The next workshop involved finding a story worth re-telling. One that wasn't already popular and well known. I tried to come up with a story that was little known and many people had not heard of before. I decided to use the tale of "The rat cook". It is a story referenced in the book 'A song of ice and fire' by George R R Martin, where a character is telling scary stories around a camp fire.
The story is a comment on the importance of being an honest host to guests. It involves a king and his son visiting a castle. The king had done 'something' to anger the cook of the castle. Later when the cook was preparing the bacon pie for the king, he secretly killed the prince and put him in the pie and fed it to the king. He liked it so much he asked for another slice. The Gods punished the cook by turning him into a giant white rat that wandered the castle for the rest of eternity and he can only consume his own young to feed. The gods punished him because no matter what the king had done to the cook, it is a worse evil to kill someone you are hosting.
I thought this story had the right amount of horror and was interesting enough to draw you in to further want to understand the plot. I first did a rough storyboard of the story (below) so I could visualise the important aspects and story changing moments.
This storyboard helped me when looking for the most important parts of the story. Which I then tried to compress into three major events. This was helpful as it turned out the related workshop was based on compressing our collected stories into three individual images to explain the plot.
The first thing I looked at doing when given the workshop was to work out exactly what I want to show on each illustration, allowing the plot to be told, as well as being aesthetically pleasing and understandable. I drew this basic sketch of the characters to get a general idea of character design and layout of each image.
I was pleased with my first attempt of designing the story to fit into three images, and also, the fact we had a time limit to try and get the three designs finished before 4:00 meant I needed to consider time limitations and manage it best I could.
I completed the first image in a good time and felt that I was well on track with my time management. More importantly, I was pleased with the design. I am now getting used to using digital illustrating, and have moved away from this method of creating illustrations. It was nice to go back and experiment with this style again but I think that I much prefer my new styles and techniques of creating art pieces.
The next piece was carefully considered as I wanted the style to look like a children's book illustration, yet the theme contained gruesome aspects that may be inappropriate for the audience of the style. However, I wanted to remain true to the story, as well as send across the true genre that my story is about. I also like the design of the face of the cook in this scene, I feel I correctly ported the menacing and scheming emotions he would have.
I particularly like the stylised design of the giant rat I drew in this image. It fits with the chunky, blocky style of the images and shows emotion as I had hoped; looking pained and terrified at what is happening to him. I also accidentally created a border between the two halves of this
The next step after the workshop for me was to look at how I wanted to continue my designs. I thought the images I created were successful and the feedback I got from the peer group suggested that I should continue these designs too. I wanted to return to my usual style of digitally colouring my pieces, as I feel that for this narrative to be in my portfolio, I want it to truly represent my style and way I work.
I wanted to colour my designs true to the medieval, 'fantasy' style colour palette, such as using natural and low toned shades, mainly consisting of greens, browns, beiges and deep reds. I gathered some inspiration from television shows and films such as Game of thrones and The Lord of the Rings.
Here are some images I collected of clothes and medieval suits that
I then looked at colour palettes of table tops and food
I also remembered that there are lots of medieval designs of buildings and objects in the game 'Skyrim' which is based in a similarly fantastical world to the one my story is based on. I will use these collected images for colour grabbing and basing my designs on.
Adam Howling
I scanned in my designs from the workshop and continued to live trace them and expand them so I could edit the lines and make minor changes to which lines would be kept and which would be deleted. It also allowed me to create layers below the image that allows be to neatly and cleanly colour in my designs.
I spent a long time carefully selecting the colour palette and shades for the image and added the colour to the images. I feel that these improve the designs and add another layer of depth and 'fun' value to the illustrations. One thing that I believe I should revisit again is the violent, gruesome side to the middle image, as the overall design is in a children's book style and coloured in a similar way. I think that this makes the illustrations very simplistic and changes the audience from children to be more appropriate for an older audience. To change this, I could either remove the red blood from the image, or have a more suggestive way of illustrating what has happened to the prince.
