In today's session we attempted to finish our individual interpretations of our paintings and hopefully write up a self-evaluation using the self-reflective evaluation sheet. I finally finished the initial drawings of my comic and have now begun experimenting with the comic in the editing tool, Photoshop.
Here I have finished the sketched outlines and have put in the inks of the lines without the shadowing or any colouration. I had wish to actually draw up the final outlines in a more Sin City blockish shadow style but at the moment I don't have the time but I can try it in photoshop if I wish. I really like the poses and the composition that I used in this comic as it has quite a lot of action and movement and hwo it is broken up helps to add to intensity and brutal violence you see. However I do wish I had more time to expand my story and add some backgrounds but under the independing time limit I need to focus on whats important and whats only additional to the piece. If I have more time I would go back and work these aspects of the comic.
Here in this image I have finally added a bit of shadowing to the comic with the paint tool in a dark grey colour and have used gaussian blur on them a bit so the they seem to blend and dissipate into the other elements. I find the shadowing to be quite helpful in creating the dark atmosphere thats required for most cyberpunk productions and has added a bit more needed detail for the characters to become more three-dimensional and burst with the spark of life needed for the suspension of disbelief. However it is pretty shallow tonal work and needs to be incorporated better into the piece so my theories above hold some water and not become some self-righteous excuse on my it needs to be incorporated. Maybe I should add more detail into the shadows themselves to make the characters even more detailed and three-dimensional.
Here is the final conclusion of everything that I have done with the new added detail of blood splattered across the characters to enhance the violence that is contained within thsi piece. The use of bright red for the blood and the only colour that is represented within the piece was inspired by the original paintings use of significant colour to illustrate a point and the comic Sin City's use of symbolic colours that also helped in illustrating their points and meanings. What I really like about this use of red within the comic is how hard it hits the viewer, especially in the final panel where the beheading is taking place (the poses inspired by the original painting, of course) and huge splurt of blood is coming out of Holofernes neck. However I feel it would become even more effective if the outlines, shadows, and back ground was inverted because I think use of red on black helps to improve the vibrance and brightness of the colour even more then the stock white background.
Here I tried out my previous idea in another image to see if would have been more effective if it was on a inverted comic strip rather then a normal one. I was right i the fact that the darkness of the black would contrast well with the brilliance and brightness of thye colour red but the rest of the comic suffers as it rooks rather bizzare inverted since the shadows are our now white and the supposed lighter parts of the subjects within the comic have now bgecome the darker elements. While it is effective I personally think that I should stay with the white background for the final piece because it looks to bizzare and somewhat ugly when it is inverted.
Here is the final image with a blue background to relate to the colour association of the real painting and to create a darker background to make the panels more distinctive from each other. I think it looks quite effective in it's execution thanks to the fact that it adds a new layer of colour to the comic without colouring it more and ruining the effect of the striking blood in the comic. I also how it creates contrast between the figures and the background rather like the original painting and making sure each figure drawn on the paper pops out individually instead of just blurring into the background like the original.