CHARLOTTE BANCHINI
IDEAS & PLANNING
EXPLORING MY INITIAL IDEA
Comic inspired by my time spent at college and the friend group that has been formed because of it.
ELABORATION OF IDEA
Explore possible software options. Paint Tool SAI, Photoshop etc.
Try to make each scene stand out by changing the art style.
Could implement animation by including gifs in the comic.
Implement colour and shape language to add more depth to the narrative.
Show a range of different scenes to represent what the friendship group is like/how it has developed.
Adopt a friendship message into the scenes.
Add emotional elements to the scenes.
Experiment with possible comic layouts.
To start our planning, we wrote down our initial idea and passed it around the class as a form of brainstorming so that they could add more elements to the idea or elaborate on all the possible ways we could execute the idea we already had. These included some ideas for what programs to use, possible themes and context to implement into my idea. My starting point is very vague intentionally in order to give me room to expand my idea as the project develops, so that I don't tie myself down to one concrete idea. At its core, I want to make a comic that is dedicated to my years at college, the friendship group I've made because of it and in a way show my development as a person from first year to now. I want to immortalise the most impactful moments of my life so far, and most of those moments have been at or because of college.
The program I intend on using is Paint Tool Sai, because it's what I'm most used to while also being something I can consistently grow my skills within by using different user-made brushes and various tools. I've never made a comic before, so I'll have to experiment with various layouts and how to format my comic visually in order to be paced well. I want to incorporate a lot of symbolism into my comic, especially in terms of colour - I thought of maybe using a sunset theme, with the beginning of the comic being with more pale, watercolour colours like the beginning of a sunset, and ending with. the most vibrant saturated colours to symbolise the end of a sunset and the end of college/this phase of our lives.
PITCH PLANNING
This year there's a lot more options for how we'll communicate and present our pitches. From pre recording what we want to explain about our idea(s) to having all of the information already on our websites and scrolling through it as we elaborate on what we've written. We also have the option to have people in the room to make us feel more comfortable while presenting, or to just present to one person. Last year we were required to have 3 different ideas to present, but this time we're able to instead just do three variations of the same idea. I already have an idea I've scrapped for the FMP, but I can still propose it as an option for what I could do as I had already done a lot fo planning for it in preparation.
Additionally, we don't have a set theme to follow for this FMP which gives us a lot more freedom in the ideas we will present. At its core, the pitch is about elaborating on the treatment(s) we make and describing those core elements; some examples of these this include concept art, inspiration, moodboards, a summary of our idea, the context, key themes and intended audience.
Wix
Video
Photoshop
Pre-recorded audio
FMP PITCH
One on one or to whole class
Word
Powerpoint
Presenting my pitch with confidence was a big issue for me last year, even though it was done one-on-one. While we do have the option of having our friends in the room with us for the pitch, I rather have it be to as few people as possible. As my main project idea is about my friends, it's a bit harder to explain that idea to them since they already know it, in a way. As for now, I plan on sitting down for my presentation and showing Mike my one-page treatments as casually as possible on my website to make it as low pressure as possible for myself.
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This task initially stressed me out, because I didn't look forward to doing a pitch again. However, now revaluating it and constructing an easy plan for myself makes me feel a lot calmer as it helped me to pick out the key elements of last years pitch that made it difficult for me and adapt them to my comfort level. Additionally, my friends have offered to be in the room with me if I did change my mind about doing the pitch one-on-one. Having the option of them being there, even though I'm undecided whether I want them to be there or not, is a comforting thought to have.
WHAT I NEED TO INCLUDE IN MY PITCH:
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Brief description of my ideas
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Possible technical specifications
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Moodboards
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Colour palettes
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Format/structuring of the comic
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Narrative
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Summary
IDEAS TO PITCH
Multiple page comic based on my college years alongside a poem I'll write, depicting my best memories and immortalising them as a final goodbye to this era of the whole friend group being here together.
