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Front and Back covers of Wildhunt

Making these covers was pretty easy. I opted for a simple cover so I could get it done before the project ended but if I had more time I might dedicate more time to make a cover similar to my pirate cover back in the first project of the course.  I started by sketching and inking in my sketch book just like I did for my pages and then scanned it into photoshop. Afterwards I needed to colour Yuga in and took my time with this while taking inspiration from Trunks from Dragonball. once coloured I added text and the volume number then worked on the back. Here I took the first panel of the manga to put some illustration on the back. I then got a random barcode on google and also started writing random codes on the back to make it look authentic. For some added Japanese look to the manga I wrote some Kanji which is also an Easter egg that says “I love monster hunter” with all this done I added a red background as I thought it looked good and was inspired by some of the Dragonball manga’s that are done the same and the covers were complete. 

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Manga back covers

For my manga the last part is making the cover but I forgot I need a back so looking at some of my favourites for ideas this is what I've found that I like. 

Dragonball has simplistic approach just having the characters that are in the story and a simple sketch of a character on the back. I like the red too it is very eye catching which can help it be noticed on a shelf. I don't like the lack of blurb. 

Noragami also has a simple approach with some stunning art of Yato and Hiyori as well as a smokey black background and a simple boxed blurb. This looks very satisfying and is probably what I would use most for inspiration on my back cover.

My hero has a really cool back cover with art and a western comic like look to it as the artist behind My Hero loves western comics. This is impressive and I would love to make a back as detailed as this but I simply don't have the time to do so. 

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Week 11

This week had the completion of page 7 and also began one of the best and worst weeks I have ever had. Anything good that came from this week had also major downsides and effected my mental health greatly. For example I finally got a job. It happened on accident and was for a job I didn't even apply for but I had to accept because it has been two years almost trying to get a job. This is really great because I can finally earn money however it is all mornings where I need to get up at 5am to make it to work. I would go to bed earlier to compensate this but then the second major problem of the week stops me and that is my parents. In my house I am not allowed under any circumstance to run a bath before 10pm. This is because if I dare to have a bath before my parents they will be extremely angry especially my step dad because I used all the hot water which isn't okay if they have freezing cold baths but is entirely fine if I do as well as doesn't matter if I don't get good sleep but does if they do. It is a very big problem where their health seems to matter more than mine. Also stress between us through personal things has caused multiple arguments that I get blamed for starting even though my parents raise their voice first since I try to avoid conflict as much as possible. All the stress has caused me to be extremely angry, tired, paranoid and I have not been able to focus. I haven't had more than 3 hours sleep in a night if I'm lucky for a week and will not get any decent sleep all of this week either because of having to work as well as college now. I don't think I can complete this project the way I wanted which really annoys me and caused me a mental breakdown not even an hour into the college day. I feel like everything is falling apart around me and that I am at my roads end. What a pathetic waste to the project I planned this whole week just pisses me off so much and my disappoint is beyond measure that I couldn't do the project I planned.

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Page 7

Creating page 7 was a much smoother process than page 6. I even recorded a video of me making the page from beginning to end but I didn't have time to edit it and when I tried to upload it to YouTube my upload speed was so slow it would of taken days to do which I didn't actually have time to do plus I didn't want to leave the PC on for days at a time. Instead I will use screenshots from the video to show the process of this page as well as my cat rudely interrupting me in the process. I am glad I could of gotten on more page completed before the project finished though I am still disappointed I couldn't make even more. 

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Week 10

Week 10 saw the completion of page 6 (finally) this page has majorly ruined my plans for my FMP and will guarantee that I do not hand in anywhere near the amount of pages I wanted for the final piece.

For week 11 I want to make page 7, possibly page 8 and also the front cover  though front cover should be the priority as making a mini comic regardless of the amount of pages is the end goal.

