Comic-Con Anthology
For this project we were asked to work in groups of six to create an anthology for MCM London comic con. Each story in the anthology must be from 12-16 pages long and share once theme with all the other stories.
Group members: Connor, Jess, Vinnie, Enola, Gabi and me
This year we had a freedom to chose who is going to be in our group. I decided to team up with my friends as it would be easier to communicate for everyone instead of being shy like in my last year project. We also roughly knew abilities and styles of each member, which helped us in picking the theme for our anthology.
First group meeting- Theme
For our first group meeting we decided that each person will prepare a short power point with ideas.
In my power point I showed with my group the themes I looked into including these mentioned above to tell my group what I would like to include so then we could talk about what fits the theme best.
My first idea for the world was post apocalyptic world with ruins and modern cities. However, my group came to the conclusion that we should go for something bigger like a universe full of mystical creatures and technology so then we got a more options when it comes to planning our own individual stories. It was also because we could have more variety which means different things could be more appealing to more audience.
In the second part of my power point I talked about creatures that could appear in our world for example: angels, demons, any type of mythological or fantasy creatures. My group liked the idea. However, we came up with a suggestion that since we are most likely go for Science Fantasy theme we should combine fantasy creatures and world with modern technology. It also meant that our world would have to be in XXXX amount of years in the future.
When deciding on a theme, we chose to list few options to then narrow it down to one theme that would suit all of our styles and aspirations for the story. Our first options were Fantasy, Science and Change. We were thinking about building various stories, such as time travel, kingdoms, dreams, Good vs Evil and season change.
To narrow these ideas down to one we discussed our experience from last year comic con trip. What each of us observed was that most of people were in our age or roughly teens, young adults and a bit older. Based on this information we looked what is the favorite theme of books for the people at this age. It turned out that both Fantasy and Science were themes that people are most interested in reading. Based on this information we thought the combination of these two (Science Fantasy) could be a good option for our anthology.
The final theme decision
Our final idea was a Science Fantasy universe full of technology and mystical creatures living in the far future. Our group meeting allowed us to brainstorm many good ideas and create one final idea that works for all the group members in terms of story building and style.
Second group meeting- Logo and name for our group
The second group meeting was a full day designated for our group to work together on sketches and ideas for logo of our group. The first idea that I suggested was naming our group after our group of friends called Chaos Council. Since last year I met amazing people and it became a long lasting friendship throughout the course. Our small group of artist is very chaotic and make a lot of decisions together. That's where the name came from. We thought that our logo could be named Chaos Council Comics as it would have a lot of sentimental value for us and help us build wonderful memories during the trip to comic con. It also sounds nice because of the alliteration in the name, which usually appeal to a lot of people as it is very memorable.
I don't thing I ever attempted to design a logo. In the power point I presented to my group I included some ideas that could inspire us to draw few ideas during our meeting.
My idea for the logo was inspired by designs with technology, neon lights and some nature to refer to the Science Fantasy theme of our anthology. I drew a small example I drew of a exploding bottle with our logo on it. However, we all agreed that it is indeed too complicated for a logo.
My group found the example of social media logos in neon colours I included in my power point and decided that we should use a neon colour in our logo to make it stand out of the crowd as most of the comic logos at the comic con tend to be a very basic comic book text.
Since our logo was a bit long, our group members came up with idea of using triple C to represent our name in the logo.
My first logo design
Working out making a comic as a group
It is well known to us all that in the comic industries there are various roles like inkers, colorists and more. However, the styles in our group varied so much that it was impossible to make it work. Instead we decided that each of us should work on their own stories and artwork. However, when it comes to things like covers we should all contribute to it just like we did with the name and logo of the group.
Product of Connor's idea and Jess' artwork
My individual story
I made small diagram to plan out the pacing in my story. It starts with two characters working in a field to then slowly build the tension by making two of the enemy teams fights and reach the high point by being surprised by a monster that takes the two character somewhere far away. The tension created by some action in the battlefield then is released by characters getting to know each other and start working together as a team. They fight together to defeat the monsters in their way and safely get home. The tension then rises a bit again when the two characters have a major disagreement caused by different political and historical views. They go back to the city where the tension rises again as they fight the evil leader of the city. The story ends happily with them ending the war by defeating the leader and taking over his role.
My story was inspire by my favorite comic book called Saga. It is Science and Fantasy story about two planets at war and two enemies falling in love. At first I wanted the plot of my story to head in the direction of making two enemies lover, but story like this would take more than 16 pages to develop this kind of relationship between the two characters.
