MUGIC - the Wonderful Adventures of Officer Mu

LAST ONE THANK GOD

I'm so funny it's not even funny

We each made a comic for our final project. The minimum page count was 4, but because I'm an idiot I decided that 8 would be more appropriate. It didn't help that I spent 3 hours one day sketching the storyboard for another idea instead of this one. #efficientplanning

So yeah, by the end of this I was getting thumps in my brain, the kind you get when someone's banging on your door trying to rob you of all things happy. 

But I have to say, it was worth it in the end. I'm really happy with how my comic ultimately turned out - it's about Officer Mu, a magical creature that world of such colored-pencil cuteness that you wonder why he's the police chief in a worlds of black-white inked monsters - until you find out why :P. I really like the fact that I used so many media to do this (colored pencil, pen, pencil, colored charcoal, marker), and I'm overjoyed that I actually enjoyed using pen this time - THANK HEAVENS FOR THE ALL-MIGHTY FABER-CASTELL PENS they're so smooth and wonderful

Really relieved that the monsters turned out all right, since I've never drawn monsters before and I wasn't sure I could come up with enough designs - but I guess you can just take some organs, vegetation, and reptiles and just slap them together and there you have it.

 I'm also proud that despite the fact that I did so many extra pages, I managed to fit in a bonus page and a back cover logo (which I didn't take a picture of). So it comes to a total of 12 pages, and it's printed out and stapled all nice and shiny. :))) The only thing is that it is apparently hard to read (source: parents) in terms of Mu's hand-drawn text and some of the panels' orders. :( Nonetheless, still feels like the first semi-professional thing I've done, even though the process was all scrambly and not professional at all :P 

Kind of inspired to make another few comics now though, this was so fun even though my body was so miserable

Greeting Card for Un-Holiday

We all made one greeting card each for a holiday we invented. I originally had a lot of lovely ideas, such as happy colonoscopy day, and I also wanted to draw innards and rib bones, but well dreams don't always come true DO THEY. I went with happy emotional breakdown day in the end, 'cause we all need a positive spin on our darkest moments right? :D It may not be visible in the picture, but for the inside black background I used scraps of velvet, which I think helps make the card heavier in atmosphere. I also like that I made the brain a frown to contrast with the bottom laugh. However, I kind of failed on the speech bubble part, since I just could not glue it properly onto all the velvet, so now when you open the card, the little tail sticks out all weird and unwanted. Also, since the background's so dark, the face itself needs more darkness in its shading.

In-class Watercolor Model Study

A watercolor study of a model who was sporting some tats that I unfortunately did not have the time to paint in. I'm pretty satisfied with the result, although his legs look short and funky and he's a little too yellow. Gotta work on subtle colors more. I like that I made the background textured and the little chunks of red I put in his body though. The figure pops, which is nice since usually my colors are too mid tone(?).

In-class Studies

I don't even know what order this came in anymore

In-class studies (I didn't put all of them up, just a few). We had some pretty fabulous models. Times ranged from 30 seconds to 20 minutes.

WHY ARE MY SHORTER ONES BETTER THAN THE LONGER ONES

But yeah, pretty happy with my short ones, gotta work on maintaining the energy, or rather, channelling it into shading, in the longer ones.

TRICKED YA!!

WAIT NO THIS WAS THE ACTUAL THIRD ASSIGNMENT

Oops.

So yeah, in-class charcoal study. Really not much to say. I'm pretty happy with the shading and highlights, but it needs more contrast (a running problem with my work), and the composition is kinda boring (another running problem). MERRR

Editorial Illustration

Fourth(?) assignment: Choose an article and make an illustration for it.

I chose a New Yorker short piece about trigger warnings on university books. I think the piece itself is pretty explanatory.

Thoughts: Honestly, I think this was my weakest piece. Although I think I was pretty successful with getting the idea of the article across, and I like the harsh black/white bottom of the book and the poses of some of the students, I'm unsatisfied with the hanging blonde girl and black guy, as well as the cloud background. All in all, I don't think what's outside of the black-white bottom of the book matches its intensity and dynamism. Verdict: MEH

Watercolor Study

I think this was the third assignment. Not sure. Our palette was artificially limited to only include blue and orange, if I remember correctly.

Not so much to say about this one - it was fun to use watercolors, and I think I painted the objects pretty well, especially in terms of the highlights. I wish I had tried to push blending orange and blue a little more to produce neutrals, since the only non-orange/blue object in the piece is a chopped cupthing. In terms of composition, I also think the piece might be a little too heavy on the left side, so that needs to be watched out for next time. Composition and I are not very good friends. Yet? Lastly, I should probably have painted the background some color. Yellow, maybe? Or a lighter shade of the cup? Right now the background and table are too similar in color.