Creatives Spotlight

Some examples of influences and inspirations for my Final Major Project can be seen below. Their contributions in storytelling (in all forms) helped me to understand how good stories are written, as well as how themes and emotions can be portrayed successfully in many creative mediums.



Joseph Staten

Joseph Staten is an American writer who was the main writer at Bungie Studios for the Halo video game series, and was the cinematic director, script and dialogue writer, and franchise developer until 2011. Staten now acts as a senior creative director at Microsoft Studios.

One example of his work is Halo: Combat Evolved - the first game in the Halo series (released in 2001). The narrative of the game follows the Hero's Journey Monomyth that I have mentioned before to be a classical aspect of character development in stories, as well as being a unique interpretation of military life in the year 2552. As the beginning of a series that would grow over the next 15 years and span countless games/comics/shows, it is telling that the writing of Halo CE unlocked the potential to explore and develop a new and exciting science-fiction universe.

Halo: Combat Evolved - Bungie Studios

The work of Joseph Staten has influenced my Final Major Project, in that I am inspired to explore my own version of a sci-fi narrative set in the year 2320, with many designs and ideas from Halo feeding into the visual style for my project. Added to this, Staten's writing has helped me to inform my own writing when constructing the main threads of my narrative. This is why these influences add to the structure of my FMP.



Matthew Stover

Matthew Stover is an American fantasy/sci-fi novelist, who has written several novels in both genres - to much critical acclaim. Stover may be best known for the four official novels he wrote in the Star Wars universe.

An example of his work is the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith novelisation (released in 2005). This book was based on the story and screenplay of the movie in the Star Wars franchise of the same name. Because of the nature of this storytelling medium, and the talent of the writer, the novelisation evokes more emotion and thought in the reader than the movie ever could. While fans of the franchise are split when it comes to Revenge of the Sith, both sides come together to highlight this novel as one of the shining examples of a Star Wars narrative done right.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith novelisation - Del Rey

The work of Matthew Stover has influenced my Final Major Project, in that it fueled my passion for meaningful and emotive storytelling. Many of the passages of the novelisation are beautiful and raw, and I hope to reflect that beauty when writing my own narrative. Stover's novelisation also inspired me to always take a deeper look into the aspects of a story, including the feelings of the characters and the descriptions of the locations (world building). This is why these influences add to the structure of my FMP.



George Lucas

George Lucas is an American filmmaker, entrepeneur, and creator of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. He also founded well-known studios Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic. Lucas led Star Wars media and the Lucasfilm name until he sold it to Disney in 2012. He now works on experimental movie projects and ideas on his own.

One example of his work is Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV), which was first released in 1977 and remains one of the most influential movies of all time. This movie is a sci-fi/fantasy adventure that hosts a clearer case of the Hero's Journey in the development of Luke Skywalker. A New Hope (and Star Wars in general) has become a cultural phenomenon lasting 40 years - a testament to the initial spark of creativity and imagination provided by George Lucas, as well as how strongly these stories resonate with fans across the world.

Star Wars: A New Hope poster - LucasFilm Limited

The work of George Lucas has influenced my Final Major Project, in that Star Wars shaped my childhood and gave me a setting where I could use my imagination to create limitless stories. The unique vehicles and planets in the series inspired elements of my ship and world designs, and the Hero's Journey parallel is something I intend to utilise for the protagonist of my story. This is why these influences add to the structure of my FMP.

Pitch Design Board

The design board for my pitch went through many iterations before I settled on a layout that demonstrated the visual language of my Final Major Project, as well as one that described the influences behind the various elements of the project.

This is the final version of the design board, and includes my own illustrations of the main character, one of the alien ship designs, a dummy page from one of the graphic novels, and simple dummy book covers.  It also includes visual reference to inspiration from other comics, literature, and narrative devices. I believe this layout is effective in portraying the atmosphere and style of my FMP, while also giving a good idea about my intentions and reasons for doing this project.

The above image shows me testing the scale of the design board, to see how best to fit all the seperate elements to the aforementioned design. By doing this, I can visualise how the finished board will look and adjust the scale of other elements, such as text boxes, to fit alongside the images.

