alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

comic covers, something that has been synonymous with comic books themselves as well as the be associated with the stories they accompany

comic covers also show as an interesting progression of a characters history as well as the different interpretations that artist give on their designs throughout the decades 

no matter what incarnation these comics were made in all these covers have dynamic and distinct posing that’d you expect from the character, the last one also has a semi narrative within the cover itself which is also a common thing you see in some comic covers, as they can sometimes prelude to the events of the story itself 

usually if a property has multiple comic runs from different companies  there will be a lot of different art styles and aesthetics used on these characters, such can be seen between the different art styles and aesthetics between the archie and IDW runs of sonic the hedgehog 

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

A scanner darkly is a film about Bob arctor an undercover agent who is on a mission to investigate groups involved in the drug trade. In the process, he becomes a drug addict and tries to cover his identity

The aesthetic look of a scanner darkly feels like a sort of weird mesh of 2D animation and real life acting, creating an incredibly bizarre but fascinating affect when you see it in motions, colours and silhouettes warp and move depending on the characters position or lighting of which the live action actor is in it created a very surreal look and feel which matches the tone of the movie within itself

Link to the film itself to get a better idea of what I mean

https://youtu.be/hkjDUERgCQw

The surrealist imagery of scanner darkly and it’s blend of animation and live action acting is a solid comparison between my project idea of characters appearing more cartoony in a certain persons vision.

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and here we are it’s finally complete my comic page concept the first real one I’ve ever done so far digitally so It’s to get my foot in the door as well as have something nice to wrap up my project with 

starting with the line it was pretty simple to do especially since stevie nor earl are super complex characters designs wise helped further streamline the process of doing it 

as for colouring it was time consuming but still quite simple with the harder questions being in where to place shadows  for the walls of the scene I had a base colours and then used a the dry paint tool texture with a darker versions of the colour to make the walls look more worn in the imagery 

this is the part where I give you a detour in why it’s good to have backups or fail safes for your stuff as during the colouring process I had accidentally gotten the cloud file damage due to a computer restart and thus all my work had just been whisked away in an instant I had a saved picture of the line art files however that wasn’t nearly affected due to me separating most of everything in terms of characters and backgrounds into different layers which means the colouring wouldn't of had been nearly as good looking, however I had lucked out as since it was a cloud file I could head onto my browser to log into adobe creative cloud there and download my exact file back onto my laptop, this was a massive luck out for me and is also a lesson into investing in different backup plans in case certain things fall flat, a corrupted file a messed up usb or the wifi going out at just the wrong time could cost you hours of process if you don’t have a back up plan so do be weary.

moving onto colouring after that whole thing was done was again time consuming but manageable I also used the picture frame to include an Easter egg to my previous project and the two main characters of it, blob and trixel I’m aware no one will get it but I find it funny to place Easter eggs like that in my stuff for some reason 

here’s a picture of the comic without the subtitles 

also to close off with subtitles each is unique in a way Jesse's are regular stevies are angular and look radio esc which fits with his existence as a television and earls are in the pen colour of his other form and the background lines to signify his role as one of the mutant creatures

also one more thing stevies speech patterns are a two way reference the way he speaks was inspired by spamton a character who was a living caricature of a spam email who used parts of sales pitches as communication 

as well as stevie interludes being references to quotes and tropes associated with television that might fit the situation for instance the “hoopla” quote was based off the quote of an old sponebob episode.

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This is something I’ve forgotten to talk about for the longest time and I don’t know why, tf2 is a subject I’ve already talked about in terms of world and character designs however one thing that actually relates incredibly well with my project is the video of one of the games most iconic characters meet the pyro

Link above is very important to understanding the context of what I’m talking about

https://youtu.be/WUhOnX8qt3I

Meet the pyro is about the titular class who burns down the blue team however unaware to anyone else he perceives the world in a far different way, with pyros vision that has been dubbed ‘pyrovison’ being this cartoony silly and colourful world with little cherub versions of the mercs that masks the reality of what’s actually going on

The whole idea of a characters vision being very inconsistent with reality is literally one for one with my idea with faulty visions and I’d probably say that this was one of the main subconscious inspirations for my project as I was a fan of tf2 for years before this project.

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

Oh boy I can’t find a computer to do the project that’s due tomorrow so I guess I’m doing research on my phone right now

Fallout (surprised it took me this long to talk about it is a series about a character surviving in a nuclear apocalypse while fighting off mutants and different factions throughout the wastelands

The wastelands and that decrepit dessert vibe that is given off is a similar vibe to the world I had in mind for the world of faulty visions you can even see in the cover for the series which

The creature design is also a cool thing as it shows us these very strange creatures that were a result of years of radiation creating entirely new species

The series also has a cute little mascot in the form of vault boy this mascot for the series in the form of vault boy this little 50’s style dude who is completely out of place in the crazed and violent world of fallout which makes me think of how Jesse perceived things in a more cutesy way while in reality their uncanny and creepy.

