Design Boards & Evaluation

Star Wars Slideshow

Star Wars - finals?

I've been entirely focusing on making sure I have a substantial amount of practical work to go thematically alongside my essay, as I definitely feel this is an area I have fallen behind with in previous modules, and the practical never seems as strong as the written work.

The core idea with my Star Wars characters is to illustrate how each character goes through multiple iterations and alterations through their appearances. Luke begins as the fresh faced hero and evolves into the grizzled old mentor. Finn begins as the troubled soldier and evolves into the heroic rebel dedicated to a cause he actually believes in. I used colour to denote these different stages of the characters "lives" (they're not real), and focused on getting the atmosphere of each one right so that this message could be clearly communicated alongside the essay, rather than spending days making sure I capture the exact likeness of Harrison Ford and wasting loads of time, as I have definitely done before.

I'm happy with how these turned out, as they work well in sets of three as I intended, and the stark contrasts in colour help to highlight the defining aspects of their character.

Paper Girls - visual inspiration

I also went back to Paper Girls by Brian K Vaughan (authors called Brian are my jam right now I guess) and Cliff Chiang. It's not often you get a coming of age story set in the 80s which centres entirely on girls and has absolutely nothing to do with boys. Literally nothing at all. I can only remember three boys in the volume and one is abducted by aliens and the other two get mangled in the wall of a spaceship time machine. Oh well.
Paper Girls is so refreshing because a young female perspective isn't one you often see in this sort of book, an the characters are all distinct and compelling in completely different ways to one another. The art style has definitely given me something to think about regarding character, as colour and contrast can be equally as important in communicating character as the actual design of the person themselves. The atmosphere of the illustration is what I’m interested in, rather than being portrait perfect to whoever it is I’m drawing.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - visual inspiration

THIS SIDE OF CHRISTMAS

I’ve tried to spend most of Christmas on the bulk body of my dissertation , as I found i had to rewrite large parts because I’m dense and  forgot that films come out at this time of year which are relevant to my point SOOOOO I chopped and changed some of my examples and references to be a bit more current. Mainly there was a new Star Wars and a new DC movie, which both had *interesting* narrative choices that I felt the need to analyse in the essay.

But I’m also really aware of the practical side of this project, which so far is loose experiments but without a solid final direction, so I’ve tried to crack on with that as well.

Going back to some stories that really resonated with me in the past few years since starting the course was helpful, as it's good to remind yourself where certain things changed for your practice. I think.

Anyway I revisited Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series because the story levels with me to such a degree I think a future version of myself wrote the thing. It's balanced with cartoonish videogame aesthetics and violence alongside brutally honest emotional moments that don't compromise to protect the integrity of any of the characters. It shows that everyone is simultaneously a good and terrible person, all of us have done good and terrible things, and accepting the balance is more important than focusing on one or the other. That's why I loved this series, because being the hero or a main character didn't save you from having feelings of guilt, shame, poor judgement and countless other awful feelings all of us are familiar with. This honesty was something I’m trying to understand in the art style, the lack of colour definitely helps as it feels very unglamourous and stripped back.

Essay Feedback - going forward

• put titles in italics, reference the year published/said
• remember to either put a space between paragraphs or indent
• use of quotes to start paragraphs is effective, find some that sum up the paragraph and start with them and then break them down
• explore the psychology of audience mentality more - why do people require a sense of safety (its probably Freudian)
• Introduce scholars don't just put their name, could be anyone
• work harder to integrate the quotes into the body of the text - like a pie - everything is mixed in, cant just plonk all the cherries on top can you?
• ITALICS FOR MOVIE TITLES TOO
• reference specific comic books, dont assume the reader knows (they aren't a nerd loser like you)
• link case studies more directly to themes and context, direct connections to provide synergy throughout the essay
• try to stay away from opinions, form counter arguments more often to display an impartial evaluation
• make the case studies flow into each other in some way so the chapter feels cohesive, not just one after another
• link case studies together in accordance with how they link to the themes present in chapter 2
• delve into the psychology more, storytelling as a human preoccupation, why?
• The Hero's Journey - Joseph Campbell
• assess changing media, how people respond to films - youtube reviews, rotten tomatoes, news sites dedicated to pop culture, hard to escape and form your own opinions