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. 

Starting to work on final layouts and pages

I wanted to start working on some of my pages in full scale so I decided to try and draw out the first page for one of my Short Stories "The Barnes Mystery" .

This image is only a mock up of how one of my pages might look, I want to work into the images more to generate more texture and a stonework effect.

             I also want to look at text and need to keep working on my figurative drawing.

For this particular story I plan to research into the location more, I can do this by traveling to Barne's Cemetery to get a feel for the location, draw extensively at the location and take reference pictures for further research.

Story Boarding, Practise pages and planning covers

When planning my comic pages, I tend to work with small thumbnails with very rough work, this is an example of one of my thumbnail pages:

I also wanted to try out a few practice pages to experiment with Line Art and playing around with Characters and Layout:

 Working on ideas for a Cover 

Some examples of possible cover layouts, I was pretty sure I wanted to feature the Entire Team so starting with this, I made a few rough sketches:

I decided to go with Image number 2 and started to plan how to layout the cover, starting with figuring out how to place each member.

So far I have only been able to draw this out roughly:

Experimenting With Colour

Taking the line art I created, I decided to experiment with colour to discover possible outcomes for colouring my final images: 

This was the Original Line Art

                               

                                   I then did a rough colour block in grey scale on photoshop:

I then added a little colour on photoshop , practising my digital painting while exploring whether colour would work well for my final images.

Perspective , Mark Making and Character

Working further into the project, I began to explore perspective and how to develop my mark making skills while getting used to the character designs.

This image in particular is one I plan to work on, the amount of detail I put into Jack's coat has worked very well, generating quite a fair amount of texture.

Some examples of perspective work from my sketchbook:

Designing Characters

As I began to progress in my research work, I decided to start developing characters and making preliminary sketches and roughs from the Character Bios I created and can be seen here.


Nicholas 

Jack

Lucian

 

Dante

Edmund 

Violet

Starting the Drawing Process - Reference and Research

When starting off my project, I wanted to gather a lot of research as well as develop my drawing skills. I made a list of things that I would need to improve on, this included figure drawing, location, perspective and lighting.

To start with, I looked into the fashion of the period, that way I could look at costume, hair styling as well as the human figure in general. 

Here are a few examples of my pencil sketches exploring hairstyles from the period:

I also gathered a lot of references of buildings from the period. Here are some examples:

As well as buildings I wanted to look at locations and because a good bit of the barnes story revolves around a cemetery I decided to do some research sketches of cemetarys as well as some research on grave markers and angels , these are some of the best images from that experiment

Looking to television and films for inspiration and research, I made a lot of drawings based on characters from series' such as "Ripper Street", working on my pen skills and figure drawing.

These are some examples of work from my sketchbook showing several figure drawings and clothing references:

One of my characters is based on the figure of "Spring Heeled Jack ", who was allegedly able to leap to great heights. Thinking about how I could take this information and illustrating my own take on it, I began to think about how I could take something like Free Running and incorporate this into the character, giving the effect of him leaping great distances. It proved to be a good research process, particularly for mid air poses.

Artist Research -

I extended my research into relative artists by looking at how some artists have a particular style or personal practise that can fit very well into a particular setting or context .

Edward Gorey-

Edward Gorey's style is very recognisable . His pen and Ink drawings depicting morbid and unsettling scenes that hark back to the Victorian and Edwardian Era, and it surprises people that Gorey worked and published his books and artwork from around the 1950s until the late 90's. 

Gorey's specialist technique of mark making made his work look like it belonged to a much older period of Victorian lithographs and prints,   his line work  was so consistent and precise , showing extreme control and passion for his work and producing  incredible texture and backgrounds for his subjects to interact with,  making his pieces look like something from a newspaper of the time , victorian etchings and the arts and crafts movement of the late 19th century .

An Image from Gorey's  book " The Doubtful Guest”  [1]

Gorey is a big influence in my own practise for his use of texture and the way he has  managed to create his own setting that houses his subjects very well and compliments his style, giving it an older feeling to his work than you may originally think.

A page from one of Gorey's most famous book, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" which was an illustrated alphabet book that depicted Children Dying in various strange and gruesome  ways . [2]

Brett Helquist-

Helquist is an American Illustrator who is probably most famous for his work that features in  the "Series of Unfortunate Events " book series written by Lemony Snicket.

