Posted by: mfreema @ 8:35 am
The end of the semester is quickly approaching. Below is a list of what you will need to submit for your final project and CD.
All Work must be submitted to me personally or placed in Patrick FitzGerald’s box by 5:00 Wednesday, April 30th. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Work to be submitted:
- Printed high photo quality versions of your 3 Page Spread of panels
- A PDF Process Book (This does not have to be printed)
- Archive of Original Files on CD
Below is a detailed description of what should be on the CD:
Create a folder with your name on it on the CD.
Inside that folder, create the following folders:
- Final Panels
- Process Book
- Archive
- Miscellaneous (Optional)
Inside the Final Panels Folder include the following:
- Flattened full resolution versions of your 3-Page Narrative (ready for print) at least 6″ x 9″ at 300ppi
- PSD versions of your 3 Page Narrative with layers intact (at least 6″ x 9″ at 300ppi)
Inside the Process Book Folder include the following:
A .pdf process book that gives the pitch for your narrative and development process. It should include the following content on separate pages:
- Title Page
- Written Pitch for your story
- Reference/ Inspiration Images
- List of Major Story Beats
- Environment Sketches
- Character Silhouettes and Character Design Process
- Character Turnarounds
- Storyboard Thumbnails and Color Studies.
- Final Three Page Layout of Finished Panels
In the Archive Folder include original high-resolution files for all work submitted in the Process Book.
These files should be organized in sub-folders with the following names:
- Pitch
- Reference
- Environment
- Character Design
- Storyboards
- Final Panels
On Monday, I will give a short tutorial on organizing your Process Book layout with Adobe Indesign to create the .pdf. If for any reason you are unable to work with Indesign, you can also use layer comps to create the PDF in Photoshop as previously shown in class. I urge you to have your content for the process book ready for Monday. It will not take more that 30 minutes to create the PDF in InDesign if you have everything already in organized in folders. You can also easily update it, if you need to make changes. Text should be in a .doc file or Text Edit File. We will discuss printing on Monday and Wednesday as well.
Create two outlines of events as listed below:
Due Monday, March 17th
Create an essential list of the major events in your narrative that convey the general story-line. No less than 3 events or more than 10 events should be included on the list.
Create a second list which tells your story in 30 events. This should be an exact number. You may need to clarify parts of the story to have enough events or eliminate less significant events to arrive at this number.
Please number each item on the list.
When I go shopping for something, I like to collect all of the versions of them in the store, lay them out and narrow them down. You might hear me quietly talking to myself with statements like these:
“This one is too expensive, this one is too cheap, I like the features on this one and this one, but this one kind of does both. Another may have a better warranty, but I trust this brand.”
The best choice isn’t always an obvious decision. Sometimes it is nuanced and requires that you are able to compare all of your choices at the same time. After going through that process, you will be more aware of your options and be able to make more informed decisions.
A basic design strategy is to generate-and-cull. In this process, to generate is to produce a set of solutions and to cull is to reduce their number through a process of selection. Simply put, it is a two-part process that you begin by creating or finding a broad range of ideas or solutions, and lay them out together to analyze and select the designs that work the best. This strategy is most effective at the beginning of the creative process. However, it can be used throughout your projects or on a continual basis.
Of course for practical reasons, you need to work in a way that allows you to quickly generate a large number of solutions. Thumbnail drawings are commonly used because they can quickly convey a sense of the whole design and it only takes a few minutes to produce several of them. It is not uncommon to produce anywhere between 100 and 200 thumbnail sketches to hash out ideas for a project. Some painters may create nearly 100 paintings to stimulate ideas for a single work, or instead select a few of the more successful pieces as final works and destroy or recycle the others. By generating more work and selecting the best of the bunch, these artists also take the pressure off of having to produce a masterpiece each time he or she steps up to the canvas.
There are several benefits to the production and analysis stages as well. You spend more time “thinking while making” rather than planning. Engaging in making and doing stimulates creativity, especially if you feel you have artist’s or designer’s block. The result is a visual record of your creative process. Consequently, you also open yourself up to more experimentation and new ways of approaching your work. In the analysis stage you aren’t as concerned with getting a shaky idea to work, but instead you can survey all of your ideas at once and weigh the strengths and weakness of one design against another, or mix and match elements of each. The creative process is both an analytical and intuitive process. Your first response is usually an intuitive response, at which point you can begin to articulate why one approach is more effective or suitable than another. As you clarify your creative goals by comparing and contrasting ideas, you will improve your understanding of your current creative decisions. In turn, it will help to improve your work, your ability to articulate both your concept and your creative choices. Likewise, developing the habit of broadening the number of solutions that you produce in projects will greatly increase your creative range over time.
The advantages of generating and culling during your creative process is that helps you to:
(1) Work through a number of ideas fairly quickly
(2) Compare and contrast their strengths, weaknesses, and overall feel
(3) Develop a more nuanced perspective about what you want the work to accomplish
(4) Articulate your creative direction more effectively
(5) Take chances and make less predictable or safe choices
(6) Increase the range of ideas that you come up with
(6) Reduce the stress of putting all of your eggs in one basket
How do you draw what you have never seen before? Have you ever spent time staring into the clouds while naming objects, places, and things as the clouds form new configuration. Have you ever tried to make shadow puppets on the walls with your hands? I’m sure you have tried at least one of these as a kid. Looking at abstract forms and creating relationships between what is in front of you and what you have the ability to visualize is a core process in speculative drawing.
Speculative drawing is simply a process of finding, recognizing, or generating forms as you search for design possibilities. In most cases you don’t have everything worked out in an image before it is translated into a drawing or painting. You may have an impression of what you want but these visual impression are often fleeting and difficult to consider as a whole. However, your marks are certain and once they are recorded on paper (or by other means) they remain for you to consider, analyze, and revise them. Chances are, unless it is some type of divine act, clouds are not really forming the objects that you interpret them to be. However, the variety and ambiguity of their shapes lend them to being interpreted in multiple ways. They are themselves physical things that we recognize and can name but through their abstract shapes they suggest other forms. They also can be a mirror to the way that you resolve forms because it is you who essentially makes the forms and associations not them.
The human mind naturally tries to make sense of abstract form. Consequently, observing or manipulating abstract forms can lead to ideas for representational imagery. Exercise your creative ability to discover original design solutions and form ideas by beginning with abstract forms. You may find that it helps you to break out of cliches that you have developed over time. Anything can be valid approach to creating base forms such as blobs of ink, a series of gestural lines, folded sheets of paper, irregularities in wood grain, or cracks in a sidewalk.
On some level, all drawings are both abstract and representational but when classifying works as representational or abstract this loose interpretation is not very helpful. Likewise, most drawings involve speculative drawing but some would be better specifically classified as speculative drawing than others. For our purposes, speculative drawing is the intentional search for or generation of abstract relationships in order to stimulate creative thinking, discover new design solutions, or invent new forms.
On one hand, speculative drawing is a natural component of the drawing process used in tandem with other ways of working to help you massage your elements into what you feel are the right relationships as you work. Even if you are drawing something in a fairly deliberate manner, your marks in the process of drawing and elements that are already laid down can and should actively influence your design decisions. On the other hand, when pushed, speculative drawing can be used as a separate method of working in order to generate forms as an initial part of the creative process. It is a natural part of the drawing process but you can emphasize it in such a way that it enhances your ability to generate forms, design solutions, and increase your flexibility as an artist and designer.