Illustration & Visual Narrative / Task 4 : Webcomic
05/12/2024 - 02/1/2025 (Week 11 - Week 15)
Rachel Ng Jie Ting/ 0378902
Bachelors of design (Honours) in creative media
Illustration & Visual Narrative / Task 4: Webcomic (40%)
Table of content
Lecture
Instructions
- Task 4
Reflections
Instruction
Task 4 - Webcomic
40% Final Assignment Brief: Animated Webcomic Cover and One-Page Comic for "The Monkey's Paw"
Assignment OverviewIn this final assignment, students will create an animated, web-ready comic cover and a minimum 3 panel comic page based on the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs. This assignment brings together storytelling, composition, and animation to capture the eerie atmosphere of the narrative, formatted for a mobile-friendly, portrait display.https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/monkeys_paw.htm
Assignment Breakdown
Illustration and Visual Narrative (IVN): Design an illustrated masthead for the comic cover in Adobe Illustrator. Apply Scott McCloud’s comic transition types (from Understanding Comics) to tell a part of the story visually, emphasizing animated transitions that enhance the storytelling.
You may use photoshop Photoshop to manipulate images, adding textures and effects inspired by Dave McKean’s Sandman covers to achieve a surreal, atmospheric style. This will be key for creating a suspenseful, eerie mood that aligns with The Monkey’s Paw. Search for “surrealistic adobe illustrator artwork”
Webcomic Animation:
Using Google Slides, students will create a portrait-oriented comic cover and a one-page comic with animated GIFs. They must animate at least three panels of the comic, and may also animate parts of the cover to draw viewers’ attention.
Duration:
week 10 - week 14
Week 11: Introduction, story analysis, and animation basics in Google Slides
Week 12 - 13: Focused tutorials, animation techniques, panel composition, feedback sessions, and work time.
Week 14: Final critique, presentation, and submission.
Assignment Requirements:
- Comic Cover: Design a cover that represents your interpretation of The Monkey’s Paw, including an illustrated masthead created in Illustrator. You may use Photoshop to manipulate textures and images for a surreal effect inspired by Sandman covers or refer to “surrealistic adobe illustrator artwork”. Include subtle animations if desired to create a haunting atmosphere.
- One-Page Comic: Translate a selected part of the story into a single-page, animated webcomic with at least 3 panels animated using GIFs in Google Slides. Focus on panel-to-panel transitions (e.g., moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject) to maintain suspense and continuity.
- Format: Portrait orientation for phone or tablet display. Assemble all elements in Google Slides for presentation.
References and Inspiration:
- Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud for narrative transition techniques.
- Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre for composition and depth principles.
- Dave McKean’s Sandman covers for visual style and mood inspiration or vector based surrealistic artwork.
Understanding source material, finding references and making sketches
Before starting on my webcomic, I first had to read through the source material to understand the story clearly.
Link to The Monkey's paw by W. W. Jacobs : https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/monkeys_paw.htm
Fig 1.1 - The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
Then, I selected a passage to translate into a one page webcomic. I choose this passage because upon reading this section, a scene where the Visitor is telling The Whites couple the bad news about their son with a big eyeball staring down at them while inks of dread flows out from the eye.
That's when I knew I had to draw this part of the story.
Fig 1.2 - Chosen passage to translate into a one page webcomic
After this, I went and found some art style references on Surrealism.
Fig 1.3 - References
Comic cover : sketch, digitasation, and animation
Sketch
I decided to tackle the comic cover first.
In the story it feels like the Whites family's lives were being played with and controlled by the monkey's paws. So the cover page idea was to have a monkey's paw controlling a human, like a marionette and her puppet.
Fig 1.4 - Cover page sketch
Digitization
After idea sketching, its time to digitize it.
Fig 1.5 - Cover page progress in Illustrator
Then, using an old film video effect and moving the title around, I animated the cover in adobe photoshop.
Fig 1.6 - Cover page animation timeline
While exporting the cover page animation as a GIF, I had to optimize and reduce the file size as it was quite large. However, by optimizing the GIF using the preset 'GIF 64 No Dither', I realised it made the cover animation look way cooler than what I was going for, so I kept that option and saved the GIF.
Fig 1.7 - Original file vs optimized file comparison
Final cover (static)
.PNG)
.PNG)
Fig 1.8 - Task 4: Comic Cover - Rachel Ng Jie Ting (Static)
Final cover (animated)
Fig 1.9 - Task 4: Comic Cover - Rachel Ng Jie Ting (Animated)
Google slides link (to view the animated work):
Comic one page : sketch, digitization, and animation
Sketch
For the one page comic, I struggled with coming up with a good composition and when through several sketch version before settling for the version I'm most satisfied with.
Fig 1.10 - Comic one page best sketch version
Panel 1 to 2: Aspect-to-Aspect
The transition shifts focus from a narrative explanation to a symbolic depiction of the emotional.
Panel 2 to 3: Subject-to-Subject
Focus shifts from The Visitor to The Whites couple in the conversation.
Panel 3 to 4: Action-to-Action
This scene shows The Whites stunned reaction to Mr White standing up and Mrs Whites tearing up.
Panel 4 to 5 : Moment-to-Moment
This provides a dramatic, focused progression on The Whites emotional response, specifically through the eyes.
Panel 5 to 7: Action-to-Action
The transition builds on the growing tension of Mr White looking stunned, then opening his mouth to speak, then to his dialog.
Digitization
Next, digitizing the comic!
During digitization, the main tools I have use would be the and pen tool and the pencil tool.
First, I traced the pencil sketch onto the adobe Illustrator.
Fig 1.11 - Tracing
Fig 1.12 - Tracing (detailed)
Here, I drew out the ink flowing from the center eye and added the text for the comic. After that, I coloured the comic with a dark and slightly muted colour palate.
Main colours are: Red, blue, green, purple, and black.
Fig 1.13 - Drawing the ink and adding text
Fig 1.14 - Colouring main elements
Fig 1.15 - Colouring the background and adding background details
After colouring, I added a noise and canvas texture effect for the backgrounds of all panels, as suggested by Mr Hazif, since he felt that the top left and right of the comic was too empty.
Fig 1.16 - Applying textures and doing minor adjustments
For animation, I decided to animate the ink tears in panel 2-3, the eye of Mr White in panel 5, and the text box in panel 7.
Fig 1.17 - Highlighting the panels to be animated
Fig 1.18 - Key frames for panel 5
Fig 1.19 - Key frames for panel 7
Fig 1.20 - Key frames for the ink tears of panel 2-3
Fig 1.21 - Key frames of the whole comic
Fig 1.22 - Animating in Photoshop
Final one page comic (static)
Fig 1.23 - Task 4: One page comic - Rachel Ng Jie Ting (Static)
Final one page comic (animated)
Fig 1.24 - Task 4: One page comic - Rachel Ng Jie Ting (Animated)
Google slides link (to view the animated work):
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10qSF5Q4yMNNOTWwUdg53G9Ii90igj7CS7Ro67Gbz3CU/edit?usp=sharing
Reflection
This task was slightly frustrating, as I had a hard time understanding the Surrealism art style that I needed to apply in the comic. After some research however, I think I have a greater understanding of this art style. This task had allowed me to explore a new art style, one that I would normally avoid, so that was great. I have also learned that balancing artistic expression and clarity is important to avoid the reader getting confused,
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