Sequential Illustration

Before I started my second year of Illustration I had been studying Graphic Design, so I didn't really know what to expect when I started the course. We could choose between three optional modules within Animation, Graphic Design and Illustration. I chose Sequential Illustration, which is using sequences to tell a story.

Our first project was to create an A3 Graphic Novel about any subject, telling a story for the Thought Bubble Comic Art competition. This is how Grumpy Bear came to be! He was a character that had been in my sketchbook for a while and I thought it was time he came out. Since moving over to Derby in September I have been losing my socks and it makes me grumpy, this is how I picked my story of Grumpy Bear and his missing socks! I used colouring pencils, my favourite medium for drawing. It appears to be a nice, sweet story but it has a dark ending! Grumpy Bear gets annoyed that his socks have gone missing (they have actually run away) so he decides to knit some more socks and ends up knitting a very long scarf which in the final scene he uses to hang himself. My lecturers were not big fans of my ending as they thought it was a bit morbid but I like the surprise twist!

For the second project we had to work in 3D, something I had not worked much in! We were given the task to create a 3D picture in a frame, this only had to be one scene that still told a story. I chose the bus stop scene, again I used animals for my characters as I find it difficult to draw people. I felt a theme developing in my work and that was death. Although this picture looks like a nice innocent scene of some animals waiting at the bus stop, it is in fact, the story of the chicken crossing the road. If this picture was too carry on the chicken would be hit by the bus and die. For this picture I used book pages from a book about murder! This is not obvious at first glance and some people may never notice it, but me as the creator knows this and I feel like it's my little secret. We got to use the light box and camera equipment to take professional photographs of our work. I learnt that by changing the angle of the light and the depth of field it could give my picture a 'moody' look, which i did focusing on the chicken.

The final project for the module was Circus and we were tasked with creating a story around the theme of circus. I went with puppets and my story was the little girl that  always wanted to go to the circus, and then it arrives in town, but it's no ordinary Circus and she ends up becoming a puppet and a part of the show. Although this story is not as 'dark' as my other works I feel that it still follows along the same theme. I found this the most challenging out of all the projects but I think that it pushed me to develop the story and try new things!

I didn't really know what to expect from the Illustration course, other than that we would be drawing, but I really enjoyed my first semester and was excited to see what the next semester would bring!