Well I’m basically making this post to clean up the previous ones and make it all make sense. You’ve seen all of my finals but here they are along with the story to make sure it makes clear sense.

For the extension series, my words to work with were ANCIENT and MODERN. I decided to convey these two words through the characters I was using rather than through the other elements in the panels. Avelon (a character introduced in my previous project) is a King from another world and so he represents the “ancient” in the series because Nina (who is being introduced here) is a young girl from our world who is considered “modern”. It’s kind of like an age-gap difference (ie grandparents and grandchildren think differently). Anyway…CHARACTERS:

Avelon is a King of another world. Originally (in my previous project) he was a prince – younger and royally bored out of his mind. After contemplation I decided to bump up his age and make him King. He’s still royally bored but I suppose you could say he’s having a slight midlife crisis and doesn’t find joy in life quite so much. However, he feels too old and set in his ways to do anything about it.

Nina is a young orphan who meets Avelon by accident really. She is young, delightful, and despite her hard life she is full of energy and the joy of living life to it’s fullest. Through her Avelon is able to find joy in life again and it’s beauty.

There was reaction to these characters interacting because of their age difference. I planned on treating the characters with a relationship much like one found in Annie or The Professional. I don’t want it to be awkward or weird for the audience to see the two characters together. I want it to end up looking more like a father/daughter sort of story. They’re not directly related, but Nina is an orphan who Avelon sort of takes under his wing and vice versa.

That’s part of what Avelon’s story is all about – finding that thing that makes him realize there is more to life than he realizes. I was very careful in choosing references for my actual panels to show the relationship between these two characters hoping that it wouldn’t get the wrong vibe. I want the story to be more endearing than anything else. I chose the extreme age differences to keep away from the cliche “falling in love and living happily ever after” story.

Anyway…THE PANELS:

Panel 1 - BLACK AND WHITE TO EXPRESSIVE COLOR

Avelon and Nina meet. Avelon’s world is gray and boring while Nina’s is bright and radiant (though you can’t really see it in this poor quality pic). Through her, color will also enter Avelon’s life and help him find joy and purpose besides that of being a King. They enjoy this introductory time eating ice cream.

Panel 2 - FLORESCENT PIGMENTS (POP ART)

Nina seeks to “modernize” King Avelon by going shopping for clothes (she’s such a girl)! Avelon goes through the fashion timeline in this panel starting off in his kingly garb and ending in modern day clothing.

Panel 3 - CUBISM (TRANSPARENCY)

Avelon and Nina are playing hide-and-seek – their relationship stronger and Avelon is beginning to open up. They’re learning from one another.

Panel 4 - ART NOUVEAU

I went with the story book approach to this one. It shows Nina and Avelon bonding and Avelon is obviously happier than he had been before his time with the girl.

Panel 5 - EXPRESSIONISM

Nina is sharing her musical taste with Avelon – which is colorful and full of movement – but doing so on a phonograph – an older piece of equipment. Such modern music coming from a piece of equipment more up Avelon’s alley confuses him and he lets his curiousity take hold of him while Nina dances in the background.

My words, again, are ANCIENT and MODERN.

As stated in my previous few posts, my story revolves two characters – a king named Avelon and a young girl named Nina. Avelon is thrown into the modern world where he meets Nina and is exposed to the modern life. How the words “ancient” and “modern” are shown in my panels are explained in my previous posts but will be revised and posted along with the final post of the project after all revisions are made to the panels.

MOVING ON.

The following two panels are the last two in the sequence: Cubism (transparency) and Expressionism. These two gave me the most trouble and even now I’m not sure if I entirely got them right.

CUBISM (TRANSPARENCY) – this one has gone through A LOT of stages and this was the outcome I came to. I had to look up so much information and tutorials and reference/examples of cubism in order to come to this. Cubism is probably the style I have the most trouble with just because my brain has a hard time understanding it. Hopefully I did okay with it though. In the panel, Avelon and Nina are playing hide-and-seek.

