Illustration and Visual Narrative 2017

9th of Nov '17 - 7th of Dec '17 (Week 10-Week 14)

Jaslyn Tjhai (0333039)
Illustration and Visual Narrative
Project 3: Tunnel Book/Webcomic

Project 3: Tunnel Book

Week 10

On the Thursday of week 10, Mr. Hafiz briefed us about our final project which is to either make a tunnel book or a webcomic. Mr. Hafiz recommended some websites for us to try if we were to make a webcomic, as well as some examples for tunnel book. Mr. Hafiz also told us that if we're going to make a tunnel book, we have to film the final outcome of the tunnel book. We were told to try not to do something that's been done before. If we're going to make a webcomic, it could either be a parallax, animated, or animate it on madefire.com. The outcome must have at least three layers and at least three types of transitions. As for tunnel book, we can also include lights. After briefing us about the assignments, Mr. Hafiz then showed us some works done by Chris Ware.

Fig. 1.a Art by Chris Ware

Fig. 1.b Art by Chris Ware (2)

 Mr. Hafiz also gave us links to a few descriptive stories that he thought would be good for our project. But we are also free to choose our own stories.

Week 11

By week 11, we should already chosen a story and start sketching out mind maps, narrative structure, and decide on what we wanted to do and start planning. I decide to choose a classic story titled The Elves and the Shoemaker. There are a lot of versions of this story, I decided to use this one.

Here are my mood boards, narrative structure, etc. I was still confused whether I should make a tunnel book or a webcomic. Mr. Hafiz then told me to just settle with tunnel book since I'm interested in it and I've never done it before so I might as well give it a try.

Fig. 2.a Mind map and narrative structure

Fig. 2.b Mood board and references

I then started to do some sketching and plan out how my tunnel book will look like. So at first I wanted to make a tunnel book where there's five parts of the book, according to the narrative structure. I also tried to sketch the characters that will be in the book as well as how the house will look like because I wanted to make the tunnel book in the shape of a house.

Fig. 2.c Sketches of the elves

Fig. 2.d A sketch of the house

Fig. 2.e A sketch of how each panels will look

Week 12

On week 12, I was still working and tracing on Illustrator. Mr. Hafiz asked some of us to start trying to do the laser cut but not all of us are done yet so only one or two went to try. I was kind of confused as to how I should plan and arrange my panels during this week and I also decided to decrease the number of parts for my tunnel book as I don't have enough time and some parts may be repetitive. I was also thinking about how to put the tunnel book altogether. Basically during this week, I'm kind of still really confused as to what I should be doing and how I should be planning.

Week 13

By week 13, I showed Mr. Hafiz my work, and he said my sketches were too flat. I don't have any angles for each panel and it's going to be not good. Mr. Hafiz then told me to try and draw at different angle. For example, for my first panel, it will be first, furniture, then we can see the man working on the shoes behind the furniture, afterwards the next panel would be a close up of him working and so on. I actually thought about doing close ups but I thought it would be weird but Mr. Hafiz said it's fine, so since I'm a little confused, I decided to try and do some sketches again so I can be clear. So after class, I immediately start sketching again and start drawing and tracing in illustrator as I really need to get the digital files done by this week to do the laser cut next week since next week is also the submission week.

Fig. 3.a Redo of sketches for each panel

Fig. 3.b Drawings on Illustrator file

After tracing all of it, I actually wanted to UV print on my laser cuts but it would cost a lot. I thought of painting but I'm not going to have enough time to paint as I will have to wait for the paints to dry while I have so many panels. After tracing I found out that my panels reach 30. So I decided to draw on Photoshop and color it there then print it and cut it and finally paste if on my laser cuts. Here are some of my drawings.

Fig. 3.c Drawings on Photoshop

After I finish drawing it, I realized that I also don't have enough time to really color it well, so I decided to just leave it at black and white.

Week 14

On week 14, I showed Mr. Hafiz my work again to ask for the final feedback. I told him I have like 30 panels and that each part (which I ended up just making three parts) doesn't have a consistent number of panels. Mr. Hafiz then told me to try and make it consistent so it'll look good otherwise it's not too organized to look at. I was also told to try and decrease the panels and try not to repeat a few panels which initially I planned to do since the whole story happens in the house itself so I thought it was necessary to repeat some panels. But after listening to Mr. Hafiz's feedback, I decided to try and decrease some of them and try not to repeat panels. Then I went and laser cut my tunnel book. The whole process of laser cutting took about 2-3 hours as the machine kind of lost it's power so we need to do it in quite a slow speed to make sure the wood is cut and not engraved. Afterwards, I wanted to make it look like a flip book, which is why there's two holes on top of each of my panels but since I miscalculated the width, it's too thin for me to connect the holes and make it a book as it will break. It broke a few times which I glue it back together.

Fig. 4.a The broken top side of the panel

Fig. 4.b Three parts of my tunnel book

So in the end I decided to make it like a zig zag book so I connected the sides with ropes which I tied into knots so it's more durable. Here's a video of my tunnel book.

Fig. 4.c It opens in zig zag form

Fig. 4.d The sides which I connected with ropes in knots

Here's a link to my files for this project: Project 3: Tunnel Book