This image shows a far more developed version of my design board. It looks professional with the black background and borders, as well as having a cohesive and varied layout. While this is not the finished design board, differences can still be seen in how the presentation of the board evolved through its production. I feel that this new layout puts a more central focus on the visual design of my FMP, while allowing enough negative space to declutter the limited space.

This is the final look of my design board, and includes added illustrations to fill the remaining large negative space, as well as giving as much visual reference to my project's style as possible. The board includes a good balance of reference images, dummy examples for my graphic novels, and design illustrations. I am content with the development and final outcome of this design board, and I believe it represents everything that I intended it to.


-
I feel that by producing a design board for my pitch, it helped me to summarise and clearly explain (through text and visuals) the ideas behind my project, my intentions for it, and why I decided to do it. While being hand-made, the board ended up looking professional and visually appealing. I believe that constructing design boards like these would be beneficial to any creative project I plan to undertake.

Visual research and style

Developing the visual style of my Final Major Project is an important part of the design process, as it gives myself and others a clearer idea of the different aspects of my fictional universe. This includes everything from the spacecraft used by the humans and the aliens, to the techniques and aestethic used in the final outcome. 

The first experiment into the visual style of my project came in the form of traditional inking practice. This page shows dummy panels from my graphic novels, as well as a shaded and detailed head, which I later realised would be too detailed and time-consuming to implement into my graphic novels. I worked to get better with my line control when it comes to brushwork, and I think this experimentation payed off in the final dummy page at the end of this post.

Next, I produced several designs for what the human ships and military vehicles would look like. This was one of the most enjoyable parts of the visual research, as I hadn't developed the human side of the designs and could do anything I wanted with the designs. In the end, the designs I preferred the most were the more 'modular' and blocky ships, along with the infantry transport on the last page.

Revisiting the Cryp'lar concept ship designs, I wanted to produce a larger and more concrete design of the Cryp'lar Control Ship for my design board. I believe that this illustration shows the technique and level of detail that would be in my graphic novels - as if this drawing was taken directly from a panel of one of the books. I like this design because it has a simple structure, while also showing a lot of detail. For example, the large concentrated city on the surface of the craft has all the buildings and towers fully represented, which not only gives a better sense of scale to the ship, but also contrasts well against the more spacious 'arms' surrounding it.

This is the initial page layout sketch for the final dummy page that would also be presented on my design board. There is rough detail concerning the subjects of each panel, and it gives a good, if not crude, example of the finished page.

Above is the inked page in all its detailed glory. The ink gives the lines a bold and sharp look, which works well on subjects with a lot of close linework (like the Cryp'lar warriors under the first panels). The content of this page includes the Cryp'lar invasion seen in the first graphic novel, and is presented in a way that emphasised the aliens' descent onto Earth - with panels at the bottom on ground level showing the reaction to the invasion. 

While this was only meant to be a simple test for how the actual pages of my FMP would turn out, it surprisingly helped me with the world-building of 24th Century Earth, if only slightly. The towering skyline of this metropolis helped me to comprehend the setting of the first book - before the Cryp'lar attacks Earth.

Here is the final dummy page scanned, formatted, and with the text added. After digitally cleaning up the linework, I placed the page inside a black border with a white bleed, which makes it look professional and further aids the black ink lines in popping out.  By adding text to only the top panels, I managed to further emphasise the alien descent by having the text move lower and further to the right, which would naturally end on the people at the bottom. The textless end panels give time for the people to react to the ships swarming over the skies. Overall, I believe this page is both visually pleasing and representative of the direction and pacing I had in mind for this part of the narrative.

-

I believe that conducting this visual research has helped me to better understand the look of the characters, vehicles and locations of my own universe, as well as gave me an opportunity to practice the process I will use to create my graphic novels, during the FMP module. As this was only preliminary research into my narrative, I did not get to experiment or develop elements very far, and would have enjoyed a longer period of experimentation and development to fully engross myself in the visual style of this fictional universe.