EXPRESSIONISM – This one has had its share of stages as well. What started out as a beach scene has changed into music. In my post that included all of my reference pictures, there was a picture done by a deviantART artist within the expressionism teir that really stuck out to me. It included a lot of busy/rough pen work and then splatters of paint. I wanted to give a go at that for this one. In this panel, Nina is sharing her musical taste with Avelon – which is colorful and full of movement – but doing so on a phonograph – an older piece of equipment. Such modern music coming from a piece of equipment more up Avelon’s alley confuses him and he lets his curiousity take hold of him while Nina dances in the background.

Again, my words for this project are ANCIENT and MODERN. In my two previous posts, I’ve explained how I use these words in each of my panels and how they relate to the story of Nina and Avelon.

I’ll be posting the finals (which may very well be changed I suppose) to three of the panels – Black and white to expressive color, pop art (florescent pigments), and art nouveau (metallics). The black and white has been altered from it’s original compostion (found in the previous post). Anyway, here they are:

BLACK AND WHITE:Avelon and Nina meet. Avelon’s world is gray and boring while Nina’s is bright and radiant. Through her, color will also enter Avelon’s life and help him find joy and purpose besides that of being a King.

POP ART:Nina seeks to “modernize” King Avelon by going shopping for clothes (she’s such a girl)!

ART NOUVEAU: I went ahead with the story book approach to this one. It shows Nina and Avelon bonding and Avelon is obviously happier than he had been before his time with the girl.

The next two images are sketches for my last two panels – Cubism (transparency) and Expressionism. I will be honest and say that I really have no idea what I’m doing with either of these. When it comes to cubism, my brain has a hard time processing and so doing cubism and understanding it is like a wall I keep running into over and over…I just don’t think that way I suppose. Thus, I know the cubist panel needs some work. I’m posting it just so you can see my thoughts as far as composition go – my thought process.

The expressive panel was done before in a previous post and I suppose we felt it needed more. This sketch is just another approach at adding in some crazy swirls and distorting the figures a bit. Thoughts?

NOTE: The colors on these digital sketches really have nothing to do with what the final product will turn out as. I simply used differed colors for different layers in photoshop. Like the other panels – these will be done in watercolor and ink for the finals.

First off – My words are ANCIENT and MODERN.

I’m taking Tom’s advice and making Avelon older (in his later 30s or so). I’m introducing another character into the story – Nina – who is a young girl. There was some reaction to this in class because of the two interacting despite their age difference (Nina is somewhere between the 5 and 7 mark).

I’m planning on treating the characters with a relationship much like one found in Annie or The Professional. I don’t want it to be awkward or weird for the audience to see the two characters together (which is part of the challenge I suppose). I want it to end up looking more like a father/daughter sort of story. They’re not directly related, but Nina is an orphan who Avelon sort of takes under his wing and vice versa.

As far as ancient VS modern…Avelon is from another world of princes and kings and castles and that sort of ancient ruling system. He gets thrown into the “modern” day world where he meets Nina. As stated in the previous project, Avelon is bored and unhappy with his kingly life, so I have him meet Nina who is lively and innocent and finds joy in every little thing life offers. I hope to show modern VS ancient in each panel with the characteristics of Nina and Avelon – such as differences in music taste, fashion, ect.

That’s part of what Avelon’s story is all about – finding that thing that makes him realize there is more to life than he realizes. I was very careful in choosing references for my actual panels to show the relationship between these two characters hoping that it wouldn’t get the wrong vibe. I want the story to be more endearing than anything else. I chose the extreme age differences to keep away from the cliche “falling in love and living happily ever after” story. I’d by happy to explain this more if there’s any confusion.

I’m sort of worried with how to go about doing each of these panels because it will be my first time working in these styles, so it should be an interesting experiment! I also decided to do my finals traditionally (ink and watercolor) because I have been working digital all year haha.

Jess

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Below I will be posting the SKETCHES (straight from my sketchbook) and work-in-progress “FINALS” for each of the panels in the order they are found on the project sheet. REFERENCES can be found in the previous post from last week. Enjoy

BLACK AND WHITE TO EXPRESSIVE COLOR

Avelon and Nina meet. Avelon’s world is gray and boring while Nina’s is bright and radiant. Through her, color will also enter Avelon’s life and help him find joy and purpose besides that of being a King.

