A Novel Approach

A Novel Approach - Achievement Standard: 91103

Credits: 3

Achievement	Achievement with Merit	Achievement with Excellence
·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas.	·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas convincingly.	·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text which develops, sustains, and structures ideas effectively.
·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text using language features appropriate to purpose and audience to create effects.	·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text using language features appropriate to purpose and audience to create convincing effects.	·        Create a crafted and controlled visual and verbal text using language features appropriate to purpose and audience to command attention.

Student instructions

Introduction

This assessment activity requires you to create a controlled visual text focused on ideas that interest you from the novel you have studied in class this year.

The audience for your work will be your class and teacher.

You will present your work as a page from a graphic novel.

You will be assessed on how well you:

·        develop, sustain, and structure ideas

·        use verbal and visual features appropriate to audience and purpose

·        craft a controlled visual text.

Once a pencil copy is completed in class you may take this home to make a good copy, allowing you to have more time to colour and ink your graphic novel, as well as using design software if you like. Your teacher will specify the final due date.

What the criteria means:

	Achieved	Merit	Excellence
Ideas	Ideas from the novel are mostly clearly communicated. E.g: character feelings, thoughts, development, conflict, relationships, influence of setting, theme.	Ideas from the novel are clearly communicated consistently through the graphic novel text.	Mature ideas from the novel are communicated with depth.
Presentation	Visual and verbal language features common to the graphic novel text type have been used. E.g: comic panels, lettering, colour, onomatopoeia, dialogue etc The final presentation is tidy, mostly consistent and able to be understood.	Visual and verbal language features are combined throughout the graphic novel. E.g: colour and panel shape and lettering. Features are repeated with comparative/contrasting effects to develop ideas. The final presentation is tidy and consistent.	Visual and verbal language features are used in original and/or incredibly effective ways. The final presentation is very well executed.

Composition of the comic book panels

Comic pages are supposed to be read like we do when reading a book. 

Top to bottom; left to right. 

The layout of the panels needs to be put on the page so that the reader can follow the story. If the story is not being arranged in this way the story will not make much sense.

Read this article from Webcomicalliance to get a clearer understanding of this concept: http://webcomicalliance.com/featured-news/composition-101-laying-out-your-comic-page/

 Panel composition

We also read each panel in a comic page like we read books. Again, this is top to bottom, left to right. 

For example:

In this example, every piece of writing has been organised in a way that tells the story clearly.

In the top left corner is a narrative caption. The next part we read is the “Whoosh” sound effect. This is followed by reading the dialogue, which – chronologically speaking – takes place pretty much at the same time as the plane explodes. The last part of the panel we read is the second sound effect, “Whaam.”

For the dialogue of your story to be followed you need to ensure speech bubbles are organised this way as well. Here is an example showing how to arrange speech bubbles in panels where conversations take place.

 

As you can see, in each panel, the piece of dialogue we are supposed to read first is in the speech bubble that is placed highest and to the most left. The speech bubbles are then arranged so that each new piece of dialogue is placed to the right and/or below the dialogue we are supposed to read first. Our eye is thus led from left to right, top to bottom, and reading the dialogue in this order leads us to read the dialogue in the way the storyteller intended. 

Frames

The frames that make up the comic panels can be the standard straight lines. But, you can also manipulate the frames to help convey ideas. Also, though you can arrange the panels in a linear fashion, you can also layout your frames in ways that further develop the story.

Here is a standard set of comic book frames:

Each panel is the same size and shape. What changes within the frame is the ‘camera shot’ of the panel. For example, the scene above begins with an extreme close up of a bullet shell, followed by a series of mid shots.

There are many ways to use the design of the frames to tell the story, though.

Here are some examples.

 The panels here, divided by thin black lines (called gutters), create motion. It is like a pan in a film and the camera moves from left to right and reveals how large Dawn (Buffy’s sister has become). As you can see the four panels are, effectively, one picture with the only elements that change in each frame being Buffy and the speech bubbles.

The textures and shapes of the frames can indicate more than just camera movement and a passage of time; they can also help convey what is happening or what a character is thinking or feeling.

For example, a dream sequence:

Here the shapes of the panels change from being standard shapes to being more jagged and organised in a more non-linear way to convey the growing panic and hazardous nature of the situation which Thor finds herself in:

In this example, the trees become the frame of the panel, framing a dream image.

And here the jagged nature of the panel is to convey the pain one character - in particular - is feeling:

This tumblr post will give you more ideas about panels if you want to check it out: http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/841119890/advanced-layouts-paneling-outside-the-box

As well as this wordpress blog:

https://meagocomics.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/frames-and-some-tips-for-beginners-and-not-only/

Camera Shots

When planning your graphic novel adaption you should consider the kinds of ‘camera shots’ you will use and ensure you have some variety. Think of it like a film. If you saw a movie and every shot was mid-shot it would be pretty boring. The effects camera shots have in comics is the same as in movies. 

Extreme long shots: Shows setting and landscape.

Long shots: Good for showing action, movement and characters interacting with each other and their environment.

Mid shots: Help convey character relationships and help you understand who the character is, as you can see more than just their face.

Close ups: Good for conveying emotion or thinking.

Extreme close ups: These are often used to emphasise emotion or reinforce that an object is important.

Low angles: Make a character or object seem powerful, intimidating or threatening.

High angles: Make a character seem weak, vulnerable or small.

