Leeds Zine Library - Logo Creation and Concept

I took these initial logo concepts and ideas into the Art Librarian, quick sketches and inspiration that I wanted to build into the new Zine Library logo. I wanted to focus on owls, it being a Leeds emblem, the golden owls at the bottom are at the gates to the library. I took colours from these, a dark blue and an antique gold.

The librarian was extremely positive about them, let me know they wanted the close up face of the owl. We looked at other zine library images too ad liked the simplicity of many that could be turned into a stamp, into stickers and badges easily; meaning not too much detail that can be lost if the image is quite small. I went away and created the these variations:

 

A Walk to a Waterfall - Covers and inside covers

Front cover - Inside Front Cover

Back Cover - Inside Back Cover

I wanted to carry on the front cover of A Walk to a Waterfall into the inside covers and back cover. I also wanted to make them flow into each other. Very excited to see these ones in print!

A Walk to a Waterall - Old V New Pages

Upon restarting the pages of a Walk to a Waterfall, having now already fully completed one comic, I went into it with some prior knowledge on ways to stream-line the process, given my tight deadline this was quite important too. Here is a side by side comparison, left being old and right being new.

As you can see the one on the right has a lot more detail, it's also more stylised in a way that is unnatural to my drawing style, meaning it takes a lot longer. Although the images are more flat, and the colours more limited, this being an A5 comic means it's not as important to have a lot of detail; thought if I dont have some additional time at the end I will go and add in some additional detail.

At the minute, however, I am very happy with how it looks, it feels more natural to me and I feel more confident that I am going to hit my printing deadline.

 

A Guide to a Waterfall - Map Zine.

 It was suggested at mid-term peer reviews that I make a zine alongside A Walk to a Waterfall, which details the route for other people to use to take the same walk. I thought this would be a great idea! I did a little research and found a company that print concertina fold wedding invites, which would work perfectly for this as the route itself is quite long and narrow, and it being a wedding invite means the stock is quite thick! I've put together the artwork, which you can here.

The printing costs around £30 for 30, and I'd look to sell them for around £5.

A Walk to a Waterfall - Fully lined

I have now fully lined, and began colouring A Walk to a Waterfall, as previously mentioned I was playing around with the narrative and page count, using the skills that I learnt during A Crying Shame; this was resulted in the original 12 pages becoming 20. I am incredibly happy with this, the flow feels a lot more natural and well paced. It's allowed me to bring in more details from the trip that I took. It also means that I will have 2 20 page comics, which feels more substantion.

 

Reflection on finishing first comic

Finishing A Crying Shame as felt like a real achievement, it has also been a huge learning curve, which has lead me to understand sequential art in a different way. 

Through the process I have learnt a lot of practical skills, specifically lettering. Although obviously still very inexperiences, the short time I was letting this comic I felt like I streamlined the process, as well as learning to create my own font too. I printed pages out with various font sizes to test how they would look in print.

I have now revisited A Walk to a Waterfalls script, using what I have learnt and my new understanding of pace, I have realised my words per page doesn't quite work. I've made some edits, and re-split per page, and it's now more than twice as long; its gone from 12 pages to 28... this causes a few issues with my timeline. 

I'm going to work on a dummy book immediately and decide which route to take from there.

Caliburn Prize - Entry

 

I came across this comics prize on twitter, and have just submitted my entry.

To enter you needed to send a single PDF document consisting of a cover with logo, eight finished pages of story, a one-page full synopsis of the comic and a biography page. Deadline Is June 7th, so I got it in with a few days to spare using completed pages from A Crying Shame.