FLORESCENT PIGMENTS – POP ART

Nina seeks to “modernize” King Avelon by going shopping for clothes (she’s such a girl)! Avelon will go through the fashion timeline in this panel starting off in his kingly garb and ending in modern day clothing.

TRANSPARENCY – CUBISM

I’m taking Charlotte’s advice on this one. This panel will show the difference in music that the two are used to. Avelon is used to classical/orchestrational music, while Nina is very accustomed to modern pop/rock. In this panel she’ll be sharing her musical tastes via ipod with the King (who suffers in silence while she dances about).

METALLICS – ARE NOUVEAU

I don’t have the idea for this one entirely fleshed out yet. The sketches show two possible compositions – one where the two are sharing a story book and another where they are flying a kite. I could really do either, so I could use some advice on this one…

EXPRESSIVE LINE – EXPRESSIONISM

Re-reading the criteria for this one, I’m not sure if I did it right or not…looking up for information on this one is something I’ve really had to do and even now I feel like I haven’t found a nice example of what exactly is being looked for in this panel. I chose to try and express the feeling of calmness, relaxation, and simple happiness in this panel through the colors. Nina and Avelon can’t imagine themselves without the other and are a part of each other’s world.

Here are my reference pictures for the next design for media project which is a continuation of the story of my character, Avelon. It will also introduce another character that closely interacts with him in his story named Nina. NONE of the follow pictures are mine unless stated otherwise. I will be using all of these wonderful pieces of art as reference for the panels to come for this project. I’m thinking of trying to go with traditional media for this project…but we’ll see.

*Note: “DA” stands for “deviantART” and online art community that can be found at www.deviantart.com

Black and White or Natural TO Expressive color. Art belong to Whalan and DA artists: watermelonjunkie, Artimis347, CuriousGeorge43545, and greenxin.

Florescent Pigments: Pop/Op Art. Art belong to Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein,  Jeimi Campos, and DA artists: smoothdog2000,  effettoeffe,  and SecretConfession.

 Transparency: Cubism. Art belongs to Alber Gleizes, Kimberly Rose, Natalia Goncharova, Aram Nersisyan, Emil Filla, Georges Braque, Tamara de Lempicka, Michael Biondo, and DA artists: darkphoenix7 and CrazyRecluseArtist

Metallics: Art Nouveau and Assemblage/Collage. Art belongs to Alphonse Mucha, Adele Lorienne, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Franz Anthony, Michelle Hoefener, Gustav Klimt and DA artists: ameeeeba, janey_jane, and The_Gwyllion.

Expressive Line: Expressionism. Art belongs to Robert Stark, Gabriele Munter, Emily Carr, Lyonel Feininger, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and DA artist: tofurcky

The following are some sketches and notes I’ve made thus far on the project (straight from my sketchbook). I haven’t quite developed an idea for my nouveau and expressionism panels…I suppose that will come in time. The second objective aside from having each panel relfect one of the above art styles is that they must portray words assigned to each student in class. My words are ANCIENT and MODERN.

Here are the FINAL versions of the 8 panels and introduction/short story of my original character, Lunar King Avelon. The Panels are in order – Geometric, symmetrical, asymmetrical, natural, animate, inanimate, dynamic, and rhythmic. They were all done in Adobe Photoshop 7 with a Wecom tablet. This has been 4 weeks in the making. Thanks for viewing!

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Avelon is the King of a moon kingdom far from Earth. If one were to see him, they would think he was human. He has a lean, strong build and stands at 6’2’’. The only parts of him that may not seem normal perhaps would be his piercing blue eyes and long, silky hair that is a glistening silver. He is often seen wearing his royal garb and is very neatly kept with a light scent of white roses.

Though Avelon is considered quite debonair, gentlemanly, and the target for any young, lovesick girl, he is actually quite unhappy with his life as a King. He understands and accepts his responsibilities but is lonely and does not feel that he has anyone in his life that he can truly be himself with. To counter this, he takes part in many activities when he’s not involved in his country’s politics to avert his mind such as barrel racing, sword fighting, meditation, taking long walks in the countryside, attending festivals, and extensive reading whenever possible (though one must note that he does all of these alone).  Avelon is a good king, but seems rather disconnected from general society.

