The desicions possibly took the longest, how I would fit in desicions for a horror type plot proved arkward at best. Originally I was going to have the choices be what path the protagonist wished to take, but this seemed to branch them off too far from one another; there was no easy way for the branching off to link back anytime soon.
After finding out about extending the first project I immediately started writing up an extention of the existing narrative, which ended up being far too long and never got used in the final piece; there were an additional 5 or so choices.

Character creation went smoothly, I had the characters pretty much set in mind as I planned out the plot. The only problem being, coming up with their profiles; of which only the protagonists was really necessary.

The colouring for the pages I wasn't pleased with, however I didn't have the time to really mess around with a page until satisfied; this was mainly becuase I underestimated how much time planning out the scripting, pannelling and then actually drawing would take. Without a doubt I now have a considerable amount more respect for comic book artists, the planning stages for comics require more planning than i thought. Planning out the panels to go along with the speech and what happens in each of those panels took up more time than I had thought, however I'm glad I went through it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't difficult to follow.
I did consider using sprites, when I was coming up with the narrative ideas; but it seemed like too much of an easy choice, and I really wanted to get out of a comfort zone and draw more dynamic poses that were semi realistic.

Putting the pieces into iWeb proved to be fairly easy, after getting my head around some of the features it had.


Overall, I really enjoyed this project; it has taught me a lot about comic artists workflow and how interactivity in narratives can be used to affect such a broad spectrum of the plot. One thing I wish I could have improved on was the colouring; I'm still working on finding an efficiant way of colouring on it as I rarely used photoshop for colouring back in college.

'Next' and 'home' icons

Just before finishing off placing all the images into iWeb, I had literally forgotten to place in icons for the next button. I looked at some of the generic arrow shapes that could possibly be used for my narrative and none of them really fitted in with it; so in the end I decided on making the next and home icons.

This took roughly 30 minutes to whip up, most of the time was actually spent on what colour scheme the next button should have. Originally I wanted the colour pallette to match the panels, but it blended in too well and didn't stick out at all; it needed to actually be easily findable for the reader. I ended up with red as it generally fitted in with the horror aspect to it and also contrasted the blue tones.

This was the original home icon, which was scrapped almost immediately after putting it into iWeb. People I asked to test and also myself just couldn't make out what it was meant to be, it was just a blue stain ruining the comic. If that wasn't reason enough, I didn't need the home button for all of the endings; one of the ends for the decision actually leads back to the options page, making a home icon all the more useless.

In the end I scrapped the idea of using a house for the home icon and stuck with a 'back' icon instead, also sticking the the same colours.



Old protagonist design

This was one of the first quick colour designs of the protagonist, also I was originally aiming for the style of the comic to be colourful; to an extent. I scrapped the idea of using bright colours as I felt it would just deter from the earie atmosphere I wanted for it.

Her original design, she did wear a small dress; however it just didn't seem to fit with what kind of character I had in mind for her. The setting was going to be in a releatively chilly time of the year, which further reasoned why I had to scrap the dress idea.

Colour swaps

Some of the colours I went throught when it came to picking out the second main character. In the end I picked the red shirt version (In a previous post.) Which earned him the name red man.



Testing the narrative.

Before I started drawing up the panels early on in the project I asked a few friends to go through the outline of the plot, picking what option they wanted, without any idea of what would happen next.
For this I asked around my friends that weren't on the course.

This was very early on in the project and originally had 4 options for the narrative. The fourth being the option to ask to call the protagonist's sister on one of the other characters phones; however some of the people who tested it found it to be pointless and also felt like the protagonist would have a lot less drive to carry on wandeing around if she could contact her sister. In the end I dropped the 4th option as I noticed this myself.


The second testing potion of the narrative was taken during the iwebbing process. I asked Kyle Bamford and Jade Phillips to go though the puplished version of the narrative to make sure they could read and understand everything, and also if all the links work. Thankfully there were no problems with it and no changes had to be made.

More colour concepts

One of the versions of the interiors that the character spend most of the narrative in.

Practicing with colouring and lighting. Took roughly 2 hours, I need to find a colouring method more efficiant for the final panels.



Final colour choice for the other main character.

Initial designs.

I realised going back through this blog that there is a severe lack of all the designing process I went through before starting the actual narrative.

The very first sketches of what I wanted the area to be like; my aim for the overall plot and setting was  focusing on interior areas. Also a small sketch of the main character, this was the point where I was still unsure whether or not the protagonist should be male or female; orginally I had her in mind to have shorter hair if I picked a female.

It was pretty much set that the narrative would have a male and female as the main focus of the plot.

Some of the initial character designs, at this point I was leaning more towards having a female for the protagonist and a male for the side character. Testing out different hair length and facial structure for potential female; as much as I liked her design , it felt more like she was a side character from it.

As well as that I ended up drawing her a bit too feminine, I wanted a more tomboy-ish character; still recogniseable as a woman, but not emphasising her features.

Desicion ideas and concept for a third character. An in situation sketch of the protagonist, still testing out hair styles; also practice with scared expressions.

Action poses study.

Hand studies.

 

Environment practice, also another redesign of the protagonist; jumping back to shorter hair, I liked the sketch, however I still felt like I should design her with slightly longer hair.

More finalised concept for the protagonist.

From the first design of the male character I wanted to keep the slightly scruffy appearance; but deceptively well learned, setting his occupation as a doctor bubbled up pretty quickly from this sketch.

Environment studies, possibly will be advanced with coloured versions for more practice.