Short 'home video' style animation complete with VHS noise and overlays, compressed music and audio from videos of my friends and I, reimagining scenes of our lives from the past couple years together to make an animated scrapbook of sorts of our college memories.
Several character sheets depicting fantasy characters based on my friends.
THE BRIEF
The FMP is our opportunity to fully express our full range of skills in any way we choose and to document our creative process, how we create and produce our ideas and be given full creative authority over our own work. Unlike last year, our FMP has no theme this year, meaning there is truly no barriers for what we can make. The aim of this project is to practically show off everything we've learnt throughout the course of this college year, having full independence and responsibility for our final products. In this FMP, I aim to create something that is wholeheartedly personal to me, original and authentic to my own college experience and dedicated to my friends and memories - it's unlike anything I've made before.
While this means it may have a more limited audience, I'm making it first and foremost for myself and the people it's dedicated to. More than anything, I want to have an emotional impact with my project and through doing a lot of research, experimentation, problem solving and gathering a lot of feedback and reflecting throughout. At the end of this project, our final outcome will be shown in the exhibition, and likely put into the MGA showreel. The only requirement for this is that it's at least HD 1080, with no pixelation.
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Before anything else, we have to pitch our three ideas (or three variations of one idea) for feedback using three one-page treatments we made, before deciding on the idea we'll go ahead with and carrying out research for it, and making a complete treatment for it. Additionally, we have to complete the project proposal where we justify the why, what and how of our idea, as well as the proposed research we will carry out. Alongside this we also have to make a production schedule to follow throughout our project to document our process.
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I'm putting a big emphasis on research for this project, because there are a lot of different elements I want to include in this project and to make sure I do each of them justice I would have to carry out a lot of different experiments to see what works and what doesn't stick. This research will also help inform my problem solving, since I'll be able to to document any changes I make to the project thanks to any failed experiments I carry out.
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I'll be documenting my production as closely as I can to this project as there's a lot of different aspects of it to be shown the process of and showing how each of those elements develop will be integral to understanding how the final product turns out.
THE PITCH
After presenting my pitch, I settled on going through with my first idea as it was the one that was the most balanced in terms of being both ambitious, original and challenging for me while still being doable within the timeframe of the project. The feedback I got contributed to me choosing this idea, as I was told that my third idea wouldn't be challenging enough due to it being something I already specialise in. Additionally, my chosen idea takes a very different route to any of my other ideas and past FMPs which makes it more of a suitable option since it will allow me to branch into new areas in the industry, learn a lot of new skills and delve into many different types of research that will help inform my creative decisions throughout production.
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Another point to be made is how my 2nd idea was actually the original idea I was gonna go ahead with, before later deciding on this comic idea since it would be more possible for me to make. The 2nd idea, while it's something I still would like to do one day, it's too big of a product to be made within the time frame of this project as it would be a minute and a half in runtime. Learning from my FMP last year, I know that I shouldn't aim to make something that I wouldn't be able to complete in time. My FMP of last year was of the same runtime as my 2nd idea for this year would have been, and it was also meant to have colour, like this idea has, it was practically impossible for me to do this last year so I doubt I would be able to now.
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I was also asked what I thought would be the hardest and easiest/most fun part of my project would be to do, if I were to do my first idea. I believe that the hardest part of this project would be the sheer amount of comic panels I would have to draw, the range of subject matter like characters, props and scenery ,as well as overall learning how to make a comic and include all the elements i want to implement without the emotional impact being lost along the way.
UAL PITCH PROPOSAL
FULL TREATMENT
ETHICAL & ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS
In this project I plan on minimising my environmental impact by using as little power as possible. A couple of the ways I could do this is by turning off my computer and using sleep mode while not doing practical work on it, and turning my computer brightness down to not take up as much electricity. Additionally to this I must take into account ethical considerations, for example not using harmful stereotypes or cultural appropriation. The characters present in my comic will be my friends, so it's important to me to portray them as authentically to real life as possible.