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ok updates lets give em out

these are some current new work I’ve made on my current comic sketch in which I further update the initial sketch 

some stuff was pretty clear to adapt even from the beginning and some stuff was more difficult specifically Jesse as there was more to design and as mentioned humans are my strong suit

it’s going solidly so far and I’ll continue with it tonight as I’m kind of on a time limit now and I really need to get this done maybe I’ll make another blog later tonight maybe I’ll just update tomorrow and go over all the changes I made whether one I choose expect more updates very very soon 

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ok 3 days till turning everything has to be turned in panic mode is in full engage right about now so let’s formulate a plan before the alarm in my head drowns out any and all forms of reasonable thought

I have multiple sketches some are covers ones a comic page since the whole concept is a comic book basic logic says i make the comic page first I wanted to make 2 but hey time is tight right now so I don’t really have the time if I get the comic done I can get another cover done if I really push it.

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

Ok long time no post time for some follow ups on that weird precious post

I ended up sketching out some ideas for how I may want it to look, but I’ve had to do it in a sketchbook since I’ve been away from my drawing tablet for the last week

The first one is probably my favourite of the bunch, granted the stars could look better. and the placing of the tentacles look kind of off to me but overall I actually think it looks pretty alright I imagine if I actually went through with this I’d make a cover piece that showed it to be incredibly large and literally towering over Jesse while she’s standing over a canyon or something.

Seconds ones kinda worse in every way I wanted to mess around with having multiple eyes to possibly go for an all seeing look and make the tentacle thinner and more realistic but eh I wasn’t a fan of it at all so I never really finished this sketch I’d probably consider this the worst of the three

Last one is probably the most Kirby final boss inspired as it’s just an orb the stars oh it are pretty good but overall yeah it’s too plain for me

In the end I probably won’t go with this ending as it just feels very left field for the sake of being left field, it really doesn’t connect with anything and really just feels like a joke ending, also it,d probably be a rush to cram something like this in there, so yeah I messed around with this idea it didn’t work out but I figured I’d document this since it’s pretty important to write down thought process and ideas and all that.

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the concept of character coming to life or gaining sentience is a common theme in a variety of media 

for instance in phantasia where mickey would provide a broom sentience to do his dirty work for him 

https://youtu.be/VErKCq1IGIU?t=110

more strange and zany examples being the robotic characters of the futurama series, who have advanced to the point where their on a near level of emotions and charactistic as humans but also have their own version of the devil and hell which is located in new jersey for some reason 

onto more conventional ideas of innominate objects coming to life we look back to Disney with beauty and the beast a film I’ve never really watched however their features a slew of designs featuring a slew of designs of sentient item people 

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ok this feels like a weird thing to discuss but I just felt like saying some stuff on the fmp at large as I’ve come up with an ending that I really like but feel might conflict with the rest of the projects tone 

the idea sort of being that while the rest of Jesse's delusions were real, turn out that Stev-E was not only real but in fact a cosmic super entity with infinite, power that wanted to test the remainder of humanity if they were worthy of having the events that ended the world reset and replaced from the timeline by posing as a smaller living life form and seeing how they’d react to them, and by Jesse's showing of comradery and care gave the entity the realisation that while has sums of people that are selfish there are also those who practice selflessness and comradery and that’s what gives it the go ahead to turn back the clock and fix everything, the story could end with jesse back in her apartment she lived in before the apocalypse her memory’s of the apocalypse erased and maybe getting a call from her friends if she wants to hang out and when she leaves it cuts to a shot of her old tv that she mentions still needs to replace, that same TV being the model that Stevie had as a body before the door shuts and the story ends 

now this is a interesting idea in that it’s weird and off the walls and very comic-y in it’s absurdity but at the same time I may feel that it may be too off course, however there may be some alternatives ending that revolve around a similar idea like when the space being claims to rewind time it turns out jesse was just waking up from a coma after she attempted to do a backflip down a flight of stairs and cracked her skull and was in a month long coma or just go full absurdist route and the entire comic was just the result of her doing shrooms and going on a weird trip

either way I kinda wanna mess with the idea of the whole world either being reset or flipped on it’s head by the end so I might keep this in mind 

also for what I want the space entity to like I’m thinking something along the lines of zero 02 in being that of a very strange and unnatural cosmic being 

 I might design a few sketches for what it may look like in the coming weeks though this idea is pretty weird to begin with 

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

they live is a film about  Nada (Roddy Piper), a wanderer without meaning in his life, discovers a pair of sunglasses capable of showing the world the way it truly is. As he walks the streets of Los Angeles, Nada notices that both the media and the government are comprised of subliminal messages meant to keep the population subdued, and that most of the social elite are skull-faced aliens bent on world domination. With this shocking discovery, Nada fights to free humanity from the mind-controlling aliens. this trailer also gives a solid but vague point about what the film is about 

https://youtu.be/iJC4R1uXDaE

the idea of the worlds elites being alien invaders who seek to rule humanity by giving secret messages to subdue them making many elements of their modern reality somewhat stages is interesting and does draw some interesting parallels with my fmp with some elements of the world being fabricated though it splits off far more the more each messes around with that idea   

