Evaluation
For the final piece of Unit 1, the brief was to create a small-press book on a design and topic of our choosing. This was something I was really excited about doing, and I was happy with the freedom we’d been given to complete this task. At the time my main inspirations were the Moomins, a book and cartoon series originally created by Finnish author Tove Jansson. Even before the final piece task had been set, I wanted to create a character that was inspired by the Moomins. This was a great opportunity to develop such a character and give them a story.
I tried to keep the art style fairly similar to that of the one Tove Jansson uses to illustrate her Moomin books, particularly the eyes of the characters and the use of cross-hatching for shading and detail. The comic’s story itself was inspired by my own thoughts of what it would be like to be transported into Moominland – this I then translated into my own original world and story.
The first page, where Tisk’s life seems to be going badly, lacks shading and detail to represent how bland and uninspired her life feels. Then, as her life gets progressively better, (plus the deeper we get into Tisk’s life and more 3-dimensional she - hopefully - may appear as a character) the more shading and detail I added. Also, the panels are very linear and structured until the fourth page; when Tisk groggily wakes up and begins to realise that she is in another world, the panel’s structure slowly deteriorates until it has completely fallen away. From that point on the panels are not only unkempt and without structure, but are sometimes round, their boundaries are obstructed, and sometimes are plain not there at all, to represent the whimsical and enchanted world and things happening around her, in contrast to the linear, monotonous structure of her previous, regular life on Earth. (Deep, huh? :D)
