Name: Caleb Smith

Student Number: 10332948

Phone: (08) 9303 4890

Assignment Title: Creative Project Process

Tutors Name: Chris Mason

Unit: CCA1103 Creativity: Theory, Practice and History

Character drawing

First Character – Mach

Second Character – Shade

Third Character – Marcus (based off Mach)

Fourth Character – Python (based off Mach)

Manga Title

Stat placeholders

Exegesis – Manga Trailer

My plan for the creative project was to have an animated trailer for a manga that I am creating with some of my friends. The manga being a Japanese inspired comic book or graphic novel. The animation would introduce the title of the manga and then go on to provide a brief introduction of all of the manga’s seven characters. After finishing the artwork for the first character, I realised that I would not be able to draw all seven characters in time to hand in. I then settled to draw the five easiest characters so that I could have time to animate them together to the standard I would be happy with. Even then, I had to cut it down to the four male characters due to time constraints.

I felt this presentation is important to the audience because it provides them with the first glimpses of the creative work that I have spent a considerable amount of time in development. The idea for this creative project came about by wanting to create an anime-inspired trailer. However, some of my favourite game franchises such as ‘Kid Icarus,’ ‘Fire Emblem’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’ heavily inspired this creation. I believe that my creative piece is pitched to a similar age group and cultural background as I am. That being a modern first world focus of a young person living in the digital age of technology. This creative work is highly influenced by my practice of drawn art that I have undertaken since middle school and continue to pursue. I have only recently acquired a drawing tablet and the driving force behind me creating this project was to improve on my use of the tablet. At first, it was a bit weird drawing on a blank surface only to have the actual work appear on a separate screen but I eventually got used to it.

The form that this creative work took was of an animated trailer, which highlights each character. This is achieved by firstly presenting the character, and then the character traits are revealed with a short description of that character’s behaviour. The content of the trailer included the title of the manga, the character’s portrait, the name of the character, the character’s stats and a small, two-sentence description on what the character is like. The materials used in creating the trailer was Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Flash, a scanner, a A4 piece of paper, some pencils and an eraser.

The purpose of this creative work was to present my creative ideas into a form that can be shared with others. The function of the creative work was to inform the audience about the manga that was being planned and produced with some insight into each character and their personalities. The idea for the animated trailer came from my own desire to promote a personal project that I have been working on for the past three and a half years. The suggestion to use the medium of a trailer was discussed by one of the other students in the class. I decided to present the trailer in a format similar to the way a ‘level up’ screen is presented in a video game, for example the ‘Fire Emblem Awakening’ game on the Nintendo 3DS. This format guided the basis on which type of graphics and colours I could use without wasting time thinking about it.

One of the most concerning challengers that kept coming up was the restrictive time restraints. I had to make a number of critical decisions like not including an animated background behind the characters while the trailer was going because of a number of factors. One of these factors included not creating a distracting background to divert attention away from the presentation of the characters. I had to rethink my trailer three times to make sure that this did not happen. Other factors include the limitations of the technologies at my disposal, my drive to complete this project to a standard that I was happy with along with my desire to see my creative vision on what this trailer was going to look like in its final form.

The context of the work was focused on putting pencil to paper to represent my created manga characters in a simple portrait form to be presented in the trailer. This meant that I sketched the characters from the manga in a scale that I could use to scan as a basis to convert into an electronic version. Once these images were scanned, I then went about converting these sketches into digital format by sketching over them using Adobe Photoshop CC. I then used multiple layers to separate the lines for the armour over the bodywork just in case I needed to use them again or fix a mistake later down the track. I then flat coloured the characters to give a ‘manga type’ feel to the artwork.

By the end of this creative project, I learnt a lot about the processes of creating a creative work in the form of my animated trailer for my manga. I may not have had as much time as I would like to, but I did improve my skills with my digital drawing tablet. At the end of this project, I think that this was a success as I am happy with what I have accomplished. I will continue improving by adding more to this trailer to get it to the point of my original vision for this creative project but I am much better than what I started with.

References

Andersson, B., & Beveridge, A. (2007). A guide to assessments and skills in SCCA (2nd ed.). [Booklet]. Perth, WA: Edith Cowan University.

Kroll, J. (2004). Exegesis and the gentle reader [Electronic version]. TEXT Special Issue, 3.