It's worth noting how different this and my semester 1 comic are from anything I've done before. They are the two most traditionally narrative stores and illustrative art. This is partly because I wanted them to reflect the art of their subjects. My previous pieces have used deliberately iconic images, and communicated through symbol, metaphor, metonym, and variations on repeated images.
The Uccello story is in fact like a stage play:with the exception of a single outdoor establishing shot, it happens in a three indoor sets, and focus on the interaction between the characters. My first use of Manga Studio's 3D models is well timed for this story, both because it needs realistic and clearly delineated figures to match my subject's paintings, but also because it needs a lot of body language: pointing at things; gesticulating; unconscious body language; power poses, etc. The 3D modelling has helped with this, by letting me try and refine a number of poses. It might seem that the 3D models remove the skill, but one still has to get the right pose, choose the clearest angle (so that e.g. limbs aren't hidden), get the characters in the right relation and 3D space; and and then overlay their distinctive character features. getting the right pose can include relatively complex things like getting a character to look like they are holding a board in one hand and drawing with the other. One also has to compose the figures against the background to avoid unappealing and/or confusing tangents.
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it I'm having problems with my web editor, which explains the strange layout of the post below (at time of writing), It won't let me resize or move photos. It may be a dip in the connection speed, or a problem at my site providers end, or something to do with editing that number of photos in a single post. It try later to fix it.
UPDATE - I managed to fix it by posting in it's chaotic state, and then closing and reopening the web editor. It helps in comics to make sure that your characters are recognisable, even when they are drawn small. A device I picked up some years ago from the work of (Corto Maltese creator) Hugo Pratt, is the use of hats. This might be implausible in a contemporary story, as hat wearing is less common, but in a renaissance story it seems natural, and indeed is a helpful signifier of period. There are six main characters in my story, plus a further six that only that appear in one or two panels each, and I've given them all distinctive headwear, based on either period images, or reproduction period hats. The exception to this is Cosimo Medici's assistants - I gave the two the same hat, a variant on their master's, which matches them being giving matching walks. Below are some examples of my characters' hats, and at bottom, some reference images of period replica hats. I've also tried to give the characters clothes that are distinguishably different, even before the colour, though I am also giving them distinctive palettes
.This page is pretty near finished to ink stage. What's happening in panel 2 is that Uccello (right) is backing towards the wall and his foot hits the armour - drawing it to Rocco's attention. I probably need to tweak the position of the armour parts in the main panel. I may also add an inset in that panel showing the detail of the foot hitting the armour.
I was please with the drawing of the collapsed stool, both as an aesthetic image, and also because the legs pointing in towards Uccello support the idea of the aggression towards him, and also acts as an obstacle were Uccello to try to make a run for it. It was actual quite difficult and time-consuming to draw the stool and arrange it against the tiled floor: there are so many compositional tangents to be avoided! However I am realising that page 17 show3s the stool upright. I think when I drew this page (a couple of weeks ago), I had in mind that Uccello would sit on the box (shown here bottom left). The box was seen in page 13, with Uccello standing on it for height - it hasn't just materialised for this scene! I do like the stool on this page. On the other hand, the stool will look better than the box in the next page, so I'll need to sleep on this. In some scenes of the room there is a large board against the wall on the right (in this panel). That would add some visual interest, but I quite like the blank wall - it keeps the focus on the figures and Uccello being 9literally) back against the wall. Hopefully the colour and a bit of texture will add just enough visual interest. Possibly some horizontal lines drawn on the back wall with perspective effect pointing toward the characters' eye level would help. However, in plot terms, it's the 'still nothing on the walls' situation fuelling the patron's annoyance, and thus Rocco's intervention. The armour here was drawn before the armoured Uccello on page 17. They are based on the same reference image, but page 17 is more resolved. I have a recurring theme of subjectivity and the partialility of perception, that fits well with the 'Eyes of the Artist' theme - in fact it's a key reason I chose it. On that basis I think the armour works as it is here; firstly because it's in the foreground, and therefore an out of focus, photographic depth of field effect applies; secondly, because although it comes to their attention at this moment, they haven't really examined it, whereas on the next page Uccello has put it on and Rocco has watched him, so it makes sense for it be more resolved. I still need to complete the armour item in the centre foreground (breastplate) which I pasted from an earlier drawing, and add the dropped paper in panels 2 and 3. In this sequence, Rocco (the patron's major demo) makes Uccello put on armour (which he has for reference) in an effort to put him into the scene. After drawing the first panel here where Rocco hands him the helmet, I decided it is better that he doesn't give Uccello the helmet, as it would make it even more difficult for Uccello to walk across the room. The second row will be turned into a single panel, showing Uccello in armour on the stool, imagining the battle around him), and i will have Rocco put the helmet on the painter there. This means I'll have to change panel 1 to remove the helmet - that won't be hard, as I drew it on a separate layer.