I also will have to be aware of how I could be limiting my audience by having my comic be about my own specific friend group and college experience. I don't necessarily want my comic to be "for everyone" as it is an important context I want to be present in my project and I don't wanna lose that nuance to trying to make my comic appealing to everyone, I want it to maintain its integrity. Another thing to note is copyright and plagiarism, or rather the lack thereof in this project. This is the first FMP I've done that hasn't relied on an outside source like a song or piece of media, so I don't have to take copyright into account as the comic will based on my own life and friends.
Privacy is something to take account of too, this comic could potentially have a big reach online so it's important to me that my friends and I's privacy is maintained despite a lot of the comic being based around places we live, like college and the park we frequent.
STORYBOARD IN PROGRESS
FIRST DRAFT
To start my storyboard, I first laid out some possible boxes that would fit the current draft of my poem. The format of my comic itself is very reliant on the structure of the poem, since the flow of the poem would have to be recontextualised into a visual format while still having enough space to have the poem captions present. The black bars are representative of where I intend to have the lines from my poem laid out. In the final version of my comic, the boxes will not be drawn with linework this rigid, bold and untextured. This storyboard was made so that I had a foundation to start building upon and adapting, so it's not very representative of how it will look in the end yet.
SECOND DRAFT
I then made a second draft where I adjusted the boxes accordingly to the new draft of the poem I have made. I'm not sure yet if this new draft is the finalised version, I intend of gathering feedback on it and getting a beta reader to help me with my word choice and overall structure and content of my poem - without changing my original message I want to convey.
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After doing both of these drafts though, I felt like they looked too messy and crowded, with the exception of the last big panel being a whole page, acting almost as a release of tension. It's at this point where I implemented the research I had done about different comic formats and suddenly the idea of making something in a more webtoon style felt more appealing. Webtoons are more often than not very vertically based, intended to be read by scrolling on a phone etc. and the benefit of this is that you don't have to think as much about specific panel sizes and spacing as webtoons often follow the rule of only a few panels to a page, and other elements of the scene surrounding those panels on the page.
Before going ahead with making a draft of my comic that was in more of a webtoon style, more abstract than the usual restricted panel style I was going for beforehand, I looked at some examples of webtoon/webcomic pages I've really liked recently so give an idea for what style I was going for. I particularly really like the first one, made by Instagram user ven_finn. The structuring of the small comic page, the mix of panels and overlayed thought bubbles and character drawings alike was really appealing to me and perfectly depicted the joy he was trying to convey, the semi-monochrome sunflower yellow colour palette adding to this effect. The style itself is unlike the one I'd be using, as I intend to use full colour and less of a sketchy doodle style, which is ven_finn's usual style!
Below is the resulting new draft of my comic's layout in a slide deck gallery, and while it's subject to change due to changing the format of other elements like what events I want to include and the poem, this is where I'm at right now.
FINAL STORYBOARD
I started with a freeform panel with no borders, just characters to portray that lack of structure and 'security' that came with friendships that form on the first day, when you're unsure of whether they will last. The next panels become more structured, one simulating the window outside of our classroom before going into a panel that is a regular scene with a border cropping off the rest of the world within that scene, capturing it only in that frame like a memory. Next was a wide panel that took up the whole width of the page, it being a big panel and yet feeling so crowded and isolating with the dark silhouettes framing my own character, inspired by a piece by Holly Warburton, a juxtaposition to the final panel of the same page where I am again in the centre of a crowd but the people's faces aren't obscured or in darkness. Under the wide panel is a small closeup panel of the same scene, overlaid over the one before it, fastening up the pace and drawing focus to the eyes to further convey the emotion.
