Evaluation task 3

Task 3I believe the overall look of my images was good and I am

pleased with them. To construct my images I hand drew them, before scanning them into the computer, rasterizing and changing the threshold of the image to allow only the solid lines to be seen. By drawing the images I ended up with a hand drawn effect to the images, which I liked. This effect reminded me of old hand drawn graphic novels and even old Chinese stories that would have been written on tapestries. Because of this I think the technique added to the traditional feel to the images. This effect Finally I used the fill tool to colour the different blocks of white in, I think that this method gave a crisp and professional finish to the images while still slightly retaining the hand drawn look I wanted.

For the backgrounds I used the square and line tools to map out my panel design firstly, then using the paint tool to draw the ground line and filling this section in with the fill tool. With the sky I would do the same, adding texture with the different textured paintbrush tools available. There was a grass paintbrush that I believed was very effective and also a texture that worked well as clouds. I also added in further details such as blossom trees and mountains that I rotoscoped. With the blossom trees I used a soft paintbrush tool with a lower opacity to give the desired look to the blossom.

I have tried not to overuse text in my graphic novel, only using it when I feel it is necessary for explaining an image, one that wouldn’t make sense without a written explanation.

In the photo above I believed the meaning of the message would not have been clear without the text explaining what it was, and so I included the further explanation to ensure the message gets across to the audience.

In other instances I have used speech bubbles, I believe these aid the explanation of the image, but also add character to the people in a graphic novel as the reader can see what they are saying themselves.

The way the audience can see the Dragon King laughing as he believes he is about to kill the samurai makes him look evil and makes it clear he is bad, making the reader take the side of the hero even more.

In my graphic novel I used some symbolism to get across the meaning of my images easier. For example colours were quite important and I chose them carefully; one of the dragons I decided to have red, a colour with strong connotations of danger, showing that the dragons are dangerouse and evil. I also used gold for the dragon king, emperor and princess, a colour that connotes royalty and makes their status clear to a reader. I included other small details such as the emperor having grey hair, a clue that he is old now but also something that shows he is very wise. This symbolism is something often done in Asian stories.

My work represents the genders in quite a traditional manner, the men being the ones who fight and a man having to rescue the girl. This could be seen now as an outdated and sexist approach to a story but as I am re-telling a traditional tale I believe there was no real way of avoiding this. When the emperor is older, he still goes out to be re-united with his daughter and isn’t portrayed as being unable to do anything because of his age, so in this way I believe the elderly are represented well.

I adapted the original tale quite a lot to make it suit the format I was working with and be more exciting to read and view. For example the original tale doesn’t have any fight scenes and so isn’t incredibly exciting. The original introduction tells of a fisherman who finds the “bottomless hole” and falls in, discovering the land

below. I believed this didn’t add much to the story and cutting it would allow me to create an alternative beginning with the abduction, war and discovery of the hole by the samurai sixteen years later.

I believe that during my production maintained a good balance between using technology and manually drawing my images. This produced the look I was aiming for and some professional looking images.

The quality of some of my hand drawings wasn’t as good as some of the others and I believe this pulled down the overall quality of my work. The reason behind this could be my artistic skill in general and me not being up to drawing very good images every time, but also the deadline may have had me rushing to finish drawings on one or two occasions.

I think I used technology effectively making use of the scanner to get my images on the computer and then using Photoshop to digitally enhance the drawings and add colour etc.

I believe I was very creative with my work as I tried to use different ideas for things like the appearance of my characters.