In panel 2, Rocco is pointing towards the stool being referred to - it looked clear with the 3D models, but less so now. I wanted to have Rocco not holding his sword on this page, to denote that the change in his approach from aggression to a more creative approach. However the sword would be useful in panel 2, for him to point to the stool. If he's not holding the helmet in panel 1, he can hold the sword, and so have it in his hand to point with in panel 2. In panel 1 I thought the armour, drawn enlarged, did not read well at actual size. This Mac doesn't show pages in Clip Studio actual size - they're either bigger or smallerFor panel 2, I eliminated some details and managed the line weights of individual elements. The simplicity of the breastplate (fully seen in panel 2) helps, I think. The colour should also help distinguish the armoured and unarmored parts, e.g chain mail underneath. Front CoverThe branding work I did in the Semester 2 Production module, focussed on my initial proposal for a an extended comic about 16th Century painter Vermeer, however since working on that my focus shifted to an anthology of shorter pieces about different artists. The main story for my semester 3 Major Project is the Uccello story which should be 20 pages. I've therefore started work on a cover design. The shape like a rectangle with a curved area at the top, is one versiosn of the shape Uccello's san Romano paintings are thought to be. While I think it works well as a design, it doesn't quite align with how I have drawn the room they were made for, so I will probably have to change it. This scene acts as a capsule version of the story: Ucello (left) making initial sketches; Uccello (centre) being threatened by sword wielding Rocco, and finally (right) at work on the painting. The painting will be at various stages of development, again moving (in traditional reading order) from perspective grids at the left to more resolved drawing or painting towards the right. I will have some 'drawn' scenes of conflict behind Rocco and centre Uccello, matching scenes in the comic. EndpapersI propose a variant of the front cover for the endpapers/inside covers which will be a done as a double page spread (though the reader will have to create closure on that by imagining the two separate inside cover pages as a continuos spread. This will let the painting in progress be seen on a larger scale without the figures in the way. Back Cover I also have an initial draft of a back cover (below), which combines the pitch for the story with a few key panels cut and pasted from the story, setting up what's at stake. ![]() Logo The back cover also has, I think, the beginnings of a logo,with the perspective lines behind the lettering. For the front cover, it will look better with the Paolo above the Uccello, and both aligned right do that the 'LO' of both words are aligned, as shown below. ![]() This definitely needs more work, but I think it is promising. In this version the perspective lines distract less from the more important word 'Uccello', and this design lets the vanishing point be more aesthetically placed with the first 'O' of 'Paolo', while still retaining a sense of symmetry, by being the centre of 'Paolo'. The word 'Uccello' needs to have greater emphasis - so I may try making 'Paolo' less opaque, or an outline. I will try different approaches with the perspective lines - making them white on the black of the lettering might work. I will try putting in the top left space a silhouette of a horseman - one of the most recognisable symbols of Ucello, being in not just the battle sequence, but perhaps his other most famous painting the equestrian portrait of Sir John Hawkwood, as seen in page 5 of my comic, below. Alternately I could put in that space his birth and death years, as in versions of my Vermeer logo. Below are the Uccello paintings that story is about. I see the defining stylistic feature as clear graphic shapes with understated modelling. For example, the main horse reads most strongly as a silhouette, even though it has a degree of modelling. This is generally true of all the horses, although the mid-tone horse to the right shoes a degree of backlighting - perhaps to suggest that, unusually for Uccello it is not seen in pure profile.
