Book Project

Book Project

 

For this project, we had to choose three techniques from the lecture to base our work on, of which I choose wordless, talented amateur, and hole. In this, I decided to create a short illustrated book on the idea of a woman rendered in a very simplistic style, chasing a man through different environments (ie. worlds)  all of which are connected by a hole in the page which was meant to indicate a portal that also serves as a narrative device to move the plot along.

The book itself begins with a scene of the woman, chasing the man along a white background, meant to indicate the simplistic world that these characters inhibit. As he is being chased, the man is led to a hole in the right side of the page, of which the reader is meant to wonder what purpose it serves before hopefully realising its purpose as they turn to the next few pages and see the black hole in every page – the only point of connection of these different environments. As the chase continues, the gap between the characters get smaller and smaller (as indicated through zooming in on them and their growing size in relation to the environment), before finally culminating in the two characters back in their own world where they started. We get a moment of relief in the scene of the man pressed against the front of the page by himself in horror, almost as if looking at the reader for help (an attempt at breaking the fourth wall)  before the woman reenters the narrative through the portal and the chase continues.

The illustrations of the environments  were rendered in a somewhat realistic style, meant to directly juxtapose with the cartoonish style of the characters as I felt that this would be funny and serve as a form of comic relief by playing down the actual violence depicted in her actions. The colour palettes for the worlds were also in most cases deliberately made to focus on a single colour, so as to quickly differentiate one world from another immediately upon turning the page. I also decided on using a lack of narrative structure and context as to why the man is being chased as I felt that it would be unnecessary and add seriousness to a narrative that was meant to be intentionally dumb and light hearted.

In retrospect, perhaps adding more context to my story would have better enabled myself to introduce the reader to the world, and upon thinking further, may have actually added another comical element to the piece (eg. by making the reason the woman is chasing the man really outlandish and stupid). Furthermore, I definitely could have spent more time on the illustrations of the worlds to make the environments feel more real and lived in, as opposed to one that is somewhat empty and cold. Certain elements like the size of the characters could also have been further exaggerated to better communicate ideas that I was trying to get across which don’t seem to work as well upon looking back at the project. I could also have put more thought into the placement and structure of the holes, perhaps by trying to tie its appearance more with the elements found in the environment that it presented itself in to better integrate the holes with the different worlds.

Overall, while I feel that the concept behind this project was quite interesting and funny, I felt that my execution could have been far better and was definitely not one of my best works. I will likely revisit this project in the future in order to implement some of the changes that I outlined above.

 

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