For example here are two uses of long shot. The first is used to help us understand setting; the second is used to show actions – two characters fighting.

While here is an example – from the same Scott Pilgrim series – which shows how the ‘camera shots’ of a graphic novel can tell the story just as effectively as dialogue and the artwork. 

Here the camera is used conventionally at the start with close-ups to allow us to focus on the emotions of the two characters. Judging by the facial expressions, it is obvious something awkward and probably sad is going on. The camera pulls back to mid-shots/mid long-shots and the characters are placed at the extreme edges of panels. The point behind this is to convey the crushing nature of these emotions. This is reinforced through the female character’s (Knives Chau) speech bubbles which become wavy and the font increasingly small. The contrast in the background colour also helps convey the – emotional – distance growing between the two characters. 

Speech bubbles and other such times

In comics there are four main forms of lettering that take place.

1.       Speech bubbles – shows what people are saying. Often straight lined balloons.

2.       Thought bubbles – shows what people are thinking. Often cloud shaped balloons.

3.       Narrative boxes – Help tell the story. Often caption shaped boxes in the top left sections of panels.

4.       Lettering – the sound effects. Come in a wide range of forms and covered in a later post.

The composition of speech bubbles is covered in an earlier post. This is just about some tips.

To make speech bubbles and other lettering you should really follow this process:

1.       Work out where the speech bubbles and other forms of lettering will go on the panel.

2.       Type the writing to fit in the panel how you have planned it. (Then print it)

3.       Draw the speech bubble around the lettering.

4.       Cut the speech bubble out and glue onto your comic once you have finished either the inking or colouring stage. Ensure the speech/thought/narrative sections are straight.

This will make your graphic novel look tidier, more professional and will be easier to follow.

Look at this example below and you can clearly see how the speech bubbles and narrative boxes were placed after the inking had been completed, allowing them to be laid over the drawings.

You can use speech bubbles in creative ways. You should also consider the font and how this can further convey the tone, feeling, pace and volume of the dialogue. As demonstrated here:

You can also be quite creative in omitting speech bubbles, thought bubbles or narrative captions and using the placement of the words within the image to help convey ideas: 

Lettering

Lettering is used to convey the sound in a story. The words – often onomatopoeia – get across the actual sound, while almost all elements of the lettering can be manipulated to further portray aspects of the sound. You can use the style (font) of the lettering, its shape, size, length, colour and placement within (or overlapping) a frame to get across the tone of the sound, the volume, pitch and where the sound is coming from.

Here are some examples:

The way in which the lettering here is so large, jagged and in a fire-like colour illustrates the destructiveness and volume of Captain America’s action in breaking through the ice.

The placement of the onomatopoeia in this panel, along the walkway, indicates the wheels are making the noise, while the repetition of ‘rattle’ conveys how it’s constant.

Here the lettering style is mostly used to convey a video game sound.

Bryan Lee O’Malley – author of the Scott Pilgrim series – also uses lettering in a humorous, clever way in which he writes verbs (words which describe action and ways of being) and presents them in a way where comics are normally showing onomatopoeia, like Krash! Bam! etc.

For example:

Or, an even more extreme example:

Light, colour and shade

Comics can be in colour or black and white. They can be basically all black and white apart from deliberate use of a single colour for a certain effect. They can be heavy on the inking, creating a lot of shadow, or not much inking at all.

Colour can be used for a range of purposes. On one level, it helps the reader further tell the characters apart, makes the settings clearer and makes the drawings more appealing.

For example, here’s the original black and white drawings of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

And here’s a more recent version, in colour:

Here colour is used to help convey aspects of character. The woman, Ramona Flowers, constantly dyes her hair – an aspect used by the creator, Bryan Lee O’Malley – to get across Ramona’s impulsive nature.

Colour can also be used to create a certain tone or atmosphere to the work. Think about the difference between three superhero movies, The Incredibles, Iron Man, and The Dark Knight.

The Incredibles is very brightly lit with strong, bold colours, which suits the child audience, the Iron Man movies are also quite bright and colourful but with moments of heavy shadow, while Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series is deliberately dark, with a lot of shadow and cold colours to create a gritty, realistic and menacing tone throughout the whole series.

Here, the colour is very washed out and grainy, probably to create a very specific tone. A gritty, realistic tone which seems to fit the nature of the story which looks like it will be a war story.

Colour may also be used symbolically.

In this panel from the beautiful masterpiece that is Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, a middle-aged man contemplates mortality. The scene is coloured to look like a sunset, but when you consider the nature of the narrative boxes, this colouring takes on a symbolic purpose, representing the mortality that the man is coming to terms of. The sunset of his life. He is, however, also surrounded by heavy shadows which represents the grim nature of such a topic but, he is also within the green of the grass which symbolises life and – for this character – the idea that he will be making the most of his life from this point on. (The children playing with the kites in the background probably also symbolises the idea that life continues…)

Visual Metaphors

An advantage of the graphic nature of graphic novels is that you can also convey ideas through little visual metaphors, in which you draw things that aren’t actually physically possible but represent greater elements. The limit is only your imagination.

For example, look at this cover below from Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore and focus on what is happening to the heart tattoo and what this represents.

Here’s an example from within a comic, in which a person’s shadow is a bird cage.

While in this example, epilepsy is represented by a monster that takes control of the sufferer.

So, as you can see, graphic novels allow you to be very creative in how you communicate your ideas.