As well as the normal frames, I intended to animate a few of the frames in the iPhone version. They would play on touch and link straight to the next panel once finished.
These were complicated as everything that moved, needed to be on separate layers in order to animate them. So with many of the animated frames I had to create and edit multiple layers for parts like limbs moving otherwise they would look far too static and would not move organically. The more layers there were, the better the animation would look, but of course the more layers there were, the more complicated the animation was to do in After Effects.
I created four of these for the graphic novel and I think they compliment it very well and are not just animation for animation sake which is always a risk so I had to choose the frames I was going to animate carefully.
Since very early after the iPhone's release there has been various types of comics and graphic novels available for the iPhone. Comixology was one of the first to offer these and was able to offer a comic book reading platform which worked for several titles instead of being a company specific reader.
In the same way that companies release tie-in comics when a big film/game is being released, the same was being done with iPhone comics. Titles were being made sporadically but usually only when there was a movie to tie in with such as 'Watchmen' or 'Scott Pilgrim'.
Smaller companies started to bring out comics for the iPhone which were created for that purpose or for characters who's rights were in the public domain such as Sherlock Holmes..
Over the last two years the larger companies such as Marvel, DC and IDW have seen the possibilities and have released their own comics for the iPhone and iPad, normally with their own comic reader.
I intended to adapt my own graphic novel for the iPhone and this meant that I needed to think about the scale and how the interface would be.
I decided that the screen would normally show one frame at a time to allow for clearer views as the art and lettering would be lost if I left them at normal page size.
The reader would scroll through until they reached the choice screen and at that point would tap the screen on the animal form which would take them to the appropriate route/ending.
Early on I knew that I wanted two versions of my graphic novel. I wanted a regular comic page sized version and I wanted an iPhone version.
The iPhone version would be interactive, it would go frame by frame until the protagonist is cornered and there is a choice screen where the 'reader' would be given a choice of animal form, either bear, hawk, spider or panther...
Then the story would span off in one of those directions which with path being different. This choice screen would give the reader a chance to interact with the story, a chance to affect the outcome.
There are many interactive novels, such as the 'Choose-your-own-adventure' young adult books of the 90's, where the reader would be given a couple of options at the end of a chapter about how they could proceed and then the reader would have to 'Turn to page 64' or whatever their choice was. Though these types of novels have ebbed away in recent years and they seem to be few and far between, there are even fewer interactive comics. Certainly this was something that was not exploited in any great way by the major companies.
On the internet, there are a few examples of interactive digital comics such as 'Hotel' http://www.hoteloscartangoecholima.com/splash.html. But I don't think these are exploited as well as they could be.
The only trouble with my graphic novel would be that if I had four completely different paths, then that would be a lot of work and I had to bear in mind that I was already taking on a lot by producing two different types of graphic novels (comic/iPhone).
After speaking with my year tutor, I learned about culminative explosions. This technique would be very useful as it meant that although some of the paths would be very different, they could end the same way and therefore I could use the same frames.
As soon as we received the brief, I contacted as many people in the sequential art and motion comic industry as I could. As expected I didn't get many replies at first, but I kept trying and resent emails until people got sick of me. Eventually I managed to get a few people to agree to a short email interview. I was very happy with the people who replied as one of them is the manager of a company that is at the leading edge if motion comics and the others are big names in the comic business.
As I intended to animate at least a few frames in my graphic novel, I started to look at as many motion comics as I could.
Motion comics are still a fairly new medium, which seems to be getting better all the time. There are several excellent pieces out there such as Marvel's adaptation of Stephen King's 'N.'...
And the excellent prequels to the 'I am Legend' movie by Jason Chan, which was one of the first motion comics that showed just what can be done...
As soon as the larger corporations such as Marvel and DC saw these, they realised the potential of this new medium and quickly jumped on board. DC have since released several titles such as Superman: Red Son, Batman: Black and White and Watchmen. While Marvel have released Spider-Woman, Iron Man: Extremis, Astonishing X-men and most recently Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers. Marvel also released an entire series of Black Panther as a motion comics based on John Romita's 'Who is the Black Panther' run.
With After Effects improving with every version, so is the quality of the motion comics themselves and Jason Chan and Marvel's Thor and Loki: Blood Brothers leading the pack so far.
As After Effect's is widely available, there are several amateurs who are turning out excellent work as well. The following is a motion comic made for a music video. The art is from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's 'Nemesis'...
The motion comic has a long way to go as a medium but at a fraction of the price of live action or digital or even traditional animation, we are bound to see lots more and improvements all the time.
Comic books are rich in history. Many superhero's are created as a response to real world events. Captain America for instance was created as a response to the second world war and could be argued that his early existence was purely as a tool of propaganda. Many of Captain America's adventures involved defeating Nazi in various guises. Weiner (2009) agrees and writes "Captain America has often been proposed as an example of nationalist propaganda and given his wartime origins as a Nazi-smashing, flag-waving, drug-enhanced super-soldier, this is not a hard argument to make." (p17). However his adventures soon became more than simple propaganda and troops would take the comic books with them almost into the very trenches as an example of the true nature of comic-books and that is escapism.
The effectiveness of a comic books as escapism meant that many comic books were created and often depicted the darkest parts of human history. Several comics dealt with the atrocities of the holocaust. A great example of this is the Pulitzer Prize winning 'Maus' by Art Spiegelmen.
Comic books boomed in the early 90's and then crashed with many large companies such as Marvel skirting close to bankruptcy, it seemed they had hit their maximun gross load and most comics had 7 optional covers or holo-covers. This comic book crash of the 90's along with a lot of disillusionment led to a lot of comic-book artists and writers setting up independant studios. People like Todd MacFarlane who went on to produce 'Spawn' and 'Haunt'.
Although there had been a small number of comic book adaptations to film before 2000 such as Tim Burton's 'Batman' and Richard Donner's 'Superman', it wasn't until 2000's 'X-men' and 2002's 'Spider-man' that hollywood had began to see comic books as the true untapped resource that they are. And in recent times' it's hard to think of a prime comic book character that hasn't been adapted to the big or small screen.
Once I had my script laid out I knew what elements I would need in the story so I started to look at books on drawing the animals I would need in my story.
Animals Real and Imagined (2010) by Terry Whitlatch was an excellent resource as it described how to draw animal musculature and locomotion.
The Artists Guide to drawing real animals (2006) was another good resource as it broke down the techniques for drawing differeing animals. I decided to try and get some first had photos of birds of prey so I joined a few forums and managed to get in contact with falconer who lived quite close by to me. He was nice enough to let me come and take some photos of his amazing birds which I could use for reference....
I also asked and visited a friend of mine who I knew kept jumping spiders in order to get the following photos for reference...
I also had to practice drawing people such as S.W.A.T team members...
