Final Assignment: Animated Webcomic Cover and One-Page Comic for "The Monkey's Paw"

January 4th, 2024

Week 11-15

Summary of this week's lecture:

As we move on from the collaborative project, we are now required to use Adobe Illustrator and possibly aided by others to create a web comic adaptation for the short story "The Monkey's Paw" By W.W Jacobs

using theory provided by our lecturer to further enhance the comic itself, the comic also needed at least 3 panels to be animated to bring the story to life better.

The comic itself will be heavily themed around horror as the story itself narrates the tale of a family whose wishes created devastation and despair. Before going deeper into the story let's proceed straight into the process of creating this one as we are only required to grab a segment to create at least three panels.

The Preparations into Making

Before we can proceed into developing the comic we must first select a segment like what was mentioned earlier, the part I decided to grab and implement into my comics was during the transition between the second and the third wish where the son of the two elderly figures is to be revived by the now re-unearthed monkey's paw. The context here is that Herbert White, the son of Mr. White here who has died in a machine accident due to the first wish that was made by Mr. white for two hundred pounds was going to be revived by the second wish itself. The scene I chose here will show the events of that second wish with the final panel being a direct bridge to the third wish itself where he was wished gone.

The tombstone that was drawn later is backwards and devoid of a name to add ambiguity as the wish was never specified to be Herbert White as he was the only surviving son prior to these events which implied that there were more before him hence why the tombstone was faced backwards to not reveal which one among the others were revived.

And now we move onto the comic cover. The cover unlike the comic itself was fully illustrated on Ibis Paint X on the mobile phone. Using my experience from the times I used to draw horror related art the way I've devised the cover is first by drawing a skull (this is going to be the hint as to what this issue is going to be about) And the monkey's paw itself. The background is a darkened version of the one present in the comic. The amount of paws present signifies the current wish being the second wish.

Images of the Paws and Skull

After figuring out the scene I'd like to Illustrate we go straight to the paneling and the script for each of them as well, I've made some few creative liberties in order to perfectly fit a good sum of the script into the comic without making it seem odd and out of place as the first panel will immediately introduce Mr. White raising his hand while opening the palm (Future animated segment) as the words "Wish!" can be heard throughout the two panels that will be shown from left to right, the second row of panels from the left will show the tombstone of an unknown figure explained previously to have its grave struck by lightning as the words "I wish my son alive again" Is uttered out. 

The panel after will show the monkey's paw atop a glass table with the talisman slowly falling off the monkey's paw itself as the talisman wrap itself will fall through panels to add more of an animated effect. 

The last panel will be the suspenseful pause that leads to the third wish later on which isn't going to be illustrated yet as this project only required me to draw out 3 panels as I've gone with 5 here.

The Mood Board

Now we move onto the color scheming of this entire work, as it was meant to be horror, I personally think that colors tend to ruin the atmosphere of the horror itself. I am aware that it can be done right but personally from my research the monochrome grayscale theme seemed to create a better atmosphere especially for a story set in the early 20th century. 

Initially I tried illustrating the work with color but it all ultimately led to the decision to gray-scaling the work as it lacked the horror factor I was looking for. I've also had a personal liking to Japanese works that convey horror aspects considerably better in black and white like the Junji Ito Collection for example. 

Background Progress Before Monochrome Changes

Image of the Mood Board

The Making of the Line Art and Creative Choices

With the color scheming all figured out we now go to the Illustrating part; I've noticed that Adobe Illustrator isn't without its issues. First and foremost, the basic outlines for the panels are made with at least one diagonal divide to make the scene more dynamic. The first panel will consist of three frames of a hand opening. This is firstly done by creating oddly shaped paths that will then be retraced later in a different application with a different brush to get a crispier look later on. The same will be done for the other panels as well.

with the base lines done and redrawn we will now move onto the coloring part as we will now add in flat colors. 

After adding the flat colors, the illustrations will be shaded by another application to add in a more realistic look to the illustrations itself. I introduce Ibis Paint once more as I thank this application in aiding me allowing me to create and generate some nice semi photorealism looking textures without having to grab real life textures themselves, making this artwork essentially 95% self-Illustrated with the exception of custom brushes made for things like the grass and hair of Mr. White. 

Mr. white here was drawn with excessive detailing on the line art to put emphasize on the fact that he is already rather old as shown in the line art below. Mr. White here was shown to be wearing some sort of Victorian era Ulster coat symbol of his age being old as this type of outfit is not too far off. Here he was also drawn with a scarf as this part of the story would have taken place on a cold winter night. 

Now we move onto the stylization of the fonts for the dialogue; to avoid having a generic horror font I've taken it to myself to manually write all of the text presented there. The words "Wicked" and "Wish!" are written with a much wavier and crispier look to signify frustration and weakness as the two are trying to commit something of taboo itself. Some dialogue here are presented without a box, this is a sign that the character is thinking the words out rather than uttering, the sentence on the second panel has been changed to be more of a descriptive type as Mr. White is describing something that was already done hence why the lack of a chat bubble, the spiky ones are from the wife requesting Mr. White to wish the son back to life with the lack of stem as she is not present within the frame. The sound of the talisman wrapping falling is written in a smaller size as it is simply meant to convey the subtle noises made.

Comic Sample Without Dialogue and Animation. 

Comic Sample with Dialogue and Animation. 

Reference Used

Not all of the assets shown here are Illustrated with line art as backgrounds and some items here are directly Illustrated and shaded without line art blending both lineless art and art with lines. The second panel where Mr. white was shown looking downwards as he raises his hand and makes the wish was made intentionally so that Mr. White was directly looking down onto the fourth panel on the page being the monkey's paw on the glass table. The Chair's design was inspired by a real-life image that I then attempt to re-illustrate to be included into this classy house of his. The walls aside from the initial setting are mostly photoshopped from the already drawn preset to save time. And since the furniture lacked lines, they were directly Illustrated in Ibis Paint X to achieve a more painting like look to then be sharpened to achieve a grainier
feel. 

Finished House Design Illustrated Before Filtering.

The monkey's paw itself was drawn for the cover and was grabbed directly from the cover seeing as it made good use as the angling was perfect and as seen above it was drawn to in the form of a more skeletal like palm than the traditional preserved hand to make it look like it wasn't kept all that well.

After completing the backgrounds and shadings I will now elaborate on the animation choices that were made in the making of this illustration as it was a requirement in the assignment. The three elements I would like to animate here have been explained earlier which I will now reiterate. 

- Hand opening as Mr. White makes his wish.

- Lightning striking the unknown tombstone hinting to the second wish doing its work.

- Talisman slowly falling off the poorly mummified cursed object as it falls through into the final panel.

The animation process will be done in either Adobe Photoshop using frame by frame development or another personal favorite of mine being KineMaster, a mobile editing application. And with that this concludes the making of the short story comic iteration of "The Monkey's Paw" utilizing Knowledge about Adobe Illustrator obtained during the course of the of past few weeks along with theory in Visual Narrative.

The Full Animated Comic (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g66tEHl0zKrk3jbqgQzNEfQcsUjqKPMR/view?usp=drive_link)

Gif Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z420o7Xwm3AWgdAuSHw_0FQsT3idyOSp/view?usp=sharing