#discovery task 6

This one looks rushed, and that is because it is.

I did that on purpose though. I knew the topic itself would be relatively easy because I spent most of 2017 pregnant - I found out on the third and she was born late august. So, I thought out kind of how I wanted to progress the panels, sticking to the nine because I used this task as a bit of an exercise in constraints.

I have a tendency to spend an excessive amount of time on these “low-stakes” assignments because under the right conditions I find the whole process very enjoyable and relaxing. This is cool because I don’t often HATE whatever I submit, but it isn’t cool because I have a lot of items on my to-do list daily and I simply do not have three hours to draw one page of comics. I WANT to, but I just don’t have the time, and these are not assignments intended to take up time like that.... not for the drawing alone.

So when I started to draw I told myself I had only one hour.

and I didn’t start to draw until 9:30pm tonight, because I didn’t want to keep coming back to it to tweak it throughout the weekend. I wanted to do it and be done with it. 

Even if I had ‘submitted’ it early, because of the nature of THIS tumblr medium, I could very well edit the post and change the picture at a whim until the actual date the assignment was due!

In the spirit of “constraint,” I gave myself a specific window that I could not wiggle around to physically complete this part of the task, and I forced myself to use precisely nine panels, nothing leaking out of any of them and they are all the same size. 

It’s not GREAT, but it doesn’t suck either... and with some fine-tuning on the art skills, or at least just the art itself - if I erase and try again enough times, eventually it looks like I drew it that way on purpose!

I actually really like the images I used - about 2/3 of them I had decided upon the general content before I started, not necessarily the actual image, but what I wanted to depict - I truly feel if I had allowed myself to spend time on the art itself rather than just the concept of the art, and maybe if I had a larger-page notebook, the images could have really done the trick. 

I think the nine-panel grid is a really great “framework” type of structure to have for the medium. It definitely gives new-comers something to latch on to, and I think it invokes the concept of “classic” for experienced readers. It’s also a good way to make sure a creator is SHOWING SOMETHING... if nothing happens in nine panels, nothing at all, something probably could use an edit. There are certainly exceptions, creators who can totally pull off a “long pause” like that, but it isn’t something one can just DO, and in order for it to be received correctly, there needs to be some kind of “basic form” to call upon when nothing else needs calling upon.... 

I think the nine-panel thing is great. I think it opens up a lot more doors than one might think when one hears about a “form” or a structure, and I think it is important that anything that has to be “created” comes with some basic form or structure, a starting point.

For this week’s task, we were asked to travel somewhere new. Well, my ambition said, “Hey Kelsey, let’s try to draw your experience at Halloween Horror Nights!” ....bear with me.

I hadn’t been to Halloween Horror Nights since high school, and all the haunted houses were new to me. I thought I’d try to tackle one of these, which turned out to be difficult and also EXTREMELY TERRIFYING. My method of approach was to take as many photos as possible and draw with great detail later. That is, of course, until I waded through the house wide-eyed and afraid to take my focus off of my surroundings. I needed to be prepared for anyone that might jump out at me and try to kill me, you know?

Anyway, I thought I’d have to try to do a different place since I didn’t take a single photo, but after “The Purge” house, I made a few notes in my phone of what I saw, and was actually able to recall quite a bit from my experience. I think that this is because the folks at Universal take great care to create every dark and dreary detail. You’re not just in the house, you’re a part of the horror of it all. There isn’t just fake blood-writing on the wall, there’s also water raining down on you to make it feel like the blood is coming at you (gross, but cool I guess). 

The hardest part of this comic was trying to display what it was like to experience the strobe light, as seen on the third row of panels. This part of the house blinded me and I could only make out a few shapes as they propelled toward me. As far as backgrounds and foregrounds go, this effect in itself was something crazy, because it added more tension to the set up of the house. Everything in the house was eerily familiar, yet they added the strobe to throw off your senses so you couldn’t get too comfortable.