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Descriptions of final comics

Overwhelmed / “I just feel like.”

Fear / “It was still scary”

The Point / “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Strong / “What do you want to be?”

Broken / “I’ve broken everything.”

Cool / “One day you’ll be cool”

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Total Giovanni - Can't Control My Love

There’s something really warm about this video, I think it’s in the grainy quality and the colours - it’s the kind of quality you’d get from the TV that’s smashed at the start.

I really want to draw stills from the slow-mo fight.

The parts of this video with the group of kids gets at something that I’d really like to try and find in my work. A really natural view of youth, things that kids do, the way they act around each other, the way they act on their feelings. A collection of smaller moments that make you feel warm and good.

The main character reminds me of the protagonists of a lot of kid movies I watched growing up - and recently - he has a lot of heart and finds strength in himself. This is what we often try to teach children, or at least what we tell children “stand up to that bully” “you can do it!” they’re quite empty as words, but just as with the kid in the video who gets encouragement from seeing something in a game, when you watch a film and relate to a character and they overcome their problems it makes you feel all the more assured that you could do the same.

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Panda Bear - Boys Latin

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Frames

The frames I am handing in are not the final ones as many of them have a small error on one of the corners. Also since experimenting with using magnets to hold them up I have realised that they will need two holes in the back instead of one, as these frames have. I will be laser cutting the new frames next week to prep them in time for the show. 

I will also be making a greater quantity to match the number of comics I will be putting up.

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Colour tests on ‘Fear’

Starting this comic I made a small palette of what I considered to be ‘faded plastic’ colours which gave a dull summers day quality that I think matches with the setting of the comic.

The top two sets of images shows me applying a pinkish filter over the image, in doing so this drew the colours together a little better - especially the skin tone and yellowy paving colour. My only problem is that in doing so it’s muted the green and blue far too much, i don’t mind the blue as much but the green is a colour i definitely want to use for the grass/diving board. I’m not sure if I’ll have to either meet in the middle to keep the colours working together or just use the green on top of the filter.

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WAITING - New York at night in 3,454 oil paintings - THE SEA THE SEA from The Sea The Sea on Vimeo.

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Finished gif for ‘The Point’

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While putting my animations together on my website I noticed that the first animation I did [the eye one] didn’t look very much like the others, which all follow a similar style of work. While I still like the eye one and feel that it gets across the overwhelming-technology side of the comic I felt that this image in particular was stronger in conveying a sense of Threshold and overall would look better among the other gifs that I’ve made so far.  

I think it’s more important on my emmabodker.com site where I’m currently only publishing these gifs to keep a certain matching look among them and make them work somewhat as a set. However on my tthresholdd blog I think the eye gif works, as each image is viewed separately.

Now I just need to think about which version I like best. While the second collaged one matches with the original image and its textures I feel like the black hand-drawn version has more movement to it, it’s a little bit less blocky than the grey. However the grey probably looks the calmer of the two... I’m going to ask for some other opinions.

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What I want to do next

After being asked relentlessly what I want to do ‘when I grow up’/post-uni by everybody that I meet I think I have more of an idea after this current project.

I know that I don’t want to work alone, I find it boring and I struggle to motivate myself. This is one of the reasons I decided to work with Anna on a couple of projects this year and I think that doing this was very helpful and really encouraging to me. 

In the future I would enjoy being part of a team, working towards a final product - particularly on work that will reach out to people and help them on a personal level. I think that works like comics and film are absolutely key to helping people, especially young people. Personally for me I found ‘Hyperbole and a Half’s work on depression had a huge effect on me. The more that people talk about issues that all of us face in these non-intimidating forms, such as comics, the easier it is for an audience to access. 

Making gifs in the way I have for this project is something I haven’t done before, I’ve drawn gifs that are usually just a bit silly but I’ve never tried to put meaning into them before and it’s something I’ve really enjoyed. I love animating, but not for long enough to do anything full length - i would lose my mind! Gifs are perfect!

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Using social media for research

keeping up to date on instagram - get instant feedback on images.

pintrest for research

tumblr for research

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I know let’s animate stuff that’ll be so fun! yaaaay

Other than the blinking background this one’s the smoothest version yet, however i need to thicken up the lines a bit to at least match the hands!

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Head models~ I’m not sure how I want to draw the face yet but these are the placements~ I might make the pauses on each side a little longer as I think ti’s a bit quick. I don’t think i need to add any more frames in between now though. I might need to make the head a bit bigger to fit the body? Not sure. Gonna have to just see how it looks.

