Princess And Frog

The protagonist of the story is a Raccoon named Princess who hunts down her prey in a dating sort of setting, she lures them out of pubs and eats them when they are on their own, this is shown when she eats the slug man. However she meets frog (a poison dart frog) who she intends on eating but after one vicious bite kills the princess, it is up to you to decide what becomes of the frog if it dies or not.

Inspirational imagery

by artist alex laurenza http://alex-does-the-arts.tumblr.com/
I found the tones of the tinger so pleasant against the vivid red of the water, especially appreciating the lighting reflecting on the fur, I feel inspired by this to focus my colour palette for the comic to two tones just because of how well that one colour on black/gray would look.

by artist Grzesiek Wróblewski https://www.behance.net/GrzesiekWroblewski
I found the odd choice of colours bizarre but the line work amazing, each line flows well and the use of glow/gradient in the background was an interesting choice which i am unsure if i personaly like, however I do like the orange gradient against the turquoise, i find it an odd but surprisingly pleasant match.

Evaluation

For my final piece I decided to produce a 5 page comic distorting the view of the old fairy tale Princess And The Frog, where the Princess, who is just a woman named Princess meets men in a bar and seduces them into coming with her to her room to eat them. However over time she gets too confident and tries the same trick on a frog only to find out it is a poisonous frog to which she dies shortly after eating. The comic has short sentences in each panel telling her kind of story to try and twist it so that it almost seems like its the frogs fault for killing her telling the reader he is 'poisonous' which is a term sometimes used on those who are manipulative which Princess has been like through out.

This plan is a lot different to the one I had in my proposal but can be easily linked as the frog still kills the princess in the end, it was the foundation for my ideas which has undoubtedly lead to the comics completion

Kate Clark was a big influence on this work in that my initial idea to keep going with the humans with animal features to better display them as parts of the animal kingdom, not anything like two humans that are above all other animals but to show everyone on equal footing. It is quite strange as her work evolves around taxidermy animals with human faces but still pursued me to continue with this idea.

H.R Giger was also an influence in the colour palette I chose as the dark tones and thick lines interested me deeply, although I soon decided it was best to have more colour for a comic aimed towards teenagers as if it were picked at by an English teacher it would be easier to concentrate on with the added spark of vibrancy.

I feel that if I were to do this again I would be stricter at following the timetable I set for myself as to not rush the end development.

I often set up votes on character design and styling to see what others opinions would be, to do this I would go through the story for each person then let them decide which design best fit the story it was interesting as everyone seemed to be a little different, for a vote I did on the front cover I had some people who preferred a busier page while others preferred a simpler design which gets to the point.

I feel I did very well at deciding the colour scheme, my idea was to have the backgrounds of each panel looking chaotic with tone but only use up to two colours, black and red, in the initial planning the second colour(red) would be different per page however felt that that would have been too inconsistent and because I could make it a certain way so each panel had something red in it I felt it the best move to make.

I found this useful for Princess' character design because I did want her to be quite sexualised for something that is not usually considered so, however the things discussed in this video were more personal opinion but still gave a positive angle on the character for example not making breasts ridiculous sizes and paying attention to body shape and how to do that, for most mammals however it is alot easier than doing otherwise limbless characters which is why I think a raccoon was a good choice

Movies

The more recent Princess and the Frog by Disney(November 25, 2009) follows a seamstresses journey through hardship after kissing a Frog prince backfires turning her into a frog as well, a light-hearted feel with some very dark twists. Interesting colours and story that takes away from the original fairy tale, not too much but it does, the colours because on most scenes they are surrounded in a blue background (but Mel its mostly dark) true but the choice of using blue in most of the backgrounds gives a feeling of sadness or uneasy, while at happy moments like when the seamstress finds an abandoned restaurant she wishes to save up for, she is surrounded by pleasant warm colours like yellows and oranges.

Possibly one of my favourite movies Monster in Paris is another light hearted take on a classic, based on Phantom of the opera it follows a story of series of mistakes make by a delivery man which lead to a flea growing around 8 feet tall and learning to sing(pretty cheesy I know). Pleasant songs through out as a singer tries to disguise the flea as another performer and somehow gets away with it for a while at least, I really admire the curves  in each character from the clothes to the over all body shape, I may keep the body shape of the singer, Lucille, as an inspiration for Princess.

Kate Clark

A personal favourite 3D artist of mine, Kate specialises in Taxidermy but with a twist, using the face of the animal hide to make a human face, always made from a life model who may sleep easy knowing their faces will feed curiosity(or fear) when anyone looks at these pieces, however Kate has often said what she does not want from her work is for it to be 'monstery'(fig 2) meaning she doesn't want it to be considered animal, but more another step from humans, a missing link that fits in or something misplaced but familiar.

