Hey everyone , hope all of you are doing great. Today I want to share with all of you my work from a comics making workshop at my architecture school. Below is a photograph of my final work , I don't have a lot of photos since I wasn't able to document the whole process but nonetheless the final product is write below .
The comic making workshop was conducted by Ar. Nishith Urval. He is a master in making Architectural Comics and started his journey by making a Comic for his Master’s Thesis. In his comic he has beautifully explained the context of the place, the conversations he had with people, the way people lived in these areas, all the sketches are explained in a comical way with one protagonist exploring and decoding the small cycles of the city.
The Comic Making Workshop lasted for 4 days with each day ending with completing certain objectives.
It was just visual learning. He shared his projects and then projected some of the most famous comic artists from all around the world. Each comic artist had their own styles, it could be in their drawing, or the way they projected the story or even the conceptual idea of the comic. Each one of them were unique and different in their own way.
We were given a site in Dakke, Mangalore ( Karnataka, India). Dakke is a fish market, its filled with boatsmen, fishermen, people carrying fish, truckers etc. The space is huge as well as conjusted with everyone busy working. I wanted to explore more and more so I headed south and reached the place where these people live. My keen interest of exploring spaces got me walking to all kinds of spaces.
Figure out what you want to show. We were asked to figure out a narrative, make a story line. Since I couldn’t come up with any story line and also the fact that I practically thought that my drawing is next to shit. I went to Ar. Nishith Urval and told him that Ive been drawing weird stick figures all my life. And Im not sure how to draw something let alone make a comic book. He then gives me one of the best advices ever, He tells me that its not my weakness but its my greatest strength and pushes me to make human stick figures. I sat down with rough sheets of paper and tried coming up with concepts. And then I got it, infusing Movie scenes into the comic to show what it really feels like to wander around the spaces of Dakke. I first identified words I would use to describe the place. The words were : Congestion, Maze, Lost, Dirty, Calm, Noisy, Stink, Overcrowded. Once I got the words I just kept using my brain to come up with as many concepts as possible and try to relate them to movie scenes The aim wasn’t the whole narrative. The aim was to make the person reading the comic feel what I felt in just few pictures without any words.
I just Chose a few concepts and drew them in a sheet of paper, scanned it, photoshopped it and aligned the panels and finished the comic.
This was the first time in a long time that i felt satisfied with the work that I had done. Creative satisfaction is one of the best feelings for a creative artist.
Few things I did in this comic. The drawings are made in panels and the space between two panels is called the gutter. I added a small conceptual spice in the gutters displaying a maze of confusion by drawing small figures of men walking around the gutters.
It took a while to figure out how to visualize sound and by not using the traditional methods such as BHAM, GRRRRRRRR, BUZZZZZ etc. A spotify layout showing the intensity of sound using wavelengths that are used in SoundCloud and the song's name is the place I drew in the album art area.
Playing with Panels: The bottom Left I tried to show how the spaces changes in different areas and compact it gets. Especially for a 6'2 person like me, I had to duck and bend through low roofs when i went to Hoige Bazaar. The picture is depicted in the right side middle panels.
Overall, this exercise has helped me regain my creative flow and I will definitely use this method of visualization in the future. Here's to learning more and more everyday !
Thank you so much for reading this far ❤️