[alfie-etherington-fmp-year-1]

The matrix or at least the initial one is about this computer programmer who fights a computer program who has entrapped humanity in a simulation of reality known as the matrix

There’s a certain idea here worth examining for this specific concept and that’s the scene which involves the red and blue pills, the red allowing him to see the truth of the world around him and the other allowing him to remain in wilful ignorance,

A possible idea for a finale for my fmp could mirror this concept of Jesse being given the opportunity to either accept the truth of her situation and regain her sanity again or remain unhinged and have her visions soften the gravity of her situation

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loving Vincent is aesthetically as of current a one of a kind film, the first ever paint animation film with 65,000 oil paintings being created for the film itself many aspects and scenery in the film also pay homage to his work  

https://youtu.be/CGzKnyhYDQI

the process of painting and animating was split however with a combination of real life acting and cg animation being blended with oil painters and their brush strokes who could properly emulate Vincent's style 

the film also experimented with the different aesthetics of Vincent's paintings and changed things such as how the main character is drawn when entering the scene of one of Vincent's pieces as well as changing how a location looks depending on context of the film 

there were also scenes in the film where it would flashback to Vincent's life which would be done in a black and grey colour pallet, the team had to come up with a lot of these locations themselves as Vincent had not created paintings based off the any of the places in the flashback.

all information for the production of the film was learnt from the behind the scenes video done by the team which was invaluable in how much it had taught me https://youtu.be/QE9Q_7bfHsM

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whoa this a weird one to be covering, released back in 1983 the dungeons and dragons tv series was made as a an adaption of the well known board game.

the series is about this group of kids and teens who get sucked into this medieval fantasy world and they meet this guy called the dungeon master who gives them advice on stuff.

the idea of characters escaping into a vague surreal fantasy does give go with that very child's fantasy and escaping from reality into your imagination does have some connections to my fmp so I’ll give it that

this video helped with my research 

https://youtu.be/XHc9d2Nihuk

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I kill giants is a comic about Barbara Thorson, a troubled fifth grader, who escapes into a reality where she slays giant kaiju’s as a sort of escapism, so as you can see there’s already some connection as ,my fmps main character Jesse also has an altered view of really as a means of escapism.

info acquired from here:https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/i-kill-giants 

aesthetically the comics got a feeling that it blends western and eastern aesthetics within itself the faces and action shots as well as the lack of colour gives a very manga vibe, while the proportions and general look of the characters have a very western look to it, as well as the limbs being kinda long and noodly which I like, it’s a very strong aesthetic 

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finding an audience for your creation is an important thing to have in mind before you create it, if not it may create more tonal whiplash later on if a creator suddenly decides they want their creation to delve into darker territory’s theming wise which may clash with an existing more silly tone so knowing who your making a thing for is kinda important 

some good examples of knowing your age group are spongebob and ren and stimpy 

both have a more comedic focus but both feel very different in their main target, while early spongebob especially has some incredibly good and funny writing it still is a kids show, something that’s very fun for the whole family really anyone at any age can watch and understand SpongeBob and that’s a testament to it’s long running appeal this clip down here I testament to that 

https://youtu.be/PIje5NPIdqg

ren and stimpy is cut from the same cloth but the more you look into it’s contents the more you can see how it’s fairly ediger than the other shows nick had back in the day 

from it’s style and jokes ren and stimpy felt like something that while a kid could enjoy it’s something that was likely intended for a bit older of an audience with it’s type of humour

in terms of who I want to target with my comic concept faulty visions I’d definitely say it’s in a more ren and stimpy area than spongebob, something that’s targetted to slightly older kids with some of it’s themes and story concepts being quite dark without going full on teen rating. 

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bongo comics is comic company founded by renowned creator of Simpsons and futurama matt Groening back in 1993 the company was primarily known for it’s creation of both Simpsons and futurama comics, both being very beloved creations of matt and hell I’ve even talked about the cover art for the comics of futurama on a previous post 

while the company was mostly dedicated to creating comics based on matts already established series the company did occasionally produce original works like hopsters tracks and mylo hyloto 

unfortunately in July of 2018 it was announced that bongo comics would be shutting their doors with the Simpsons Comics #245th issue being their final comic produced by the company before closing their doors for good.

it’s kinda interesting to look back at this, to not only learn of both the simposns and futuramas prolific comic history but also the original stuff which looks pretty neat.

a majority of the companys information and there works were learnt from this wiki page which helped a lot in the research.

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Bongo_Comics_Group