COMIC STRIP UNIT

For this unit we had to complete a comic strip style piece of work, but the characters had to be inanimate objects.

Firstly, I had to decide what I was going to do the story about, and thought about possible storyline ideas.  I have some Manga books at home that I referred to (they are by Mark Crilley) and we had some old Beano annuals at home too. These gave me ideas on storylines, how to lay out the pages and how to images should relate to the dialogue bubbles to tell the story both in writing and through effective images.

I decided to focus my storyline on alienation, and used a mug to illustrate this.  I decided to use a mug, a rubber and pencil.  The rubber and pencil are the 2 most used pieces of equipment in the office, whereas the mug is only used occassionally, and as such feels left out of things. The moral of this story is that even if you feel alienated by working with others in a team you can achieve much more.

Initially, I did have 5 characters, but as the story developed only three featured, so I scrapped the other two t keep the storyline simple.

Now I had decided what the story would be about, I needed to thing about the style of illustration I would use and materials.

For this, I looked at the work of 5 different illustrators for inspiration. Some of these are people I remember from my childhood.

Mark Crilley


I do like Mark Crilley's style (which follows Japanese Manga illustration style) and have several of his books, including Brody's Ghost and Miki Falls.  His images really conjure up the mood of the storyline and make the dialogue come to life on the page.  His style is cartoon like, and in that respect he is quite similar to another illustrator I focussed on when looking for some inspiration.

Axel Scheffler

This artist created one of the best known children's characters in recent years, The Gruffalo.  Having two small nephews and a little niece who are all fans of his work, I am very used to seeing his work in the Julia Donaldson books that they love so much.  I really like the way his picture fill a page with bright colours and simple images, which completely suit the books' audience (young children). His images are pretty two dimensional with a cartoon like style drawings with ink outlines.  They are not over complicated pictures which means they tell the story clearly for young children to understand.His work with Julia Donaldson shows just how much his images help to tell the story - his characterisation of the Gruffalo for example, is drawn from the description in the book, but he could have created a scary monster, instead he gives up a quite likeable character that kids love/

E H Shepard

I really like the original illustrations in A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh books.  They have a quite spidery, uneven ,thick ink outline.  The colours used are quite subtle, as he uses watercolours.  This gives the illustrations a qaint, old-fasioned feel to them, which I like a lot.

They are much different to the work of Axel Scheffler and Mark Crilley, as they show more texture and shading.

Even after the Disney films of Winnie the Pooh, I still prefer these drawings of the characters as I feel they show them as they are written in the book by A A Milne.  In the Disney version, Winnie the Pooh looks too 'tidy' but in real life, a teddy bear is probably a but untidy.


Beatrix Potter

I have been a fan of Beatrix Potter's illustrations since listening to the stories as a small child, and loved the story of Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit so much, I asked for it almost every night!

These pictures are much more 3 dimensional that the work by the previous illustrators, and shows much more attention to detail.  This much be due to Beatrix Potter's study of animal anatomy.  She uses a soft pallette of watercolours and delicate ink outlining in her pictures, which show small aminals dressed in clothes of the period (Victorian/Edwardian).

Her work is much more detailed and precise than the previous artists, and these illustrations look like watercolour studies rather than storybook pictures.  in this respect, her work ins unlike the other artists I looked to for ideas.

Quentin Blake

One of my favourite artists.  Quentin Blake did the illustrations for Roald Dahl's brilliant children's books, and they go so well with the rather dark and weird side of Roals dahl's books perfectly.  The quirky ink and watercolour illustrations and very spidery outlines and a very distinctive style.  His images of Roald Dahl's characters help you to see the quite alternative side of children's books - they are not cute and cuddly, but a bit odd.  No one else could have illustrated roald Dahl's books as well as Quentin Blake.  They are brilliant!!!

Taking all of these artists' work into consideration, I decided to