New Plan (WHY I CHANGED LAST MINIUTE)

The first plan has been a disaster frankly. I planned to do a comic, but I keep on putting in too much time to make it good, one page taking more then 3 days, still counting. I need something to show, and making the product takes too long at the standard i want, and I don't want to make a bad product just for the sake of getting something done in the timeframe, otherwise that is time wasted.

I am instead going for something a little different.

I will make a character synopsis for every character, along with some artwork of them. I will show my previous attempts that would be great, if only I had a year to do this... I will show a single episode synopsis, and some artwork related to that, and perhaps a single page to show what a full product could look like.

Although at this point that seems like half a finished product to me, and like a glorified pitch, which honestly is not much progress at all, but I have put so much time and thought into making this comic something worthwhile, that I have no time, or the skills to do it justice- if i can just show all that work I have put in, this would be a successful product.

I will:

Write up for each character and a few pictures of them, including their progression, motives, backstory,etc

Write up a single episode and have some artwork from that, eg: The town, the people, the henchmen, the palace

Show what a single page at this standard would look like


This will suffice and show what this project COULD be, if I had a year.

Animation so far

here is my animation so far. it get's more sleepy as time goes on, and by tapping, he would wake up. I planned to add 2 more scenes, ones where it attempts to eat by mashing it's head into the bowl, angry because it has no mouth. A second scene would be play, which is when he hides and scares someone, here are the concepts for it. I do not think i can do all of this, as the amount of time and effort to do what i have already done, is already too much, and i am very much out of time.

Emotion Research

With these images I asked a small test group of 4 if the emotions I had drawn are clear to see. It was needed to have this test,because of the character's unique visual trait-no eyes-just eyebrows. eyes are the easiest and most direct way to show emotion, and i have hidden them. Instead i use the eyebrows, lines, and his body and clothing to show emotion.

The test came back overwhelmingly positive. Every emotion was clear to see apart from the face on the bottom right, which was an experiment to see here it could lead. Someone said if i added context and perhaps some blush, it would look like he is trying to hide being embarrassed.

I then asked about his design.

  


I asked if they liked it, and if they thought the design and the title: ASIA MAN was offensive. Everyone said they liked the design, one saying it was my most unique design yet. and everyone said the whole concept was not offensive.

Personally I see the comic as a celebration of Asian (mostly east) culture, not an offensive joke. That was what I was aiming for.

I also did a test on text, for the cover of the comic. i went through many drafts, and then using photoshop, stitched all the best parts together , into the best product.





I would like to darken the red a little

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This test was very useful, as I made my way through the drafts I could begin to see what worked and what did not. I came up with an interesting technique: When the eyebrows cross over the face, if I mimic shape of the eye , with the end of the eyebrow, it makes emotions more clear. For example look at the happy face- the eyebrows are circles, mimicking a happy closed eye. It was very helpful.

For the text if i made sure no letters overlapped, things became much easier to read. However it is difficult for those with not perfect eyesight. However my text is effective in showing the theme. As a typeface it is very bad, but as a title trying to show the audience what my story is about, it does it's job well. People are reminded of asian fast food places and asian films.

I am planning to do more tests with other emotions, which I will now bring into context, for example the "embarrassed and trying to hide it", which is quite complex for an out of context picture.

I will also be testing how extreme I can make my perspective, until it becomes hard to see. I will also be testing colour and no colour, how to work within these parameters.

Using this knowledge I make make the comic more effective.