Evaluating your final Graphic Narrative work

To complete your Graphic Narrative Unit and gain a Pass/Merit/Distinction overall your need to evaluate your final piece. Below is the evaluation assessment criteria for Merit:

M3 "Explain own graphic narrative work with reference to detailed illustrative examples* and with generally correct use of subject terminology**"

*This means that within your evaluation you need to offer reasons for the creative choices that you've made e.g character design, storyline, graphic style etc; and back up these reasons with ether examples of other published comic book etc AND/OR feedback from your audience.  

**As you write you also need to use appropriate media terms where you can ( Eg Protagonist/Antagonist, Supporting Characters, Storyline, Narrative Structure (linear,non-linear, open/closed etc) Foreground/Background, Longshot/Mid Shot/ Close up. Target Audience etc).

Evaluation Step by Step Guide:

1) When you have finished your layout export it as a PDF file - you will be able to share this with your target audience.

2) Use google 'forms' to create an audience feedback questionnaire. This is an easy way to collect data which you can use to support points in your evaluation.

3) When making your questionnaire think carefully what you want to find out (e.g do people understand certain aspects of the story?, Do certain aspects of the visual style create the atmosphere that you wanted? etc)  and chose the answer type from the drop down menu.

4) Remember to insert a copy of your final layout at the top of your questionnaire so that the audience can look at it first!

5) Send it out to at least 5 relevant people.

5) Use screen grabs/quotes from your feedback / examples from your initial research to help you discuss the +/- of your final piece.

Below are Questions to help you structure your evaluation:

• What genre of Graphic Narrative narrative did you set out to produce and who was the target audience? 
• To what extent do you feel you managed to meet the conventions of this genre eg achieve a look and feel similar to other published examples?
• To what extent did you audience understand the genre that you were aiming for?
• What were the biggest creative challenges that you found during the production process and how did you overcome them?
• Which aspects of the character design / graphic styling did you receive positive feedback on?
• Did you make any adjustments to your original plan as you worked in order to improve the characters or storyline?
• What would you do differently in terms of styling of technique in future?

Assignment 1 Completion: Putting together a well designed Creative Treatment.

[Adam, Amir, Dior, Chris, Riel, Nathan, Zee]

Session objective: Be able to present ideas for an Original Graphic Narrative as a carefully designed pitch document.

Final hand in hand in is this Wednesday.

Industry example of pages from a Creative Pitch for document for a game. 

All pages are designed to reflect the visual style of game while also presenting the creative content.

Below is a quick reminder of the brief:

Produce a clear and CAREFULLY STYLED* presentation (powerpoint etc) describing your idea for a Graphic Narrative. This should include:

• A front cover page with the tile of your Graphic Narrative, Unit name/number and your name.
• Story outline
• Character Designs & descriptions 
• Examples of background imagery / settings for story.
• Market research into other comparable Graphic Narrative products aimed at a similar audience. This should include comparison of how your product aims to mirror/contrast existing products. AND links to the research sources which you have used.
• Details of resources needed for production (e.g. construction materials, equipment etc).

* CAREFULLY STYLED.  A Creative Treatment is presentation used in industry to pitch for funding. Your presentation should make use of background imagery, colours, fonts etc to present your Graphic Narrative idea in an exciting way. Overall the presentation should have visual style that suits your theme and audience.

Assignment 2 Completion: Making a customised layout in ' Comic Life'

[Akram, Brandon, Daniel, Dante, Courtney, Oscar, Titus]

Session Objective: Be able to create a Comic Book layout customised to fit the style of your imagery using the "Comic Life' app.

This session your mission is to use 'Comic Life' to create a layout for your graphic narrative.
The Comic Life app offers some basic templates which you can customise to create something original styled to fit your theme and imagery.

Below are before and after examples. The app allows you to customise colours, fonts, callouts etc. Colours can be sampled from your imagery to create a more professional looking outcome.


Original Template


Customised Version

WHAT TO DO:

1) Collect together your imagery in a folder on your G-drive.  Even if you have a couple of images left to take begin work on layout so that you can be sure of what you still need.

2) To give your images a more graphic feel you can download them to an Ipad and use the 'Vinci' app to stylise your imagery using a suitable filter. Images will be saved to 'photos' on the Ipad - you can then save them back to your G-drive.

3) Working on a Laptop - download your images from the G-drive to your desktop (filtered version if relevant)

4) Open the Comic Life app and choose a suitable template to start with. I used the 'superhero' template as my starting point for the version above.

5) Drag and drop your images into the boxes. You can cut, paste and re-size boxes as needed to create your basic story layout. Customise the basic template to create an original design. Click on header lettering once to change the font, double click to re-shape or distort (red dots will appear which you can then drag to re-shape).

6) SAVE YOUR TEMPLATE REGULARLY AS YOU WORK ON IT!! Back up your layout by saving the comic life file to your G-drive at the end of the session.  When it's finished export your layout as a PDF and save this to your G-drive as well.

Producing & refining your imagery

Well done for some excellent character design 

& photography work today :)

Once you have photographed the scenes of your storyboard you can add further comic book styling to your images if you want to using the Vinci or Photoshop filters on the Ipads.

To do this, sign in to your drive, save your images to the camera roll then open up the either of these apps and try applying different filters. When you find one that suits your theme and target audience you can then apply this to all your imagery.

Using apps is a design choice so thin carefully about it, can hep to further blend the 3D character with the printed background... below are some examples of your images treated with different Vinci filters


Left: "hellgun" / Right: "blood"


Left: "transverse" / Right "times"


Left: "mars" / Right: "Vendetta"

Unit 55: Assignment 2 Brief (Producing your graphic narrative piece)

Assignment 2 of this Unit is to produce your 

Graphic Narrative piece.

