Wednesday 6 November 2013

Marvel Research


Marvel started out as 'Timely Publications' back in  1939 then later became 'Atlas Comics' in the 1950's. By the 1960's Marvel had become the company it is known as today and continues. It's modern incarnation started in the 1960's when they created Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man. Captain America and so on...

Marvel is one of the biggest companies EVER in the comic book universe. I myself, am a comic book collector and I am very familiar with their history throughout the years. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko are some of the most popular names throughout comic book history because they played such a huge role in the journey of Marvel's success. Stan Lee created Spider-Man along side Steve Ditko who put Spider-Man on paper.


Stan Lee even appears as a small cameo in movies with characters he created, such as EVERY Spider-Man movie, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Captain America etc.



Tuesday 5 November 2013

Finalised motion comic pages









Creating, editing, and finalising my comic motion in Final Cut Pro


I started with the pictures that I had already previously taken and edited them in photoshop to give them that "comic book" effect. Once I did this with all the pictures I planned on using in my comic book project. I saved them all as a JPEG and brought them into Final Cut Pro. Keep in mind these JPEG's are the full size page with all the comic panels on them, here's an example.

Anyway, I cropped and transitioned the images to create an effect that gives a motion across the comic. Here are some screenshots below showing how I used the transitions.
Editing was particularly easy. Having them set out next to each other to be able to easily navigate was also helpful. Here's a screenshot to help paint a picture...

I also used effects such as "Cross dissolve" and "Flash" to transition from one panel to the next and so on.




 The screenshots above show where the 'flash' and 'cross dissolve' transitions are placed to create the transition from one slide to the other.

I also added some thunder effects to get the perfect sound for this particular transition "One year later"



Once I had found which sound effect I wanted to use for the "One year later" transition. I then duplicated it 3 times to make sure the effect matched the rest of them.

I couldn't find a zombie effect anywhere in the Final Cut Pro effects folder, so I went on to the internet and searched for 'Zombie sound effect download" and I eventually found pretty much every single zombie effect I needed to finish my comic.


The long sound effect you can see in the screenshot is different to the others. That particular one says "Kill you" in a scary zombie voice, whilst the over 4 just make zombie groans and noises.


Monday 4 November 2013

Zombie poses and Photoshop edits


We eventually started doing some prototype zombie poses to edit in Photoshop. When editing them in Photoshop, I had to keep in mind that zombies are supposed to be... Dead? So I went for more a dull, grey, cold dead aesthetic. Here are some the of the edits below.























Above are the pictures I used to template my zombie effects. Once I had these pictures, I then took them into the photoshop to create them into the images you see below. As you can see, Joe did a fantastic job at giving the zombie poses and helping me create a zombie pose to go off when editing.


















Thursday 24 October 2013

Zombie Mood board and influence


Since my project on Radcliffe is based around zombies rising from the dead etc. I thought it would be appropriate to create a zombie mood board showing off the different types of zombies. Also is shows where I got some of my influence from for when I put make-up on to become a zombie myself.




I specifically took influence from the popular AMC tv series ‘The Walking Dead’ not only is this show extremely famous for it’s zombie creations but also because the tone of the show and how they go about fearing the zombies and trying not to engage in them suggests just how dangerous zombies can be. I took influence from another popular zombie/ comedy ‘Zombieland’. This movie also suggests just how dangerous zombies actually are, however it shows a vulnerable side to the zombies that I could use in my project. It suggests zombies are intimidating but not very bright. They lack common sense (mainly because they are dead).

Radcliffe timeline and multi-coloured manor


I made a timeline to show key events from the 15th century. Below is a picture of Radcliffe Tower, in which I have taken into Photoshop and changed their colours.