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In the next page it starts with small boxes to simulate a Zoom or Discord call, portraying the themes of the lockdown and how it tested our friendships but only made them stronger as a result, followed by this it jumps from two differently shaped panels to represent Summer before 2nd year and 2nd year itself, the difference between the panel shapes being representative of the jump in time. After is a big panel, slowing down the pacing and letting us linger on this moment where my friends and I went out for the first time as a group both before a big lockdown and the first time with the newest friend in our group. Next is another freeform panel, it's vague while in storyboard form but it's representative of the first time I hugged my newest friend after that day out bowling. He's gone on to become my best friend and even now that moment is still special. THe next two panels are practically part of the same one, one half portraying the lockdown where we made first contact with the other class group, and the post-lockdown where we returned to college knowing we had a whole new group of friends.
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In the third page it's the most sparse of content, giving way for the few panels to speak for themselves alongside the poem's commentary. I made the first panel into an actual scrapbook, using polaroids as mini panels, then having one big panel and standalone freeform drawing to convey the slow tenderness and soft intimacy of our friendships especially during the summer when a lot of stress was going on for me in my life. My friends are what tied me to earth and it's expressions of love like my first sleepover and holding hands with my best friends that are moments worth immortalising in a comic, to me at least.
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This page goes right back to the business of summer again, we were outside all of the time and a lot of it is a blur but I have my notes of memories and diary entries and countless pictures of us in front of a mirror crowded together to prove how fun it was. We next jump to Halloween, one of the best times I've ever had, it was the first time a big group of friends had come over to my house and it ended up being such a great experience that has become more and more normal in our group. The final three panels are ones that I think I could make into standalone ones, or make them flow into each other more smoothly by overlaying them over each other in quick succession, or more spaced out to keep the pace mellow. These three panels are very different in time and feeling, but have interesting compositions and are connected by the one key theme of them all being about love: a piggyback ride, holding hands outside of a shop, on my back feeling not fully "real" while my two best friends stuck with me.
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The next page is a big jumble of events, finding my way out of a stressful time in my life, almost trapped in the 'box' of the panel, isolated, but then jumping to the next frame where me and my best friends went to a concert together, it's a crowded freeform scene like the wide panel in the first page, but I'm not alone this time and there is no borders. Next is another wide panel accompanied by the title line of the poem "we sit in silence, dangle our legs over the line where the sky meets the sea" followed by freeform headshot portraits of each of my friends, framing them in their most happiest moments and drawing them how I see them, authentically themselves. Following this is 3 more polaroid panels depicting the three biggest events of the past year, showing a timeline of how much we've all change together.
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The page after this is very much setting up the end of this year of college, showing days from as recent as this year and earlier in the 3rd year, some of these scenes could very quickly change to include days out we have during the easter half term, this part of the comic is very much about portraying the present, we're as close as we can be to the end of this year where I can still add new recent memories to the comic, so I'm taking advantage of it. I also took some inspiration from other art during this page, referencing the iconic Creation of Adam painting and intending to reinterpret it to fit my own time, representing adulthood and childhood and the changing of times and the solidification of our identities as people. I use the overlaid panels again to create the transition between this page to the next, my character blinking and appearing in the final panel before switching perspectives to the final page and final panel.
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Matching the way that the final line of the poem is stands alone from all the other stanzas, this page does the same thing, one panel taking up the the entire frame while its subjects still remain relatively small, it's a big piece to do that has so many people and detail to put into it and so I intend to spend maybe even a whole week dedicated to making it perfect, but my main intention with this is to convey the fact that this is a piece of me and my friends that I've allowed the whole world to see, this is my way of sharing my love for them and yelling out to the world and to them as well. This is a love letter and a promise, and as the stylistically sized sun shines on us and takes up more of the page as we do, we realise we are small but it does not mean we are meaningless, because we all mean so much to each other and take up space all together despite the largeness of the world and the daunting future in front of us. At the end of the day, it'll always be all of us, together until the end despite where life takes us after this year of college, this page is a promise of that.
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Creation of Adam (bc. 1512) by Michelangelo
A Face in a Crowd (2019, from Flâneur) by Holly Warburton