Typically for Uccello, it uses single-point perspective, and I stick to this in my comic. While they are impressive battle scenes, they are seen from outside the action, as if looking through a window. I reference this in my comic through Uccello's friend/rival Donatello, a sculptor known for reviving the classical style of sculpture 'in the round', who is less impressed than others by Uccello's approach to space. I aim to reflect this in my rendering, by using single point perspective , and mainly flat colours with understated modelling. Following discussion with the tutor, I will look at overlaying age effects: for example a pale colour: a paper or parchment effect, etc. I had expected these pages 11 and 12 to be simple and quick to produce. Initially my thinking for these pages was to create an interlude in montage form. There were two basic aims to this: to create an impression of the artist at work; and to convey the idea that he was ‘lost’ in these developmental stages over a period of time, while he was (as seen in page 10) under pressure from a patron to get work ‘on the wall’. There are almost no extant sketches or records of Uccello’s process, so I had to ‘reverse engineer’ his process, that is - work backwards from the finished paintings to imagine his studies and how these were brought together,. In particular (as it is such an important aspect of his work) how he created the perspective space. I moved from the idea of a simple set of sketches to showing the artist making them. From this I developed the idea of an ‘iconostasis' effect, where the viewer quickly takes in a meaningful totality to the page before focusing on Individual panels. I proposed to make the page work as a single scene of the room, yet broken into 3 full-width panels that would represent different moments. The top part would show Uccello up a ladder drawing the upper part of the scene, the middle panel have him standing working on the lower part of the same drawing, and the lowest panel would show him drawing from props arranged on the floor. The next challenge that arose was to have some discursive text about the process. I initially thought about writing Uccello’s thoughts in caption boxes. However I have only done that at one point in the story, on the first page where he thinks ‘how did I get myself into this?’, triggering a back-story flashback. While that was a precedent within the story, it still felt somewhat forced to use it more extensively here. My next approach was to have him talking to someone, and I wondered who. I had already used the device of him ‘lecturing’ his wife to explain the principles of perspective, and her bored lack of interest/understanding ironically pre-empted the possible reaction of some readers. However, I felt it might be repetitive to simply do this again, so came up with the idea of having different people speaking to him in each panel. This solution achieved my initial aim of a montage conveying jumps in time; and allowed for reappearance of supporting characters.
This page is part of the narrative lull while the key antagonists (the patron Salimbini, and his major-domo Rocco) are away, and involves all the remaining characters: Uccello’s wife (name unknown); his rival Donatello; and his former master Ghiberti. These characters appear at (or near) the beginning and end of the story, so it seemed structurally helpful to include them in the middle too. The characters are each variants on what John Truby calls the character role ‘ally/opponent’ - they are critics of aspects of Uccello's work: for his wife - his inattention to paying commissions; for Donatello - his approach to space, and for Ghiberti, his lack of movement and action. As a learner writer, I had tried to follow Truby’s model of scene construction {which I worked into an aide-memoire table, Figure x] The element of conflict in their discussions keeps the pressure up on Uccello. I seemed to lose a week or more struggling with the comic, which explains a bit of a gap in the blog posts. Once I started making some tentative progress i didn't want to interrupt that by blogging.
I think this was a combination of a a few factors: reaching a key scene that required a different approach; related to that, normally if I'm at all stuck or bored I just jump to another page, but this scene informed the pages that came after, so it didn't seem logical to create them with doing the earlier page first; I think having started my Major Project straight after handing in Semester 2 work, my inner beach bum was rebelling - needing a break; finally I think other things on my mind unrelated to the story were holding me back. So this combination of things did lose me some time, and I didn't want to sidetrack my fragile concentration into blog posts. Looking back it wasn't all fruitless, as with some time investment, I did come up with something far superior to what I originally planned. The following posts look at this in more detail. This post outlines some of my thinking around page 5. For the main panel, the plan was to paste in one I had already drawn for the 4 page version. Once again, this needs some refinement to work at that size. I've already redrawn a line art version of the horseman painting, so I'll replace that with that. The original version I'll use for the earlier scene when Uccello is talking about it to his wife, and they are just imagining the painting - it'll make sense there to be impressionistsic, as i their inexact memory of it. The figures need reworked. I may start by doing just the two (literally and narratively) central figures, on the basis that there is a logic to the others being 'out of focus'. The architectural feature on the lower right is completely wrong! I pasted it from an earlier panel, and thought I could 'Transform' it to fit the scene, as I did with the 2D image of the horseman - wishful thinking! I originally drew this as a set of coloured layers, each drawn rather than simply filling in between lines, so a significant amount of work for a minor detail. Also the floor pattern took me a long time (and is based architectural drawings of the actual location), but doesn't look great at this size: it may be I can 'take it down' through use of colour (i.e not having it against a white background). Just as an experiment I 'transformed' and superimposed the original image. This was several colour/tone layers so not easy to replicate by other means. I selectively erased, distorted, and lightened parts to make it look better. I think the painterly out of focus effect works well in this panel, as the image is not being looked at by the characters, and for the reader, is more part of the general mis en scene: they saw in it the last page and don't need to get the detail again here. I recreated the figures, for the version above. Despite them being small, I used 3D models: having established that level of realism elsewhere, I decided to stick to it. Also, it gave me some practice in using a more exaggerated perspective on the figures. I managed this okay on the first three of figures I did, (those on the left), and it was harder for the group to the - perhaps because the perspective was steeper on them. In the end I got something satisfactory for the front right figure, and slightly tweaked that for the pair behind him,. As well as saving some time it suited what was being depicted: a powerful man with his two 'followers'. I made the floor slightly paler, which seemed to help. I will look at this afresh tomorrow, and see if I can make any tweaks.
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AuthorGraham Johnstone ~ Master of Design - Comics and Graphic Novels student 2016-17 Archives
August 2017
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