Thumbnails
I calculated that if the maximum amount of pages is 16, I could make up to 80 panels if I were to draw 5 panels per page. It is plenty space and this number will shrink if I decide to add splash pages. However, It is good to know how much space I got for the story.
I started drawing thumbnails of things that would happen in a story. It turned out to be 60 thumbnails which could turn into panels or splash pages. However, after the feedback I had to make small adjustments.
The adjustments I had to make in my story
Originally I planned to borrow one character from my group and make it a guide that will show my protagonist the way back home. However, I had already 6 characters in mind when drawing thumbnails, plus the monsters in my story that would make the story way to crowded. My lecturer suggested that I could use a device that my protagonist could use to find the way home instead. I thought that could save me drawing the panels where I was planning to introduce the one additional character. These are changes I will incorporate later on in my sketches of the comic.
Character designs
My first rough ideas for the characters were that I want them to be some kind of godly descendants with powers to fit into Fantasy theme part. The other idea was glowing tattoos, technology such as guns, light swords and smart devices.
I was looking into character designs that would fit into both categories. I begun my search with looking into things like books and movies that are popular with the same theme as our anthology.
In terms of movies I looked into animated series called Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. In the series I saw plenty of modern clothing with neon details as well as glowing cities that could be a inspiration for city design for my comic. This series gave me an idea of cyber wear/ modern fashion. It seemed that the clothes are light without heavy armor because of the mechanical parts in the body of the characters that made them stronger. It gave me the idea that i could make a light armor that would include some magical crystals that would protect them and weapons that would be powered by the powers of the characters.
In terms of books I looked into game based art book of Borderlands 3, The World of Cyberpunk 2077, The Art of Remember Me and The Art of Avatar.
Once thing in common in Cyberpunk 2007, Borderlands 3 and Art of Remember Me is that most of the are skin tight for example: skinny jeans, full body glossy body costumes with minimal armor especially in characters that use magic or any other powers. Personally, I have played Borderlands 3 before and it is very noticeable that characters like Lilith has less armor and clothes because of her magic powers. The characters that use weapons like pistols are a bit more cover or wearing scraps of armor. Besides armor and light clothing this style also includes straps and thick belts.
The Art of Remember me The Art of Borderlands 3
First armor design for my characters
Based on things I learnt from books and movies I attempted to design 4 female and male outfits. They vary into the amount of coverage and designs so that I got many options to choose from. Since I was planning at least 6 character designs I wanted the protagonist and the side character to have the best outfits as they will appear the most in the story as well as supporting products that I will be selling at comic con. I decided to ask my group to vote which are the best outfits. The results of voting were:
For the male outfits 3 votes for 1st outfit, 2 for 2nd and 1 for the 4th,
Female outfits 4 votes for the 1st, 1 for the 2nd and 1 for the 4th.
Since majority voted for the first outfit designs that's what I'm going to work on. My group also told me it would be better if the male outfit had the shoes from the 2nd design, because the 1st ones look a bit too robotic and stiff, not cool.
While designing the character I came across a problem with colour choice. The designs looked pale and almost blend together. I wanted the characters to have different colours to represent their special powers and marks. I kept trying contrasting colours, complementary colours, and other combinations,b ut it still didn't feel right. I came across a YouTube channel called Winged Canvas that had video explaning a lot of colour combinations. It gave me an idea of picking every second colour from a colour wheel.
changed to
Another problem I came across was that I made the outfit too dark and I noticed it when I posted my first post on Instagram. I would blend with all the lineart and darker background, so instead I changed it to brown like in the Borderlines 3 character designs.
For each of my characters I made a sheet containing the character from different sides, their name, age, height, powers and weapons. I am happy with each design, but now I question as to why did I do so many of them. I could do some basic background characters for the team of soldiers. I simplified some of them, but it will be a lot to draw. I don't want to change it even more because I like them and I think at least my comic is going to have detailed character design.
The 6 characters
Protagonist- The hero of the story who after a long journey will defeat the evil leader of the city and end the war.
Supporting character- He will be on the enemy team at first, but he will become friends with the protagonist and accompany her on her mission.
Side character- She is the protagonist's best friend who runs to save her in the story.
Side character- soldier of the enemy team
Side character- another soldiers on the team
Antagonist- he is going to be the bad guy undercover. He is on the good team, but he is the leader that is manipulating and brainwashing the people in his city to do bad things that he claims are good.
In Avatar art book I saw that they use real life animals as an inspiration for their creatures. I decided to take a can and mix it with dragon to create a Cagon. The monster that everyone fears.
