Padlet Research

As part of our research for our group project I made up a Padlet document and collected my work on a couple of topics there. Firstly I looked at the fundamentals of making a comic book, for example step by step guides about how to make a comic book, from researching the theme of the comic to sketching the characters. For this section I looked at guides primarily written by former comic writers.

Next up I looked at some primary research for our project, I got some comics and looked at their fonts, art styles, colour schemes etc. as inspiration for our own design. I looked at a few different genres of comics, including Batman, Joker and Harry Potter books among others.

Finally I researched some miscellaneous things that we were asked to look at, including how college students felt on their first day/year in college as well as examples of how other comics tackle stereotypes, for example how the seemingly stereotypical characters in Modern Family are shown to be meaningful and multi dimensional more and more throughout the series.

Here's a link to the Padlet itself
https://padlet.com/flemingadam355/e03xinmx1pq8

Research:The evolution of Joker and Batman through all comic eras

In one of the previous blog posts, I spoke about the evolution of comics through out the last few decades, starting from the Golden era to the Modern era. Now I want to discuss the evolution of comics greatest rivalry, two characters who have been around for 80 years and are popular in pop culture.

These characters are Batman and The Joker, these characters have changed so much in the 80 years of comics they've appeared in. Firstly, we'll discuss Batman and Joker in the Golden age of comics.

We can see here their designs are more simplistic and colourful, this is common for Golden age comic characters as this era was more camp and lighthearted, especially compared to later eras. Not only that these designs are iconic and classics in the 80 years they've been around. The Jokers design is a basis for many Jokers moving forward and these designs turn up again in stuff like Batman the
Brave and the Bold cartoon.

Now we move onto the Silver age, you can see in these images not much has particularly changed much, especially when it comes to Batman himself. His design has stayed mostly the same but his stories became more darker at this time and would continue to in later eras. The Joker however, has seen some changes, his suit has gotten more colour to it and displays a lot more of the classic Joker motifs and his face has changed too to look more crazy. This kind of design has been seen in later media such as the well loved, Batman The Animated Series by Bruce Timm. 

 

Moving onto the Bronze age, we can see that Joker hasn't changed much from his Silver age appearance, a lot of the colours and design has remained unchanged and as stated before this design is one of his most iconic among the 80 years he has been around. When it comes to his arch-nemesis Batman however, he has actually changed a bit from his Silver era appearance. We can see that the blue has become more muted, gained spikes on his gauntlet, his ears have been made longer. This is to help him look a lot more imposing and sinister, which is apt for the Dark Knight and this reflects the change in tone for his stories as well. 

When moving onto the copper age of comics, the stories Batman and Joker appear in are not only some of the most darkest and deepest stories they've appeared in like The killing Joke and Frank Millers The Dark Knight but they're also the most celebrated and iconic in the characters histories. The designs haven't really changed much from the Bronze age, just some minor colour changes and some muted colours in some stories.

Finally we move onto the Modern age, this is where we see some of the most drastic changes to the characters costumes and we see Batman's costume is comprised of mostly black and grey colours, to make him more darker and blend in with the night, not only that it makes him more imposing. For the Joker he retains a lot of motifs and elements from the Silver, Bronze and Copper age designs but in more of a modern aesthetic. The stories also retain a dark tone but with moments of levity and continuing arcs from great writers like Tom King.

Research of Medium: Evolution of Comics throughout the years

For part of our research into our proposed medium, I looked at different comic books throughout the years. Many companies and their characters have evolved over the years like Marvel and DC.

Each evolution of comics is separated into notable eras, such as "Golden Age" which is when American comics saw a boom in popularity which lasted from the 1930s t'o the early 1950's. Here are some examples of these comics.

Following on from the golden age of comics, we reach the "Silver Age" of comics which lasted from the mid 1950's to 1970. As you can see this era of comics is different from the previous in terms of the colours, art style and overall presentation.

                    

Moving on from the Silver Age, we head into the "Bronze Age" of comics. This era lasted from the 1970's to the mid 1980's, as usual this era saw a change in comics we see that the art style is more detailed with more shading and a change in the colours used which are a little more muted.

                   

When the Bronze age ended in 1984, it was followed up by the "Copper Age" of comics.which ran from 1984 until the early 1990's. The changes in this era showed even more muted colours, more detailed illustrations and also more darker stories with heavier themes and characters from witers who are legendary in the comic industry like Jim Lee (X-Men), Frank Miller (Dark Knight Comics) and Alan Moore (Watchmen).

                               

From the Copper Age we move into the "Modern Age" of comics, this era started in 1991 and is still ongoing to this day. In this era of comics we see more realistic art styles and a healthy mix of colours used depending on the style and how realistic said style is meant to be. 

From some companies like Marvel, DC and IDW etc. We see a healthy mix of more dark and lighthearted stories, we also see a mix or more original concepts from small to big companies and celebrated, modern re-imaginings and from well established IP's like IDW's Transformers.

                                          

my progress: different animation styles

So, we are now a little bit into the development stage that we are building out a prototype. One of the things that I have done for the last few weeks is that we have used a whiteboard for our group and I went into trying out different animation styles including modern day animation, anime, pop cutesy, chibi style, humanistic, detailed shots and everything else in between. With my progress that I will use as a starting point to help when I am doing some storyboards for the prototype presentation for the following week but I and Dillon will get to making storyboards and enough between us to get them done.

(This is just the mix of all of the different animation styles that I did this week with some help from others)

(This was one that I did last week (with my personal one being the sonic based on the redesign) and some of the other people in my group and I tried to do more but I was in a period of grieving so I didn't have much else).

Hopefully with these assets as a backbone to help with the different animation styles as we build on these storyboards for the presentation (we may not have them all done by the time the prototype presentation but we will have a few anyway).

our idea in presentation form

Our team idea

So this was a powerpoint presentation that we created as a team that was divided up between us to do with the five of us then coming together before the mid term break where we presented our project to some of our lecturers for this group project and give our 5-10 minute piece of what we are trying to go for when we start to build out the piece itself. Of course our main theme is on the concept of dreams and our main aim was to tell the story using the concept of dreams and that we keep with our message that life may be challenging but by following your dreams or aspirations that you can overcome it and achieve anything you can do.

Hopefully everything will seem quite well received in the end and that we have a clear plan and execute it so that we can get on top of stuff (while balancing other work in college) and making sure that it is all evenly distributed between us and that we have certain parts all done before deadlines.

the content so far

The Journey so far

This is just some of the early stages of our planning stages and we are implementing a good bit of examples to help with our group project.  There is a lot more images of what we had found and laid out but I have seemed to misplace them in the process, unless anyone else in the group has them then it should all be okay to show off.

Welcome to the Sketch squad

To who has come across this blog, let me be the first to ask and say this. 1. how did you find us and 2. I would like to welcome you all to our little collective blog that is owned and ran by a little group known as The Sketch Squad. Who are the sketch squad you may ask, well they are the collective group of individuals that have come together with many similar ideas in mind that will culminate together to make something truly amazing. I hope by the end of this it doesn't end with us at each other's throats and killing each other. Anyway i am gonna keep this short and sweet and welcome you to the Sketch squad blogs.