Because Avelon is in his late twenties (though he looks younger) his unhappiness as a king and inability to find a solution to it frustrates him. He feels as if he has missed something in life to take up the hole in his soul and doesn’t know what to do about it. Over the years, even the activities that he once found to be most enjoyable are starting to seem dull and though his citizens and council cheer him on and give him praise, it is still not enough.

Here at the progress shots of the 8 panels for the Character Design project in my Design for Media class. As you can see, I’ve revised and further progressed on the first 4 panels. The 2nd 4 panels are proving more difficult because I’m not quite sure what I want to do with the backgrounds on some of them just yet (Dynamic and Asymmetrical are giving me the most trouble). All of the panels will obviously have more detail by the time the final is due (next week). I will also have the final version of the story by that time.

Order of Panels: Geometric, Natural, Inanimate, Rhythmic, Symmetrical, Animate, Asymmetrical, Dynamic.

 

**a revised version of the revised story D: it may very well be revised again. heh**

Do you know about the prince who lives among the distant moons? Far away from here, there lives a young man who is, quite possibly, the most beautiful creature you could ever hope to set your eyes on. He is tall with a lean build and his long hair glistens silver. His eyes are a sharp, piercing blue.

But Prince Avelon is not happy. Inside of him frustration brews for he has not found himself. He does not understand how he could have anything his heart desires (because he is a prince, you know) and still find himself unsatisfied with the life he lives.

Through various activities – such as barrel racing with his noble steed, extensive reading whenever possible, sword fighting, long walks in the countryside, meditation, and the occasional bubble bath – he finds hints of joy and happiness. However, he still does not feel like he has found what he is looking for – his purpose beyond the crown he is to inherit.

Poor Avelon feels alone in crowded areas and though he is quite gentlemanly and debonair he is quiet and reserved. He is not shy, he is just lost in his own head and observing – searching for the something that may make him feel complete.

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4 of the 8 panels for the latest design for media project – character design. These are subject to change.

(geometric, natural, inanimate, and rhythmic)

4 more panels on the way

***EDIT: look for the revised version of this soon***

*** This is the revised version of the story. The panels will be separate illustrations and are meant to convey the daily activities that Prince Avelon takes joy in doing outside of his studies and royal politics.***

Avelon is the prince of a moon kingdom far from Earth. If one were to see him, they would think he was human. He has a lean, strong build and stands at 6’2’’. The only parts of him that may not seem normal perhaps would be his piercing blue eyes and long, silky hair that is a glistening silver. He is often seen wearing his princely garb and is very neatly kept with a light scent of white roses.

Though Avelon is considered quite debonair, gentlemanly, and the target for any young, lovesick girl, he is actually quite unhappy with his life as a prince. He accepts his responsibilities and his destiny to one day become King and does not understand how he could be unhappy when he could have everything he ever could want. The truth is that he royally bored. When in public, he is polite but does not strive to be entirely social. He is known to be rather quiet and possess an air of mystery about him. This does not stop him from attending social occasions, however, and he rather enjoys attending various festivals throughout his kingdom.

When he is not wrapped up in his studies (science, math, philosophy, ect) he likes to get away from the castle and servants in hopes of trying to find himself, meaning, and happiness in the bigger picture of life. He enjoys barrel racing (he is the only royal member to ever do such a thing) and sword fighting. When looking to relax he seeks comfort in meditation and extensive reading whenever possible though he is known to disappear – taking long walks in his kingdom’s country fields – quite often (must to his parent’s frustration).

In short, Avelon is a bored prince who has not yet discovered himself in life. He feels hollow but does not understand why. He would say that he feels as if he is on auto-pilot – performing what he must but not feeling satisfied with it. Despite this, he does find happiness in all of the above activities because they give him a chance to be more open and true about himself – which he feels he cannot be during politics or his studies. He is simply looking for more.

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digital sketches for panels 1-8 in order (geometric, symmetrical, asymmetrical, natural, animate, inanimate, dynamic, and rhythmic). Note the difference in composition in some of the thumbs here from those in the previous post.