Comic Sketches
I found it very useful to use different colours to sketch panels, backgrounds and speach bubbles. In the past I used to make sketchen in grey like pencil, but everything was always blend together and hard to ink in the end. Having everything in different colours helps me to organize panels.
The first change I had to make was adding a page of introduction to a story. Page one used to be current page two, but because the story didn't make sense starting with characters at random location fighting, I had to show some background story as to why they fight. Besides that I didn't came across any page at the beginning or middle that needed to be fixed.
Another issue I came across was drawing a splash page of the supporting character holding the protagonist in his arms after landing on the ground. It missed some information as to how and what happen. To fix it I used a template with two large panels to show how the supporting characters is catching the protagonist in the air to then land on the ground.
All these small issues made me realize that I have a problem with overlooking the sudden jumps in places or actions I tend to make in my comics. At the moment I need a second hand opinion to see my mistakes, but I hope overtime I can learn to spot these mistakes by myself.
To see full finished comic go to Finished Comic Page
When it came to colouring the pages I was already behind with the comic so I decided to keep it in flat colours with some variety of gradient background and neon glowing eyes and weapons. In the end it looked well. The gradient in the background made the flat coloured characters stand out and the neon glow made with a soft spray tool added some interesting dynamics like a bullet bouncing off the sword.
Another thing I learnt to use properly are the motion, focus and gloom line tools that helped me to bring some focus on objects and people as well as motion to characters in action and finally some gloomy mood that helped me to show the tense or stressful moments. For example the moment she falls down. The gloom line tool made it look very depressing like it's her last moments, she gave up on life.
Although Clip Studio Paint was a new experience for me, I learnt how to work in it pretty fast because of my previous experience with a Photoshop. Most of the tools are the same. A new thing I used in this project were the comic templates that saved me lots of time on hand drawing them. Some of them I changed or added additional panels within it, but I enjoyed this tool and I will use it again. I also used the basic comic font as it is free, suits the style of the comic and it's easy to read. I used side 10 to make sure is not too small since my comic pages are in american size comic 17x26cm.
For the Sound effects in my comic I used ready font called Crashlanding from a site called Blambot that was recommended to us last year for any fonts, bubbles and other comic additions.
After one of our workshops where we talked about dynamic poses I thought that's something I want to get better at and include it in my comics more often.
In page 9 I wanted a dynamic pose of the supporting character slashing the monster dog in half. I don't think I could take a reference photo at this angle with a mop like I did for page 2, but I knew where I could find similar poses with swords.Demon Slayer is a word to google, if you need cool pose reference with swords.
Reference from the internet
Final thoughts
Overall I enjoyed making this comic and try new things to make it look best as I could, so it sells well. I liked this project better than any others because of the freedom to write my own story and the fact that we will sell this comic at comic con gave me some extra motivation as it gives me the opportunity for people to notice me as a professional artist on a large event. I am looking forward to see if my business cards will work and how many people will my social media.
After trying Photoshop, Krita and Clip Studio Paint, I think I will continue working in Clip Studio for the next year as I think it works best for me and it is very easy and comfortable to work with.
Although I'm happy with how my comic turned out I wish I had more time to do more pages and add some fight scene in the very end. Unfortunately I run out of time because of too many details in my character design.
Example of marvel fridge magnets
Supporting products
There is not much time until comic con, but I have few simple ideas.
First idea was inspired by Marvel fridge magnets. They use their panels from the comics to use as a picture for the magnets. I was thinking I could make some fridge magnets with my comic images, that is if I find the site that does magnets or I could do stickers. Last year at comic con I saw plenty tables with stickers, which sell well because they are cheap.
Printing our comic
My group and I looked into printing our comic with a company that one of my friend used before for prints. It's called Mixam and it is fairly cheap and prints in a good quality. We already calculated that if we were to order 60 copies it would cost around 40 pounds per person. We already planned to place an order two weeks before the trip to make sure we will get the on time, right before comic con.
City design
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I wanted the two cities in my story to be complete opposites. One rich and modern, another poor and in the desert with less access to a technology. For the modern city I used pictures of a polish city Wroclaw as it is considered one of the most modern cities in Poland. It may not be as rich in architecture as Dubai, but it had beautiful buildings that inspired me to create my own little city.
Taking a reference from interned is easy, but a problem usually appears when you need the same city from different angles. That's why I used The Sims 4 to create two small cities that were a base for the illustrations I made. My plan was to use them in my comic for drawing different angles of the city. However in the end I didn't use as many reference as I thought I would.
The second city in the desert was inspired by pictures from Pinterest. I added some lights and a magic crystal on the top, so it looks like place where simple people can live their peaceful life.
