Week 11&12

Low Li Vern/ 0362678
Illustration and Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media

Class Summary

Ms Anis brief to us the information of our task. For this two week task is to design digital triptych from the story that is provide to us (https://poestories.com/stories.php). After that read the story and break down the storytelling into 3-Acts structure.

1. Research
I have chosen my digital triptych to be illustrating the narrative of the story titled, 'The Black Cat' , written by Edgar Allan Poe. I have selected some of the stories and read through those which I am interested in and I found that I can have more imagination and idea when reading the story ' The Black Cat'.

Fig 1.1 The Black Cat

Fig 1.2 The Black Cat characters

Fig 1.3 Story Flow

After analyze the main character and the main story, I make sure which part of the story I wanted to design in the digital triptych. As we need to draw out three parts of the story, I wanted it to be from the start to the end. The story shortly tells about the man addicted to alcohol and become moody and killed his cat and his wife.

2. Idea Developing

As the story is written during year 1890, I decide to let the it be design in old time colour and texture. I have search online to find some reference to help on my sketch.

Fig 2.1 Idea reference 1

Fig 2.2 Idea reference 2

Fig 2.3 Idea reference 3

Fig 2.4 Idea reference 4

Fig 2.5 Idea reference 5

Through research, I find that the colour more use in horror stories is black, white, gray and red for the blood. It makes compare between black and red, people will be more attracted by red colour in black and white background.

3. Sketch

Fig 3.1 Rough Sketch of Digital Triptych

I design the cat name Pluto is killed by the man and its eye ball is cut out by the man. For the next act is the man kill his wife in accident. And the last act is the man keep his wife inside the wall and got find out. It is a rough sketch and I will try out in Adobe Illustrator to make sure the flow of the story is nice or need to have a change.

4. Digitalization

Fig 4.1 First Act Digitalization

First I sketch out the shape of the cat and add on some details on the cat such as the shadow and the paw. After that I use the brush tool in Adobe Illustrator to draw out the fur of the cat, and make it look more fluffy. Other than that, I draw out the whole eyeball to emphasize about the eyeball that is cut out by the man and add on gaussian blur on the blood just like the blood coming out from the cat.

Fig 4.2 Second Act Digitalization

For the second act I sketch out the shape of the wife and I decide to make her hair attach to the other frame. For the head on the wife is the axe that her husband use to kill her. Apart from that, the green eye is the eye of the cat that she protected from.

Fig 4.3 Third Act Digitalization

In the third act digitalization I change my design to the man thinking about how to bury his wife into the wall. I design the man taking the axe that he use to kill his wife and he is thinking while drinking wine as he is addicted and he cannot use to without alcohol. And the eyes of the cat is the soul of the cat he killed that is still watching the man. I add on the yellow frame and some split wine surrounding the man as layer design.

5. Final Outcome

At last I add on some details that I personally think that it will let the design more interesting. For the main idea of the wine surrounding the characters is to express how the wine effect the whole story. If the man control himself not to be addicted to alcohol all the bad things won't happen.