A three page, animated comic with an accompanying front cover, and development for the character design and story layout. Making Waves tells the story of an average business student with a secret passion for esports, and dreams of pursuing a career in his favourite game. This project saw the use of animation using After Effects, in addition to creating the art with Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop.
Download the artbook to read through the development, or scroll further to learn more about this project!
Programs used:
- Clip Studio Paint EX (rendering)
- Photoshop (editing)
- After Effects (animation, composition)
Project Reel Showcase
A short video summarizing the work done for the project!
The reel showcases development from the character design, cover thumbnails, to the page drafts and final animation.
Character Design
With a "gamer" main character, casual and comfort were the leading ideas behind his outfit, using shirts and hoodies that wouldn't be uncommon to see in a teenage guy - bringing in some trendiness as well from something like esports merchendise or apparel, thus creating the first 10 thumbnails. Taking into account some formality from his studies as a business student created an interesting dichotomy in presenting the clash between his academics and hobby, then resulting in the second pass of thumbnails on the right.
With the final design chosen, color tests were done with the intention of sticking to the character's background in mind: muted, "neutral" colors were chosen for the clothes, following his background as a business student, while bright, neon colors typically associated with gaming or esports were chosen for his outerwear and additional accessories. The real question was which combination of which, as well as the colors for other features such as skin tone and hair as well. In the end, I chose to go with the 5th option, being a nice combination of all of the above.
Final Design Sheet
The final design sheet for Russell, the main character of the story. Featuring front and back views, as well as a simple spread of his jacket and belongings.
Cover Process
Rather than simply putting text over the art, I wanted an approach that could integrate the title, 'Making Waves', in a more creative manner, similar to something like digetic UI. Some explorations involved transforming it into the perspective of the floor, or even fitting the text using the screen of the monitor. At the end of the day, I wanted something that was eyecatching and could hint at the premise of the story at a glance.
After choosing the thumbnail, which I thought was a neat balance of hinting at Russell's backstory (the papers littered around him indicating his position as a student), alongside the main theme and focus of the story which is his passion for gaming - as shown by the desk, monitor, headphones, and keyboard (all elements of a classic 'gaming rig'). Being able to incorporate the title into the art itself worked out as I hoped, and I was able to add an element of surrealism to the desk by playing with the motifs of 'Waves'.
I used a sketch - grayscale - blocking - render process for the cover, which allowed me to check and correct values before laying down shadows and painting in details. Some areas, such as the perspective of the desk and keyboard, were done using overlays from pictures in real life.
Page Development
Side by sides of the original sketch, and the final colored version. Click on the arrows to scroll through the pages!
As the ultimate goal for this project was to animate the panels and some contents within them, I chose to go with a simpler artstyle involving clean lineart, minimal cell shading and the occasional gradient for effect. This made it easier to keep elements separated as I am drawing them, and improved the workflow substantially when importing everything into After Effects.
Animation and Composition
As per the goal of this project, individual panels were animated via keyframing and the use of puppet tool in After Effects. Panels with their inner elements animated were done in their own composition, which was then compiled together in what would become the main page.
This was then repeated for each panel, for each page.
Final Animated Pages
The project completes with the finished animation for all pages, resulting in the three-page motion comic planned from the start. Making use of After Effects was definitely an eye-opening experience as I learnt to work with the different tools, and gain a better sense of file management and organization as I delved into the layers and compositions of the program.
While 'Making Waves' was done as an assignment for school, I might revisit it in the future to expand on the story, perhaps even making more motion comic pages for it along the way.