Caitlyn's Honors Project Blog @caitlyn-comics-honors - Tumblr Blog

This is my double page spread in my comic that I’ve used for the banner for the online graduate show!

I’ve been very busy! Deadline is now only a week away! Ah!

Last I posted was the test for the print version of the comic, well here’s the final print version! It’s a little difficult to figure out because it’s ordered the way it is for best printing but don’t worry because I’m doing a digital version as well.

Printing with risopraph at outoftheblueprint meant I had a few restrictions to adhere to, such as the text couldn’t be bigger that 12pt which is why it’s so difficult to read here, which is what made me decide for definite to make a digital version where I could have more creative freedom. In the end, it’s just nice to have a physical version of something you’ve made and I wanted people to be able to take one when they come to the graduate showcase.

I have a few things I want to change when I format the digital version. I’m worried that keeping it strictly black and white seems lazy in terms of development for my honours degree, so I’m going to experiment one last time with greyscale, halftone and colour tone to see if one of those options works better for me. The text is going to be almost completely reworked, including the balloons, so that I can have it readable, have emphasis on words and invoke tone. This wasn’t something I was able to do with the risograph restrictions and with the deadline I had to send to print by but I still have time before the deadline to work on. Using the greyscale/halftone/colour tone experiment I’ll add more depth to the panels and also add the tartan pattern in the character designs because that was something I left out for printing because I was worried about it being readable when printed. Once that’s decided I just need to format it into a PDF!

I’ve done a test of every page of the comic, mostly to test the placement of the text on every page. I used a black background and used erase to make the sketches to emulate the lino cutting process - where the areas you cut is untouched by ink during the printing process - but I will be more detailed in the final sketches to balance the black and white and make sure that all text is black on white.

It feels good to see it close to being done now, even though the idea of moving onto the finals is pretty scary! I like being able to see the text boxes and speech bubbles!

Sketchbook pages of the character design of Geillis Duncan, the youngest of the three women I talk about in my comic and the first to be accused of witchcraft in the North Berwick witch trials.

There’s not as many pages as Barbara Napier because I’m a lot happier with the designs I came up with here and also because I had more trouble trying to find a good design for Barbara that showed her age well.

Final design to be confirmed!

Here’s my sketchbook pages for the chatacter design of Barbara Napier, an elderly rich woman accused of witchcraft during the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland.

Final character designs to be finalised!

Been so busy and stressed that I’ve not been updating! Sorry about that!

Here’s some thumbnails sketches of the front cover design.

My plan for the rest of the term starting from this week! Ahhhh!

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Finishing the thumbnails made finishing the script much easier for me. It was easier to write what I wanted when I had a solid visual of what was happening in each panel and page.

But I realised I still didn’t have a name still.

So I had to go through the process of making another mindmap of name ideas, I had done one closer to the start of the whole project but there wasn’t any I liked. This time I had some clearer ideas; like keeping it short, maybe using Scots, a few ideas were even taken from quotes or sources I had.

In the end I ended up using an older idea, “None of them witches”, which I had gotten from one of my favourite horror book/movie “Rosemary’s Baby”. In “Rosemary’s Baby”, Rosemary discovers that her neighbours are satanic witches from a book called “All of them witches”. I thought this was a fun twist and a little easter egg. I played around with some Scots spelling as well and I ended up really liking the name.

Pretty much the final thumbnails! There’s a few small changes I want to make but nothing major.

I’m excited to do the lino print art style!

Per the last post, here’s the notes I made going through ideas for posters for the graduate show which eventually led me to the idea to use lino printing and a lino cut style for the comic in general.

The character design based ideas are one where I can give a summary of who the women where and why they were accused. I think it’s really interesting because the three women are from different backgrounds, different social statuses and different stages in life. Another idea is based off of “Newes from Scotland” which was a pamphlet published in London which accounted a lot of the witch trials - including the accounts of the three women in the comic; Geillis Duncan, Agnes Sampson and Barbara Napier. I’m also going to look at more illustrative poster design as well. The poster would be in the style of the pamphlet and look older. I also thought about a poster where I could give basic facts about the Scottish witch trials.

I had an entire epithany! It’s a dumb epithany but it’s working for me!

LONG POST!

I haven’t uploaded in a while so here’s a small update for now. I’m still on thumbnails! I think I’m at a point where I’m a little scared to move on from the thumbnail stage? But I feel like I’m behind a little and I want these done, at the most, by the end of the month because I want to get back on track.

I’ve went back on an earlier decision and decided I am in fact going to do speech, and do that speech in traditional Scots. I want to show a range of skills in this comic and I think adding speech further humanises the characters. So that’s the additions to the thumbnails at the top.

The bottom two images are from my sketchbook (gasp!) where I’ve used post-it notes to try and figure out a good way to portray torture in on of my pages. It’s something I’ve been worried about because I’ve had conflicting thoughts about keeping the audience safe from triggering themes but also wanting the audience to feel how serious the topic of women being tortured into “confessing” that they were witches. The arrows ( => ) show how I move from one idea and expand the idea - like the middle images on the first page where I think “maybe we could further emphasise the power of the torturer by making them loom over the woman”. The stars ( * ) are my way of remembering what I think are better images for the next time I look at them. I’m thinking the better image overall is the one on the top right of the second image where it’s the shadow of the woman in the foreground with the torturers in front of her before they hit her. I like this because it shows the intention of the action (whipping for torture) without glorifying violence for entertainment or being graphic enough to trigger the audience.

I’ve been trying to edit the second draft of the script until it’s finalised so I know for sure what every panel on every page is for moving onto FINAL thumbnails and then moving onto sketches and page layout.

I watched this livestream today which was part of “Creating Comics”, which was about comics and fandom through interviewing Dr Kelly Kanayama. I thought it was really interesting, especially because a few topics related back to my honours project. I even got another source to maybe use for my dissertation which is always good! It was nice watching Hesitantdoodles make a small comic as they were talking too, especially because I’m new to procreate and I’m still learning how to use it and what the best brushes are. It was really calm and relaxing and it was easy to talk in the chat.

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Dissertation Outline - first draft, prior to feedback

This was pretty hard to write which I found weird because usually I find it easer to write my ideas and explainations down than to speak about it, but this time I found it so easy to talk to lecturers about my ideas and so difficult to sit down and write this!

I don’t think that I’m 100% happy with it, theres a few things I’m not sure about. I think it’s because part of the dissertation is about my project which I’m only just beginning! I’m looking forward to hearing what feedback I have for this.

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insertdisc5

do you have any tips for dialogue in comics?? mine always seems so choppy!

also please take everything i write with a grain of salt and remember that rules exist to be broken. thank you for the ask and as always: i hope this helped

fish-to-male

hey, generally speaking i am pro-pirating but there is post going around with a free version of Maus by Art Spiegelman on a google doc and i am genuinely asking you all to not reblog it. Art Spiegelman is still alive. he still makes money off of Maus. and what is being monetized is his generational trauma as the son of a holocaust survivor. please either buy Maus or get it from the library (libraries also benefit the author and when more people request or check out a book it communicates to the library that they need more copies). pirating Maus is very different than pirating a marvel movie or reading a google doc of a book no longer in print. please use critical thinking.