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Week 9

This week was rather stressful. Due to an unforeseen struggle with page 6 I did not develop any pages other than multiple attempt sketches for page 6. This page had a difficult building to draw in the background and getting it to look even decent was extremely hard. Hopefully this page can be finally completed as page 6 has completely ruined the amount of pages I could of finished if I got page 6 done quicker and easier. (the page 6 post is lower down and was prepared before this weekly review)

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Creating Designs and Marketing

When making character designs for my stories  I always make sure to keep in mind marketing regardless of if I will make it in the industry or not. What I mean by this is that I make my designs easily marketable to audiences. For example making them simplistic. If a kid read my manga and thought they liked it and wanted to try drawing my character if I made a super complex design they would try and draw it and it would not look anything like it. However with my designs making them simple and have simple shapes allows for even bad drawings of my design be recognisable which is incredibly important. 

Another reason making them simple for this is good is because say if I was at a convention and I was requested to draw my character for someone quickly I would need to be able to draw them quick and effectively where it still looks decent and like the character so I keep my designs simple and easy to replicate for this reason and for the reason of making it easy to redraw in comics.

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Three Jokers

Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok made Three Jokers in 2020 and got second place for the award of best comic. This comic is often praised for how detailed it is and that is true it is very highly detailed and Joker still looks just as menasing and awesome as ever. Being the only good part about DC this comic hopefully should be something I might like more than others. Jesus I was wrong for that expectation. The pages a riddled with 5 to 9 panels on most pages and it makes it so hard to read. If the panels were larger and made to be 4 a page the art would be complimented so much more than the pages with 9 panels on one page. A great looking page is the one where Joker is shot by Robin. It has 5 panels, the art has room to breath and it has some good pacing for a page. However, this could be executed a thousand times better by having it 3 panels, one with Joker being shot, the next being Bat Woman reacting to it, the last being Joker hit the floor and have Robin’s shot saved for the next page because it would leave suspense on what is going on and if this page was on a page where you need to turn a page you will encourage the reader to do so by pacing it this way. Toriyama is a master at this technique where almost every page makes you want to turn over to the next due to him leaving resolutions to actions being left till you have turned. It is excellent and he has definitely mastered this.  This comic being coloured looks a heck of a lot better than Far Sector and it’s because I can actually tell whats going on with the foreground and background thanks to the thick line art and exagerated shading. Also no overlapping panels or very few making it easier to follow unlike Far Sector. 

Dragon Ball Page Turner Pages 

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Far Sector

James Campbell made far sector in 2020 and it is about a futuristic world where crime doesnt exist. It is a green lantern based comic and won the award for best comic of 2020 a sentiment I can’t share. This comic isnt bad it is really well drawn and is one of the only western comics where the art doesn’t look stiff however it is extremely hard to read and it’s due to the colours and lack of bold outlines that often help comics set things in the forground apart from the background. The style looks good but I feel it would be a lot easier to read if it used less panels especially less overlapping panels as they always look awful and like you didn’t know how to make a few rectangles fit properly on a page. I would hate to see how they play Tetris.

Compared to my style and manga in general I find manga a lot easier to read. Unlike westerns Mangaka’s are often given an extremely brutal deadline to make their comics in often expected to make a chapter a week which is about 20 pages. This means that some cut corners, making them black and white to save time colouring (plus it looks good) and also making simplistic easy to master styles that they will be able to redraw over and over effectively and quickly. Manga also often has less panels than a western comic and don’t overlap a panel over another panel because that looks extremely bad and is hard to follow. My manga Wild Hunt is set to follow the rule of only having a maximum of five panels and this is so that I do not overcrowd a page, give the art you drew room to breath and also make it easier to follow. 

