Evaluation of my work so far.

Overall my work for this project has went considerably well . I think I was able to keep my original objectives of informing and exploring ways of  transferring the research I find out about the period into comic form, channeling my response through the characters and narrative and   providing gentle engagement for my audience,  and encouraging self study and research into topics which spark their interest by using likable characters which they engage with and an interesting narrative that keeps them entertained and curious.The series has also lent itself to a teaching implement for people as some people who I have been discussing the project with have engaged and wanted to explore the comic as I have been creating it and have followed it as it has progressed so far. 
People have started to show interest in the Comic as I have uploaded it over the last week , subscribing to it and commenting on the general look of the comic such as  "Great looking comic . I really like how you do the shading and textures. ".
 The  project has proven to be a fun and interesting way for the audience to connect to a bygone era through my characters and narrative  and has been quite an enriching experience for me as I have found out a good working method.  explored new comic layouts and new artists and then experimented with compostion, tone and  both digital and traditional art again ( I had been drifting away from traditional for a while and was able to go back to my watercolour and ink for this project and edit digitally. ) and my drawing technique has improved greatly since I began to develop the characters and landscape at the beginning of the project.
After some consideration on weather to publish this  short story "barnes caper " as a stand alone comic or as a collective once I have completed the rest of the stories , I have decided to opt for the latter and publish the comic as one book of short stories of LUPI's investigations and so I have began to publish my completed pages onto a webcomic format. I figured that a lot of my personal promotion will be web based as this with generate a more geographically diverse audience and allows readers who are interested in both comics and the subject matter to look at the comic online . Once the comic begins to build a following , then I can start to decide on how to publish and distribute my Comic. Online is probably the best option but because I also go to a lot of Cons  there is a possibility of me renting out a table to sell my comic and provide prints and artwork for fans of the comic.

When attending the London Book Fair this year and talking to Tony Bennett, Founder of "Knockabout Comics" I was able to get some pointers on this option and he advised me after looking at my comic roughs and  some final pages that my best option would be to get a fan base for it online and to attend Cons. He also provided me with some names of publishers which might be able to help me once my comic is ready to be published and I have kept in touch with them for submissions advice etc.

Overall I am pleased with my outcome and hope to keep this project going as a long term ongoing series which in the near future would serve to be published and distributed to fulfil its agenda of connecting people with a bygone era .

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So far, I have about 7-8 pages fully coloured and edited, they need some work with light touch ups of colour but I have uploaded them to gauge reactions to the comic and so far there has been a little bit of positive feedback in the form of people visiting the comic page and liking and reblogging the images I have uploaded , there seems to be some interest in it after only a few days online which I am optimistic will grow as the comic progresses .

These are the images which I have yet to complete but hope to over the course of the new few days in order to get this story completed. 

    

 

                                     

My Webcomic

My Webcomic


Due to the nature of the comic and work load I decided that I would stick with my original Idea of having the comic based online until there is enough demand for it to be published. As it stands , there is not enough pages and content for my comic to be considered for publishing. with it only being around 14-15 pages per story and so I have decided to make this into a collection of short stories which I can publish online .

Once the demand is there and the series gains a little popularity and a fan base, I can then start to think about publishing it and distributing it by selling it myself online on my store, bringing the comic and art prints to conventions to sell or look into getting it published through book publishers , I will most likely be publishing this independently though as I am unclear as to how well this comic series will sell as a mass product as I am only  just starting out .

My dummy Book

After Initially drawing the comic out as small thumbnails and writing notes and texts on the pages around them , I decided to make a neater version to work from .

I decided to make a dummy book to work from as this would show my how well the pages fitted together as a layout and also let me get an idea of how my work would look in book form . I had planned to get the comic printed but as the deadline approached and I brainstormed a little, it seemed like a better option to publish this comic online , see how people react to it and if there is a demand for it to be printed and then I can maybe consider printing once the story progresses. So far this is what my story "Barnes Caper" look like in A5 book form which I then bond .