I want to give this character an androgynous look, though Anna suggested I draw myself as it’s based on a story from my own memories.. I will see.

Needs to be a little smoother - may add some in between frames to see if that helps or try redrawing some parts.. i think the outer shape of the head is ok and smooth enough but perhaps the facial features are what’s making it look just a little bit janky.

Definitely needs to be slower so I may need to add more frames just so that it looks smooth when slow. Keeping the face very simple, may make the hair wibble a little [when i finally draw hair on]

I think the size is finally right though. Maybe bigger? I think the big jumper throws it off, i’m trying to go by the hands.

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White phones

Transparency on slides

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Covers

My ‘Overwhelmed’ comics looked unfinished without a cover but I don’t feel like I want to give them a /proper/ cover. I feel like these aren’t full length stories, they’re parts of stories, so giving them a cover just wouldn’t make sense.

On this particular one I also really liked being able to see the first line of text, I’m not sure if this will be present on the others it will depend on each one individually, it’s intriguing. 

Keeping this in mind I wanted to test using something semi-transparent as a cover and tracing paper worked perfectly. Depending on how flat the cover is against the front page you can either read the first line or you can just about see the text without being able to read it properly.

I then considered printing or drawing on the tracing paper as a way of obscuring the text further and adding some texture/detail to the cover. These things don’t have titles so if I’m going to put something on the front, it can’t be text. They don’t have titles for the same reason that they don’t have covers. I’ve given them nicknames [Overwhelmed, Fear, Trespassing etc.] 

I think before I decide finally on this I need to have copies of as many comics as I have finished - or at least the front pages of as many as possible - so that I can try to identify some sort of uniform look amongst them and see what works best. I am swaying towards the drawn textured cover.

The tracing paper gives me the feeling of a memory fading in and out of focus, then you open it up and it’s clear and you can look at it. It’s similar in that way to my slides, pick them up to see the full picture.

This also made me prefer the white version. I’ll print it on nicer white paper later to see what I think.

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Trying

Trying is a word that has cropped up a few times throughout the last phase of this project. I have a couple of quotes at least that use it, Tiny Furniture’s “I’m a young young person and I’m trying really hard.”, A Bag of Hammers’ brilliant monologue about being a good person “Someone who was trying” hits the nail on the head [HA]. While thinking about these quotes and why I felt the need to talk about them I was reminded of watching the Simpson’s episode “Bart gets an F”  as a kid - the only Simpsons episode i actually remember the name of - in which Bart studies for his test but still gets an F, and I’m pretty sure follows it up with a quote about how he was ‘really trying this time’. 

The idea that I’m trying to get at is that as a child you’re often told that if you try your hardest things will work out - and for a good portion of your young years this is probably true. If you fail at something maybe it’s because you didn’t put your all into it. However there comes a point where you’re really trying and you still fail. Or something bad happens, something completely out of your control, but because you’re a kid you can’t help but blame yourself. 

It’s a really scary feeling.

Finding out that even if you try your hardest you still may not succeed, things might not go as planned. That sometimes bad things are going to happen for no good reason.

What makes it sting, particularly in that Simpson’s episode, is that it seems unfair. This might be a kid’s first taste of life being genuinely unfair to them. That’s why it hurts more than just regular old failure, it feels like an injustice, it feels cruel.

It’s too late now for me to try and work this theme into a comic, it may have an influence in one of the later ones but it’s unlikely. However it’s a theme that I’m very interested in exploring further, potentially in a longer more detailed way than the work I am currently making. I want to really try and get behind this feeling, perhaps offering some catharsis to those of us still upset by Bart getting that F.

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Magnet problems

10mm perfect size but 0.58kg pull is not enough

Magnet update:

Got some 1.1kg magnets and they are still not enough to hold a frame up. However if i stack a 0.5 onto them they become strong enough. My problem then though is that they become very difficult to pull away from the wall. 

To fix this problem I am going to embed / or just attach to the back / two magnets in each phone. One at each end. This will hold them straight, keep them in place, and make them [hopefully] far easier to pull from the wall - which is important, as if something resists being pulled too much people are going to feel as though they aren’t supposed to be picking it up or they just won’t want to for fear of breaking them.

I don’t think this will cause too many problems aesthetically, as the nails will still be minimal.