I wanted to see what my images would look like in a comic strip layout with a black outline. I wanted to look at different ways of presenting my illustrations, best suited for my portfolio. I feel that these illustrations are different to my usual style of creating designs, as the lines are too inconsistent and less impressive, as they are too thin and dark, which now cannot be avoided when editing, as I would have to change the colour of all the lines at once to do so.
The more i referred to my trip tic narrative, the more I thought about how much I really like it. I think that it is too dissimilar to my usual style, and would be out of place with my style of working, which is usually thick lines and a more stylistic design. I deeply considered aspects such as time management and remaining time before the deadline, and came up with the decision to re-think this brief completely. I decided not to do the three images to convey the story, rather looked back to my very first set of storyboards, telling the story over a set of smaller, less detailed images that involve more emotion, as well as in my own style that I could use for my portfolio. I rethought my designs and stylised how I will construct this piece.
I decided that I wanted my set of images to tell the story in the form of an animated GIF file. I know how to create them online and have experimented with how to use them. this technique of using illustrations is new to me and out of my comfort zone, which is important, as it can still involve the style of work that I am used to creating, but is portraying it in a totally new way for me.
I looked over my story and decided on the vital points that could be illustrated that will tell the tale without using text. I think that not using text will be a challenge for me and will cause some difficulties, but hopefully the plot will still be clear without the use of words spelling it out.
I looked at how to create animated GIFs and found a website that makes it easy to create them, by importing images and selecting the size and rolling speed of the animation. GIFs are generally used to either animate a very small animation, flickering between a few points of movement, or to scroll through information creating a narrative (usually found online for explaining how to work out computer programmes). I feel that I could utilise this technique and apply it to my own work, which has seldom been done before.
I made this GIF to test how easy it is to make them and how plausible my idea was. I think that it is very doable, and simply requires the illustrations to put into the format.
I think this style is very cool and is much closer to how I work than the style of work that I created the three narrative images are. I particularly like the contrast between the thick outlines and the thinner 'blob brush' tool lines inside the outlines.
I further worked on these characters and coloured them in to refine them a bit more. I like my new design of the cook, as he is snarly and characterised. I feel these designs are true to my style of work and will prove to be a useful accolade in my portfolio.
When considering the designs for the final outcome, I talked to various people for their opinions on their style and designs. I noted mainly feedback regarding the cook and that he did not look 'ratty' enough. I tok this feedback on board and redesigned the cook's face before committing to the final designs. My next step was to go through every image and refine the sketches into the style shown here.
I also made a decision regarding the background that they should not draw attention away from the main characters. To conquer this I decided to have a style for the backgrounds that involved no thick lines, as well as being mainly colourless. I think that this will work well as I have done work before using this style of outlines focal points and pastel coloured, simple backgrounds as not to draw attention away. An example of this was some illustration work I did in the summer for a driving instructor to use on his website.
This work was useful towards developing my tile, as well as helping me understand producing narrative illustrations, as each event drawn in the cars are new developments in the character's learning experience. I learned about the importance of continuity and consistency in designs, as well as how to deal with real world clients. This was overall very helpful and may have a place in my portfolio too.
This was the first outcome of my GIF that I designed and put throughout the GIF generator. I am very pleased with the outcome and feel that it properly portrays my style and capabilities of designing images that narrate a story. I decided on the speed of the scrolling, size of the file and quality of the file. I decided to put the size and quality to the highest possibility and decided on the scrolling time giving the audience time to think and work out each frame in time for the next without it being too long or boring.
My next step was to lay the images out roughly in a comic strip layout that shows all the illustrations in one image. This would make the story was to read and understand at the pace of the audience, rather than having it revealed at my selected speed. Although, I feel that as a comic strip, it does not lend itself to the designs very well, and so I really prefer the GIF format.
I revisited the GIF images and decided to touch up all the areas I was unhappy with. This included a few lines on the chef's hat, reflecting the final form of the rat image so it flows better, reshaping the king in one or two slides and a few more minor things that improve the GIF. I also changed the speed of the scrolling of the images. This is because I showed the GIF to some peers for more feedback and this was one of the suggestions that I agree'd with. However, I may only belief the quicker speed of the images is better because I already know exactly what is happening and the play through of the story, so I showed it to people in my house and they said it was still clear and readable.
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