 

Influenences for Colouring

As I began to colour my final version of my comic, I began to research into artists who use the specific tonal , shading and mark making techniques that make their work look atmospheric and dark with the use of lighting, texture and the figure.


Spring Heeled Jack Comic by David Hitchcock.

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This comic caught my eye a few years back as something that was quite unique and visually interesting. the story itself takes another route in the Spring Heeled Jack folklore, involving Aliens and a man who builds a suit to combat it , which in turn causes mass panic as there are then two versions in Spring Heeled Jack in London.
However, It is the Images which really caught my eye. with textured pencil drawings. the comic has a foggy and almost translucent feel to it, which helps set the scene of the iconic period of London in the victorian age filled with smog and mist.
I found my editions of it again and found it to be exactly the kind of influence I needed for my own project with its saturated  colour scheme and detailed texture for clothing and landscape.

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Sin City

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Frank Millers Comic series "Sin City " was a great influence for my work for this project , the stark black and white imagery works well with setting a gritty setting similar to noir and grunge films and  comics . 

I took alot of influence from millers use of extreme black and white areas to create drama and distortion in his images.

I took the same influence from the Sin City film franchise who strive to make the films' look as similar to the comics as possible , using the same stylised colour schemes and lighting . 

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Other influences included Artists and Images that I am very familiar with and use alot in my work such as Edward Gorey ( influences my mark making and inking ), Mike Mignola (influences in colour , story and character designs ) and the original penny dreadful and police illustrated stories )

Colouring My Comic

As I had gotten to the stage where I had completed inking a good portion of my final pages , I decided that it was time to start thinking about how I was going to colour my images. 

As texture and linework are a crucial part to my work , I decided to do a varied amout of different experiments , looking at how I would colour my images and how to invoke some drama and movement 

into my lineart. 

I chose a passage from my comic and scanned in the simple lineart. I then began to colour it using different methods and use of colour.

the First experiment I did was fairly simple. with me using pen to create texture and depth into my panels.

These looked effective and brought the images to life a little more considering their plan linework to begin with, they now had texture in the hair and clothing and sense of light distribution and setting was added .

The second experiment involved me colouring the images in full colour using watercolour, copic markers and other traditional materials , but I found it did not have the same effect as the first experiment and was not as dramatic.
Around this time , I was beginning an experiment for my research project which involved me looking at Gothic elements in Noir and Silent films  where I was experimenting with greyscale and intense blocks of light to generate a sense of mood and drama within a few panels .

It was from there that I realised I could generate the same drama in my Comic using a limited colour palette and experimenting with shadow and light . I began colouring my images in grey scale , adding a little shading to them with copics and pen .

I felt like this was going in the right direction and when I showed this to one of my tutors, they suggested that I go even darker with it , showing extreme lighting and creating very dynamic compositions by using blocks of shadow and angling them .

 Overall I think this was the best option to go for as using full colour would not have achieved the same level of drama or mood into my images. by using grey scale, the images seem to depict the period and set the gothic mood of the comic a little better.

This is the colouring that I decided to use in my final images. combining the penwork texture that worked so well with the grey scale colour scheme and bold use to light and dark areas for shadow . 

I felt that it was best to use this colour scheme rather than full colour as by using the monochrome and greyscale colour scheme, I was able to invoke more dramatic imagery for my Comic and felt that it better represented the period and the works that inspired this comic . By doing this, it feels like my own homage to the Penny Dreadfuls and Illustrated newspapers that use this colour scheme, I felt this was particularly strong in some of the images where I took influences from older images such as the information spread on the Richmond Murder Case and Spring Heeled Jack

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Revised Thumbnails

These are some of the revised Thumbnails and sketches that I completed before finally roughing the work out for real.
I went through these images with some of my tutors and tweaked them until we were both satisfied with the quality of storytelling and the fluidity of the narrative as well as composition and other little details such as paneling and placement of characters.