(Fig 1)

To me her work gives a sense of belonging, all are posed so that they look like they are in motion or just going through daily lives as they wood, laying down, running, jumping, looking to one another for reassurance, it is very odd but you cannot look away.

(Fig 2)

idea: the princess is a ‘bad’ girl and very sly, she knows that the small frog likes her and intends to lead him on, eventually offering to give him a kiss to signify the start of the relationship to which he agreed naïvely and attempts to eat him, to which she spits him out and dies from poison, the frog was saddened

Chosen Idea

I thought about the link between raccoon and frogs would be better fitted for this story, raccoons are often thought of as mischievous while frogs are thought of shy or lazy, which i tried to portray in my new character designs. I have also been distorting the idea of what a princess is, innocent and sweet, wearing dresses all the time etc, however to distort that I will make 'princess' which is really just the characters name not relating to hierarchy, will be sexy, mean and wearing just an every day outfit (trousers and long sleeved shirt).

the Idea is for the raccoon woman to lure men into thinking they will have a good time with her only to be eaten when they are alone(this kind of shows how some men and women will do what they can to get what they want, just like animals would in the wild or captivity), however when she gets to the frog (who is opposite of a brave knight or prince) would bite him only once before dying, the final image being them as animals to show how we humans are just like animals.

Update

Current idea: Princess and the frog, Princess likes the bad boy frog, he promises to stay with her if she kisses the frog however upon doing so she dies because the frog is poisonous, and a douche bag. The frog is not a prince

Current idea 2: Princess and the frog. The frog tells the princess he is really a prince stuck in the body of a frog, he tells her that if she kisses him he will turn back and they could combine kingdoms however this turns out to be a lie, the princess dies from the poisonous frog. He had lied to prove that he could to his friends and is a douche bag.

I still agree with the frog being golden and have chosen the princess to have raccoon features and head, as raccoon commonly eat frogs and I find that a sort of irony

I am feeling confident about this project in that I have planned the character but am worried the story will be hard to piece together as an illustration

Update

Current idea: Princess and the frog, Princess kisses the frog and dies because the frog is poisonous, the frog turns to a prince and hides his secrets.

I have decided the frog should be a golden dart frog as it looks or sounds like a wealthy frog which would fit the prince well however it would still mean he needs black dots, those placements should be thought about but I am not too worried.

The Begining

My main idea for this project is to focus on the word distort and the many ways it can be used in comic form. I aim to make an illustrated book by the end of my project that would be at a publishable standard. I found this theme interesting because the media, news or even schools can distort the truth

one idea I had for the idea of distorting perspective to make a comic about to witches who hated each other, but know what each other hates even more, spiders and butterflys.
so they made a bet. they were to turn both things human and the winner would be the one to make them the most human like.
Spiders have been thought to have brains similar to our own except they were lacking the frontal lobe which held emotions and feelings of pain, except for their territorial natures and poor eye sight.
However the witch who had the butterfly had more confidence because of how graceful they seem  which would mean they would be a respectable human but this is not what happened
the spider withdrew into himself and was very nervous
the butterfly was handsome in appearance but lacked morals

Specialism: Illustration
Theme: Distortion
Sub-theme: fairy tales/grimm tales

My theme fits into my idea of fairy tales and legends by the use of my own imagination, distorting well known stories into different outcomes or rewriting all together, an example of changing an outcome would be like lady and the frog, in which the the frog is really a poison dart frog, or even a cane toad which are highly poisonous which would lead to the princess' death and the spell not breaking for the frog.
My inspiration behind this would be from the famous Disney cartoons as well as humorous not so known comic tales such as 'drop dead monstrous'.
Artists I will be looking into include H.R.Giger for the thick curved lines and the morbid feeling of his work and Camilla d'errico for her bright colours and absent expressions.
The target audience would be 12+ as there would be too much death/violence for PG rating, yes comics have age ratings on the back of them sometimes but I shall be using the movie ratings.

I will be mostly using ink, marker pens and Photoshop however if I change my mind later on i may decide watercolours and acrylics would be more suitable for the future.

I intend my first 2 weeks to focus entirely on research, the next 2 weeks would be planning and the last 4 weeks would be starting and finishing the comic strips I have planned, they will be short and witty as most already know the stories and if not they can get a good feel for them from reading my comics.

Feed back from people around me on their thoughts and opinions will be taken into account when it comes to making changes to my work