One of the Illustrations  from Helquist's Website showing an image of one the main characters Violet Baudelaire from the book "A series of Unfortunate Events : The Ersatz Elevator ".
[3]

Helquist's  Illustrations are so distinctive in style and decorative nature, his work often having extensive amounts of shading and texture , giving the desired effect of depth and tonal quality but also making the images pleasing to look at as you get lost in the patterns of the mark making, giving the image not just a narrative quality , but also a feeling of it being quite an intricate and important piece of illustration as you see the lengths Helquist has went into to create the detail we see in the images.
His work seems to fit well in collaboration to Snickets "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" because both have a very surreal and fantastical  element to their work. The images work well with the text to create a world that seems real but also has its own distinctive mix of period elements and surreal imagery that make it hard to pin point an actual setting for the narrative, it stands between multiple periods in terms of fashion, technology and general atmosphere , there are many different periods which can personally see the books paying homage to , from Late Victorian/ Edwardian, Pre War , 50's/60's as well as some elements which bring it into the present day.

Image From "A Series Of Unfortunate Events : The Wide Window" illustrating now the world which the narrative is set in is very much a mix of multiple periods from the past.
[4]

Another important aspect of Helquist's Illustrations is their composition and the way they are framed.
often creating full page images that are framed in a very decorative nature with the same amount of detail and tonal quality , making them part of the images and framing the illustration beautifully .

Image from "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room":
a prime example of Brett Helquist's beautifully decorative style of line work and texture. [5]

By looking at these two artists I began to consider how I would achieve a sense of period setting through my own personal practise . Both artists have influenced me in their mark making and line work  but also through their execution of narrative . My own work is very linear based and mark making features prominently in it , which is why I will be looking into ways to further develop this skill.

Defining my Work

what defines my work?


- my work in pencil
- my work in pen
- my line work
- my use of texture
- figures
- the content and context

When looking at my work and trying to examine it in a little more detail i came across this:

my work in pencil- 

I tend to be very sketchy with my pencil work and its this that gives my work movement . I’m usually very tentative and a little uneasy when inking my work and colouring it so it is due to my lack of courage on my part that I tend to like my pencil work a lot better . I prefer to work in a less permanent matter which gives me room to make mistakes as i usually do make quite a few in the first stages of my drawings.
I add quite some bits of texture to my pencil roughs to give me a sense of how it would look when inked but more than enough times I have regretted even inking my work as the pencil work seems more effective .

 my pen work- 

My work in pen has gotten considerably better in the past year , the amount of texture i use in my pencil work is coming through with the pen work and often enhancing my work. My work tends to look very well in black and white or greyscale which makes me think if this might be the right way to go about my project. Often I find that once I colour my images, they sometimes lose the effect that they had when they were just black and white.

My line work - I tend to use quite fine lines for my work , sometimes buffering and thickening the outline of my subjects to make them stand out more. This method has worked well for me as it develops a good contrast between my fine detailed work and my thick outline definition. 
my quality of line is very specific to my own style and is often how people can distinguish my work from others, this is due to my influences and my insistence for working in pencil.

my use of texture-

Texture is very important in my work and I usually achieve this through my line work, I enjoy making complicated and effective patterns in clothing , often opting to a very fine and detailed way of working. The same can be said for hair and backgrounds. my style is very recognizable by the amount of texture I place into hair and clothing in particular. I enjoy adding texture to my work even if it does take quite a bit of time to finish a piece at times.

My figures are also very distinctive, they are often very exaggerated , the limbs are often elongated and my favourite figures to draw are often lanky and thin which is probably due to my early influences of Tim Burton and Harry Clarke, whose figures often tend to have the same elongated qualities, making them look slightly distorted or fantasied .
In terms of facial features my drawings have been described as “elf like” or “cute” and last year I tried to stray away from this a bit , drawing alot more masculine characters and working of different ways of drawing body types and expanding my style, I also found that i have a knack for drawing beards and facial hair very well.

content and context-

I have said that most of my work tends to focus on figures and people and this is very true. I enjoy drawing people and i relish the challenge of creating characters for my own narratives.
My figures tend to hark back to another period of time, and this is probably due to my fascination with history and a highly romanticised view of the world. I tend to draw things as I wish they were and so my figures often don clothing and mannerisms that aren't necessarily modern or incredibly true to real life . 
My early illustrative influences of Edward Gorey , Tim Burton and Brett Helquist definitely play a part in why my style has settled on this.
I'm not very interested in drawing modern representations of things, I tend to stick to what I think the past might have been like or my own visualisation of what our world will be like in the future, therefore my subjects tend to be based in a highly fictionalised or stylised setting that I have envisioned.