Revised Project Proposal

Carrying on from May, my project is still very much focused on creating a series of short narratives that explore the innovation vs superstition in Victorian Culture and to explore my objective of transferring the research I find out about the period and providing gentle engagement for my audience, encouraging self study and research into topics which spark their interest.
The series will also lend itself to a teaching implement which could be possibly useful for museums, exhibitions and information booklets. I want my project to be a fun and interesting way for the audience to connect to a bygone era through my characters and narrative.

This is an updated proposal of my work so far, along with research and my plans on how to successfully achieve my goals.

As I said before, I want my final major project to be  a series of short narratives that lend themselves to a graphic novel/web comic format. It will pay homage to genre fiction as well as the Victorian era along with the steampunk movement. It will explore the subject of innovation vs supernatural associated with that era to understand how the two conflicting topics  work well when placed alongside each other.

The  Victorian period is known for its innovation and development, but there was a different side to Victorian Culture with its myths, legends and speculative fiction as well an unhealthy obsession with the occult which dates back to ancient times .It was a time of ghosts, ghouls and monsters, mostly fiction, but I began to think of how different this period would have been if they were real or a grain of truth were present.  
 I want my project to open peoples eyes to information that they might have known about or misunderstood about this era and make it more accessible for people to learn about.


The narrative will follow a small group of paranormal investigators who go on many strange adventures in the pursuit to find out the truth about the strange, the scary and mysterious side to Victorian Britain.
My finished project will have a collection of 5 short stories the explore the back stories to the characters, providing  their reasons for joining the group and to shed some light on their lives before as at least three of them are loosely based on reformed figures of Spring Heeled Jack, Sweeney Todd and Jack The Ripper. 
I have went into more detail considering the context and characters featured in my narrative here.

The stories will be in order of events taking place. So it will begin with Nicky and Jack's meeting, followed by Lucian and Violet's introduction to the team, which then leads into the Ripper case where Dante will be introduced, followed lastly by Edmund. Once I have introduced each character I will make the stories more team based and will feature the Team as a Collective. Each back story will be roughly about 5-10 pages long, summarising how each member came to be part of the group as well as letting the readers get to know  each character.

I have been developing 2 short stories based on two well known cases of ghostly activity and sensational murder from the period. looking at "no. 50 Berkeley Square", a notoriously haunted townhouse and "The Barne's  Mystery", a sensational murder case which took place in the 1870's. These two short stories being around 10-20.


My series will be in a web comic format, which I will update regularly with new stories and adventures so that after a period of time I can accumulate enough stories to print the series into a collective graphic novel format which I can then sell. 
Due to the subject matter of this project, I feel that it would be suited for a teen/adult audience, generally focused towards people who want to learn more about the period and genre fiction and who want to be drawn into the universe I have created and who enjoy reading in comic format.The majority of the work will be presented online but I plan to print these stories into two separate books for the time being - this is open to change as the project develops.
I would like to keep the introductory stories all together as a collective, making it easy for the audience to access this, on the other hand I would like to have the introductions and a few short cases together, making a nice introduction to the series. It will on depend on how this would work out in terms of cost and printing, an element which I will have to research into further to get a rough idea. 

Because one half of the subject matter is based on fiction and speculation, I want to take the vast amount of context and research I have accumulated and create an alternate version of the Victorian Era where these supernatural entities are very real and live alongside the world of science and innovation. By creating characters based on stereotypes of the period or based on well known figures of the period and placing them into this setting, taking facts about the period and weaving it all into the narrative, it will spark the audience's interest to look into the subject more and drawing their own conclusions and opinions about the period. 
I will be providing facts and then tweaking them slightly to engage the audience to look into the real information more with it being so easy to access via the internet and books.
I'm hoping that my work will be the starting point for my target audience that projects them to their own research.