Below is a link to the assignment brief 

(it should have also been shared to you)

Unit 55 Assignment 2

Digi Arts Group A: Session Targets for Monday 6th November

Titus & Daniel (Working with Izzy): 

Session Objective:
Be able to use storyboarding techniques to plan your graphic narrative.

Task 1: 
Create a bullet point list of the scenes which make up your story.

ADVICE: Each scene should correspond to a frame of your comic book / graphic novel.
Your bullet point for each scene should explain what 'action' is happening, where it is set and include any 'dialogue' necessary.

Task 2:
Begin to plan out the character positions  and camera angles and which you will use for each scene within a storyboard template.

ADVICE: It is fine to use simple stick figure drawing for this if you want to. The aim is to think clearly about the shots needed to tell the story in an exciting way.

Akram, Aden, Christopher, Amir, Riel, Adam 

(Working with Mark).

Session Objective: 

Be able to generate ideas for your own original 'Graphic Narrative".

Task 1:

Take part in a short group discussion of Graphic Narrative examples and key terms.

(Key terms: Graphic Narrative, Comic Book, Graphic Novel, Children's Book, Audience,  Characters, Protagonist, Antagonist)

Task 2:

Using physical examples and those on the Digi arts blog to inspire you, create a brain-storm of potential story topics for your own graphic narrative.

Ext: Add ideas about characters and audiences to your favourite story topic ideas.

ADVICE: Produce your brain-storm as a word / powerpoint or google doc and share it to both Digi Arts tutors at the end of the session.  ( mark.anthony.brown@wac.co.uk   jane.maxwell@wac.co.uk )

LINKS TO INSPRINIG EXAMPLES ON THE DIGIARTS BLOG:

Rap Comic

Rap personas and comic book heroes

Music Inspired Graphic Narrative

Unit 55 Graphic Narrative - Week 4

You have two weeks remaining to complete your first assignment.(A 'Creative Treatment' pitching your graphic narrative idea).

Your focus this week should be to complete at least one character design AND to produce imagery which gives a taste of the visual style that you will be aiming for.

What you should have ready by the end if this week:

• At least 1 image showing your character in a suitable location (green screen / printed background)
• At least 1 example of this imagery with any filters or style treatments applied.
• Examples of fonts or other graphic items that form part of your intended style.

Monday PM: Session Targets

LO1: Be able to finalise an original character design.

LO2: Be able to source suitable background imagery using online resources.

TECH TIP :PRINTED BACKGROUNDS:

If you are planning to print a background to photograph your character in front of (e.g because you want to use atmospheric lighting) the source file that you use should be as large as possible. You can use the google search tools to make sure you are only looking at large images. See example below. Click on an image to check the pixels dimensions to see which image is largest (e.g 2560x1600 on the bottom example) This example should scale up to A2 without becoming too blurry.

Once you have chosen an image (or images) put them in a folder on your G-drive and also email / share them to your tutor for printing. If you send them today we will try and print them for you to use tomorrow.

 

Assignment : Getting Started

Assignment 3

Copy this link to your browser to see the Assignment 3 brief:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSUWVhQjVLdGp6eXc

Session 18 | Customising your blog and getting ready to review your work.

Click on this link to see the guide slides for session 18.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSc1lWRmlLeVdFMVE

Production Plan Template

For anyone who wants it as a starting point - here is a simple production plan template for you to adapt.

New links
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSc3RhcnRlcl9maWxlX2Rhc2hlclYw

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSOGdUMXRnMEh3Z0U



It's made in Keynote so you will need to download it to your mac to see / use it.

Session 11 | Guides Slides. Assignment 2: Production

Click on this link to see Guide Slides for Session 11.  This session is the beginning of Assignment 2: Production of your Graphic Narrative idea.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSaF9TRTZwMFpQNVU

Session 10 | Pitch presentation & Submission of Assignment 1

Click on this link to see guide slides on what to put in your pitch presentation and how to hand in your work for assessment.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSSHJJYlFfNGhheVk

Session 9 | Guide slides: Visuals

This is a link to the guide slides for this session.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSWXlScFRKT0VVSFU

Image Filtering Sites

Here are some links to useful online image filtering sites.  These seem to work faster and more reliably than some of the Ipad apps. We also have a new app on the Ipads called 'Devinci' which is up and WORKING :).

The sites don't LOOK great .. but they seem to work well...

https://www.befunky.com

http://www.fotor.com

http://www169.lunapic.com

Session 8 | Storyline

Copy and paste this link to a browser window to see guide slides for this session.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSTXJHMThmWWxlbmM

Session 7 | Assignment 1 Graphic style experiments

Copy and past the link below into a new browser tab to see guide slides for session 7.



https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSck8wb3ZlOXpxS3c

Session 6 | Assignment 1 Idea Generation

Copy and paste this link to your browser to see the tasks for this session.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSajRkM2lmeDgwVms

Session 5 | Preparation for Assignment 1

Guide Slides:

These are the guide slides for session 5.
They tell you what you need to do this session and give you some examples.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSeWRYcHRmZno2UE0



Assignment 1 Brief:

This is the assignment brief which tells you what you need to produce / hand in. It also gives you some links to useful resources to get you started:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSWWVoNF9FV0hvRkU



Unit 55 Student friendly scheme of work:

This document shows you the topics to be covered each week and when assignments start and finish.


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSX3V1cW85VUk1NDQ

Session 4 | Dialogue: Guide slides

Copy and past this link to your bowser to see the slides for session 4. These will give you the session tasks and help resources.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1ti8BamV6QSN2wweC1uSEFJVVk