OUGD406 Studio Brief 03 The Original Comic Book

Because the aesthetic of the film is almost exactly matched to the graphic novels on which it was based I wanted to look into the style of these comics and see the transferal from paper to screen when I watch the film.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/15-626/Frank-Millers-Sin-City-Volume-1-The-Hard-Goodbye-3rd-Edition

As can be seen on the latest cover of the very first sin city comic, Frank Miller has an incredibly high contrast style, making use of negative space. However, it is an illustrative high contrast style, softening the blow somewhat aesthetically but making the meaning of the images more personal. Something being clearly draw by a human hand makes the expression of emotion considerably more immediate and there for powerful, like someone is telling you a story from a personal view point. What is clear is that Miller has used black ink on white paper. I could learn to use negative space more effectively if I tried drawing in white rather than black, just as experimentation and to help ideas generation.

Obviously the focus of the story is a city but it is less than glamorous. There is a theme of abandoned factories, bare metal and scaffolding. This all combines to suggest a past prosperity that has fallen into disrepair. However, in the drawings it is only the people who have a sense of disrepair to them, where the block colours segway into scratchy lines and fine pen work. The people are like living representations of the city, old and battered, with little hope left. I don't want my designs to just be block colour, there needs to be some visual texture to emulate and convey the imperfections of the people in these stories. They are almost always anti-heroes, in the film-noir tradition.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/Previews/17-124?page=4

My next step is to watch the film and create a summary of what I want to convey with my designs. Something that I noticed when analysing some alternative movie posters was the way that they celebrate the fact that those who create them have seen the film and they open up when you have too. So my designs need to have a balance of the obvious links to the film and more ambitious ones that become apparent once you have watched the film.