Illusion of Life: Week 8

Experiment: The Malleable Comic Panel

I focused on the duality of a comic panel in this experiment. I would like to know whether a comic panel could act as a static element as well as a moving element. Hence, I each did a small experiment to test out the concept. In addition to that, I further played with the idea of opposites by having the character reacting differently to the static and moving comic panel.

The first experiment features a happy cock robin playing in the comic panel. I took references for colours and comic panel arrangements from Pinterest. The colour palette is more of a webcomic style and the comic panel arrangements could be seen in “Little Nemo in Slumberland” (1910) (https://schulzlibrary.wordpress.com/tag/little-nemo-1904-1915/) where the same characters doing slightly different things across a few comic panels. I used After Effects to create the afterimage effect on the comic panel.

The second experiment shows the cock robin being manipulated by visualised “storyline”. The cock robin is half struggling and half controlled in this experiment. The character wants to run away from the comic panel but being eaten by the comic panel instead. I focus on portraying the fear in the eyes of the character in this experiment.

By connecting them together, I played with the malleability of the comic panel. It’s static at first. When being agitated by the character, it moves and eats the character. Then, it moves again and spits out the character. I hope that I play with the comic panel more so that it has squash and stretch elements in it.