BRAIN STORMING

Hey guys,

It's a short week if I'm not mistaken. Last Wednesday was great; people were engaged and focusing on making their work spectacular.

In the world of manga, working for 1 hour is a blink of an eye. The greatest mangas take years to construct. With anime (cartoons), people work in teams. Most manga artists have assistants too.

This said, there was a burst of creative energy on Wednesday and I am impressed with what was accomplished with a short amount of time.

Lots of ideas were thrown around. Now it is time for me in a blog entry to critic work and give you all back helpful comments.

PERSPECTIVE

Jogey took a shot at perspective drawing and got a lot accomplished. However, I am going to demonstrate how the "horizon point" in perspective can create an illusion of reality.




The blue lines represent perspective lines being used correctly. The read line we produced without a ruler and thus curves. Make the line straight and the fence polls should increase in size as you get further away from the horizon point. An illustrated example below ...



The green line is a correct use of perspective; using lines to make the illusion of three dimensions upon a 2 dimensional surface. Lemmie know if you have questions, Jogey.

TONE and Texture



Tone, greyscale and texture are other techniques that can be used to create the illusion of depth upon a 2 dimensional surface. DuJuan and Lyndell have both shown us this.

By making the logs of his fire darker, they appear closer or more individual. The fire is also another tone from the background, giving them an identity.

Lyndell uses ICONIC drawing to show a lot of bricks. If one were to attempt to draw bricks realistically, you'd spend hours trying to get them right. Lyndell just quickly draws a brick pattern and this translates.


AESTHETICS

from Wikipedia:

Aesthetics (also spelled æsthetics or esthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.^[1] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.^[2] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."^[3][4] Aesthetics is related to axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with the philosophy of art.^[5] Aesthetics studies new ways of seeing and of perceiving the world.^[6]

That definition is a mouthful. If you're missing something about all that, don't worry about it. For this class, aesthetics basically means using fashion, props, color, etc. to narrate a character. Both Esdras and Alexis have done just this; Notice the bombs, daggers, walkie talkies and face paint that Esdras has placed on his black ops character. We know a lot about this guy just by what he is carrying. Even his facial expression which is cool and collected. And then the colors are great too. Alexis does the same thing. The spikes, the one eye. We know stuff about these character by what they have on.



I follow a coupla fashion blogs and there is truth in what you can tell from a person by how they look. This people don't have bombs on them, but the lengths of their clothing and they way they do their hair, etc. can showcase something about them.


By the colors alone you know what Superman is all about; he wears red and blue (arguably American colors) and a golden S on his chest. The tone of his muscles also illustrates that the guy works out and shouldn't be messed around with.

STRUCTURE, THE GRID and MAKING A PRODUCT

Mostly everyone did great in class, but I wanted to focus on Erik, Kevin and DeShaun's work and Ronnie, Alexis, DuJuan and Denisse's groups. Nygell and Mei LI also worked great together. Also, Jose and Lyndell can fall into this catagory.

These people are IMAGINING THE NEXT STEP; storytelling. Making a manga. They're finding creative ways to push a story further and go beyond an illustration of perspective and or a character.

Observe:


The paper we are working on is NEWSPAPER layout paper; it is the paper people worked on for newspapers before computers took over. It is lined and numbered by measurement. One group WROTE OUT each panel of a story prior to illustrating it.

What is the benefit of this?

This allows the story to be EDITED before going to drawing. It's frustrating to draw an entire panel and then say ... "wait a minute ... this isn't how I want the story to go."

For a group project, certain students can be asked to draw certain panels.

This is a great approach and I encourage it.

Jose and Lyndell are also doing a similar idea sharing writing and drawing responsibilities.


Danilo and DuShaun are natural born drawers. They both have a intuitive sense of the figure, background, etc. They're also prone to drawing battles scenes. This is great. However, to make a manga, a sense of story needs to be developed. This separates comics, manga, graphic novels, whatever you want to call it, from illustration.

A story has a beginning, middle and end. These two above pages are a part of the story - but it is unclear where it starts, whats in the middle and what is the end result.

So to go further, look at your drawers and just ASK a lot of questions and write them down.

Examples:

1. Why is this guy fighting?
2. Who is this guy?
3. Where does he live?
etc., etc., etc.

If you feel uncomfortable writing, maybe team up with someone who likes to write.

OK - enough blogging for now. Let's get to work! Come to me if you have questions. I'll be teaching mini lessons through class.