Research
(A1 Exercise)
Many many different versions of the A1 Exercise. Playing with font and placement and deciding between 2 different ideas. The numbers to the side were for voting purposes.
(For Final Project)
Re-reading my mom old copies of the Calvin and Hobbes collection until I found the strip I wanted.
Took a tour to the cartoon museum and found inspiration in the original Calvin and Hobbes panels.
– Idea Board : https://notability.com/n/1brCRYJj8EGuKhmHGoQVn2
– Calvin and Hobbes Exploration and Layout Plan: https://notability.com/n/gJx7dA2OC29pHolXwPYKB
Exercises
A1 Exercise (figure/ ground)
Iterations
Did Do:
- Calvin and Hobbes idea
- 2 panel comic strip
- 5-25 pages
- Foam layer separations
- Painted foam to match greyscale color
- Greyscale dark-to-light/back-to-front
- Big title cover page
- Landscape page layout
- Kept the B.W. watermark and style
- Replicated an original comic
Didn’t Do…
- Apple Valley Lake Idea
- Layers between each page
- Laser cut pages
- 3 panel comic
Process
After I drew out and labeled each layer in Illustrator, I took them to the Innovation Studio where they got cut and etched. This process was a bit of extra work because the Glow Forge worked different than the laser cutter. I had to separate each of my layers into an individual file with the etches and silhouettes and fills all in their own groups.
Before they were cut however, I had to chose a greyscale color to match with each layer. I started from the back, in black and grew lighter towards the front, where the top layer is white.
Once they were cut, I lined them all up to make sure they were equal in size.
After that, I started on cutting the foam layers to add the depth of this project.
During the process, I realized I didn’t want foam layers between every single layer because the spacing would have been too big. Also, some of the supports for the characters would have been visible. Calvin and Hobbes have to be raised to appear like they are sitting on top of the grass, so they have a piece of paper connecting them to the border and I didn’t want that to be seen by my viewers so I pushed the grass to be right up on them, effectively hiding the supports.
After I had all my foam layers glued to each page but not fully assembled and stacked, I noticed that one you put them all together, the white edges of the foam stood out. This was taking attention away from my scene when all I wanted them to do was to give an illusion of depth. This eyesore prevented that illusion and it was very distracting. So, to fix this, I painted the inside of each piece of foam to match the color page they were glued onto. This made the illusion alive again and made the depth flow.
Lastly, once each layer was stacked and glued and painted, all that was left was the border, to hide the ugly layers and proof of depth. All I did for that was covered the sides in black card stock, to match the black layer and provide contrast between the white front page and black siding.
Only lasting problem was that there was some slight warping, as Taylor clarified in his critic review. The divider between the two panels is too thin and I didn’t think of how it wouldn’t be able to support the weight of the scene. It’s too skinny to add support to so Ill have to think of another way to fix it but it’s only noticeable from the side view.
Other than that, my project came out exactly how I planned and expected.