It’s Friday again! Time for the third installment of the Bumantha series.
Come by next Friday for the final installment!
Chasing Marsha
This week, Marsha leads us on a quick jaunt in this, the shortest of the four installments.
Introducing Bumantha
Hello all! Five years ago I wrote a goofy little story about a woman who meets a stranger and her life (and couch) is forever altered.
I’ve now edited and converted that story into a series of four comics that I will show you in the coming weeks. I hope you have as much fun reading them as I did writing them.
Here’s the first part to get you started!
Creature Crunch Challenge
I heard about this website, Streak Club, and decided to start a streak of my own. For the entire month of March, I challenge myself (and anyone who’d like to participate) to draw one creature every day in any medium. What constitutes a creature? A creature is anything with a face, really. Any combination of animals, vegetables, minerals, and so on can be a creature, as long as it has life.
Sequential Valentines
These valentines demand your love.
Detective Opal (Unofficial Private Eye)
Some of you may remember my dynamic duo from last year, Opal and her tiny cow (who has been simply renamed “Tiny Cow”). Well this year I put together a pitch for a point-and-click style storybook game!
I’ll only show a few tidbits here for reasons I’m sure you understand, but if you’re interested in working with me on this, email me! I’d love to collaborate with someone who knows how to put together apps, as I think this idea would really work on digital tablets.
A filthy-yet-charming American city in the early 1900s, Grenadine is home to a colorful cast of characters. All of them are possible perpetrators of various crimes ranging from minor to major. Alternate endings reveal a different culprit each time!
What excites me about this project most is there isn’t a single character that I feel lukewarm about. All of them are dynamic and exciting in their own way and I’ve been having so much fun writing stories for them. Ultimately, I do want to make this a digital, interactive game, but in the meantime I will definitely develop a little book or two.
A Day at the Zoo
The assignment was simple: show a setting in three different periods of time. Knowing I’m more of a character-driven artist than setting-based, I chose to cover a short period of time rather than decades or centuries.
This project had to be done digitally. I get a little lost sometimes when it comes to digital work — it lacks the common sense of traditional tools. The professor suggested using textures as a way to bridge the gap. Very clever! I had fun scanning in different papers and even canvas, but ended up settling on ink splatters.
But these are way too many words. Here’s the STUFF:
I’ve noticed a “violent bird” theme in my projects this semester. Entirely unplanned, believe it or not.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Science Fiction Magazine
This assignment required two full spreads and a cover page with our name as the title. We could choose any subject, but every design element we used had to embody that subject. I chose Sci-Fi.
I needed to convey the feeling I get from science fiction. For me, that’s old radio shows, Douglas Adams, and Star Wars. I think a lot of people associate the genre with contemporary interpretations — gritty and dystopian. I definitely prefer the light-hearted, silly approach. It’s science fiction, after all. Let NASA deal with the bleak realities of the void!
I drew a lot of inspiration from retro sci-fi posters (you can find the pin board I put together here). I wanted it to be playful and really pull the audience into it. To do this, I constructed a sort of story using colorful card stock. The cover page obliterates the viewer’s home planet, and from there the spreads have no definite direction. You’re in space now! Turn it any which way and it’ll make the same amount of sense.
There are quite a few moving parts. The improbability “dunk” (duck/skunk) spins, the “jet propulsion” propels off the page, and you’ll find that little time-traveling spaceship in the future (on the next page). In the “Galactic Life Forms” chamber, the little dials slide around under a “Vague Warning” and you can open those big shutters to reveal a Large Nose!
The back cover sets the viewer down on a new planet, with a new perspective (in the opposite direction of the title page).
Maybe view this on an iPad or something that you can turn in different directions? The thing about this project is that photos don’t really do it justice. It’s a very kinetic experience, but imagine (if you can) that urge to pull and lift as you look at these images. I hope you get a sense of how much fun I had making this!
The Breakfast Revolution
This assignment asked us to provide a three-image narrative wherein each image was essential to the story and resulted in a surprise. What I enjoyed most was actually the formatting requirements. It was assigned to be set up in a french fold (folding the paper into quadrants) so that each image was revealed in sequence, doubling in size as it opened.
Take your time with each image before scrolling to the next. Hopefully any quirks in the formatting haven’t spoiled the surprise for you!
What do you think? Was the foreshadowing too obvious, or not obvious enough? Were you surprised?
Quotes
When summer began, I set up an email subscription to receive a quote every day so I wouldn’t lose creative motivation. As most resolutions go, I found myself floundering after a month or so and I decided to use these quotes more directly. I chose a few of my favorites and just got going! The project certainly got me back into the swing of things and I hope to do more of them. Some of them are sized for phone screens, and you’re welcome to use them. Click an image to view it full size.
Artful Armadillo 