Wild Hunt page 5 (most recent page at this time)

Other Manga

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Creating Page 6

aghhhhhhhhh

Page 6 has been a nightmare this singular page is responsible for the entire project I set out to do not being completed as much I had hoped. Page 6 had an establishing shot of Yuga and Yuna’s house and I knew I wanted that on page 6. However figuring out the angles and the building and layout of the page in general and also struggling to draw Yuga for some reason made this page take way more time than any other page. Eventually getting the building right allowed me to finish the rest of the page but then I was struggling to draw Yuga. Caitlin (partner) suggested that I draw him on a separate page as it was probably due to drawing Yuga so small that caused me the trouble. I tried to do this and it worked out well. Yuga was done and I could scan it all in and edit Yuga onto the page. After 2 weeks of getting angry at this page it is finally done.  If I was to do this any differently I would of done other pages while I struggled with page 6 just to produce more work and then come back to the page I was struggling with later rather than be stubborn and waste time.

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Week 8 Review

This week had slow progress. I did not leave myself enough time to finish my 5 pages I made digitally and therefore have fallen a bit behind what I expected to be at this week. 

I hope I can create pages 6 and 7 this week if possible but might need to do extra work at home to complete 2 more pages.

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Western Comics

These are some western comic Kyrstie brought into class for the few comic artists there are in the class. Though reluctant to do so I picked up a few of them and went through each one looking at how they look and what I either liked or disliked about them. Turns out don't like literally anything they've done with it. The posing feels stiff, the colours are jarring and on top of it all the amount of panels and the panel layout is awful.

My main problem from all or those is the amount of panels. I follow a rule when making my Manga and that is to never use more than 5 panels on a single page. This is because using more than 5 can make the page very cluttered and doesn't give images room to breath which is really important in a visual based way of story telling. Also having a small number of panels means your comic or manga will be a lot more digestible for any audience and easy to follow. This is never the case I've found in Western comics and unfortunately my favourite super hero is the worst offender of this. Spiderman comics are littered with way too many panels and dialogue boxes in every page. You can't tell what's going on half the time and when you finally catch up to what's going on with the page you get stuck and confused on the next one which is a headache and makes it really not fun to read. Spiderman isn't the only offender in fact all the comics I saw were just Spiderman was the worst. Its just so hard to follow when there are so many panels cluttering what will usually be an a4 page at max and manga around a5. There is a saying I was tought in graphics design and it applies heavily to comics, less is more.

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Week 7 Review

Week 7 went a bit better than week 6 though I still didn't get as much as I wanted done

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Creating page 5

For page 5 I was actually a little confused on what to do. I asked my partner Caitlin for some help since she is an amazing writer. I didn't know whether to have the pacing be faster and skip to Yuga being dressed and Yuna and Yuga walking outside or if I wanted to include him getting dressed and learning that he's late for a mission brief. Caitlin helped me decide that the getting dressed one is better and also helped decide what would be inside the panels too.

I got to sketching and started with having Yuna tell Yuga about the fact they have a mission brief. I wanted Yuga to react very panicked or yelling so tried to emphasise that in the second panel with a wide mouth and beady eyed expression. 

The last panel I knew I wanted to have Yuga hopping around trying to put on his underwear and have toast in his mouth. I knew I had seen it somewhere before in Spiderman or something but I couldn't find it at al. So I recorded myself hopping around trying to put my shorts on and it worked for referencing the pose really well.

Next is using the quill and then digital clean up like all of the pages.

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Creating page 4

For page 4 was easy to make off of page 3 since I wanted to include some of brother and sister annoyance. I knew that Yuna is a take no crap kind of girl and will teach her brother a lesson even if it means kicking him in the spleen. I love Yuga’s reaction to Yuna going psycho mode and I also love Yuna’s “you have chosen death” expression it has that classic manga comedy feel to it. 

Once again after sketching I inked it with my quill and then brought it into photoshop for digital clean up,

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Week 6 Review

This week was not very productive. I got a bad cold at the beginning of the half term where I was bed ridden for a week. I couldn't concentrate and found myself being in a lot of pain when working. I managed to get two pages done but I wanted to get at least 3 done on each week of the half term. 

Also I genuinely was Ill I know it seems very suspicious that Monster Hunter Rise came out the same week I was miraculously sick but over the two weeks of half term my total hours of play time was around 36 hours. I literally am a guy who if given the chance can get 100 hours on a game in a week.