Girl meets boy
Create a sequential illustration that creatively re-tells the story of girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins boy back, in whatever way you want. Make the re-telling entertaining. You’ll need to think about how you contract the different twists and turns of the story and decide on how you’re going to draw the characters and action, and how you’ll use your panels, speech bubbles and sound effects to make the story come alive.
This sequential illustration should be no more than one page but can be as short as a three panel cartoon if you can get the narrative to work in that format.
I started by researching Boy meets Girl comics, and I actually found that in the 1950’s there was an actual comic called ‘Boy meets Girl’!
This comic was more of a magazine and had lots of comic strips inside, so I narrowed my research down to just one page boy and girl comics for ref. I found this little comic strip which I thought was cute, it was more boy meets girl but it gave me some ideas for my design and how simple it could be, and how you don’t need that many words.
The characters are simple, there is a restricted colour palette and the boxes are all equal, and the story is short but to the point.
This design was more colourful and eye catching, again simple in style, but had more background to it, and it was funny. An equal box design again and only very short in four frames.
This design is more 1990’s with the classic retro different box designs with the gaps in-between. It has more detail in the drawings and there’s more writing and a longer scene and story, this story goes over a few pages and this is page two. It has a limited colour palette and has different composition styles inside the frames i.e up close, whole room, landscape and portrait.
like the simpleness and colour of the second comic strip, I like the story of the first strip, and I like the layout and classic style of the comic strip in the last research.
This has given me some ideas of where I want to head in my design. I am going to create a Pinterest board of more ideas, then create a spider diagram to write some down, to narrow them down further.
So now I need to think about my text/ script words for the strip, and how the story will work out.
So I thought where is the most likely you might meet someone, and I thought these days a coffee shop is a good one.
The words:-
Girl: “oops sorry I thought that was my one”. Both reach for the mug
Boy: “No problem”. odd face. embarrassed
Girl: ooo he’s lovely. blushes.
Girl: “Hi I’m Rosie”. Girl full length
Boy: ‘Nice to meet you Rosie, I’m Ben”. Couple walk off together
Girl: beaming Smiling happy face
So the script goes like this:-
Both boy and girl reach for the coffee mug and their fingers touch, the girl apologises, but the boy flinches away embarrassed.
The girl thinks he’s lovely so introduces herself
The boys impressed and introduces himself, they both walk off together chatting
The girl is pleased with herself and happy.
It’s a short 6 frame comic strip, I think I can use different compositions for the frames, and use a simple scene and colour palette.
The setting:-
A coffee bar/van near a park
The characters:-
Rosie – confident
Ben – Shy
Panels (Rough)
So I used the classic style of panels of start with, there are six in total but may need to be changed later.
I then went on to do the rough thumbnails in the panels to get the idea down on paper.
Annotations
-Re-arrange the panels better
-Have more background in scene 4 and 6
-Have the boy with the girl in scene 6, but slightly off to one side, zoom on the girls face expressions.
-Pick a colour palette
Colour palette
I needed green and brown for the setting, then I thought I would choose yellow for the girl, as she seemed very happy and sunny, and blue for the boy as that was classic and would work with his suit. Then a pink as a highlight, for the love hearts and skin colour of the boy.
Green
Brown
Yellow
Blue
Pink
Images
I’m working back on the iPad for this comic strip, so Ill start putting in the panels, then I can re-arrange them easily as well.
I started with the panel layout, but I got this design wrong, I forgot to include box four, and I had to re-arrange it as the roughs I did, didn’t work in order!
I managed to re-arrange them so they fit into the page, and I managed to work out the compositions so they work well.
Sketch 1 was of the coffee mug and the boy and the girl touching hands trying to grab the cup.
Sketch 2 was the guy feeling embarrassed, with his hands over his face.
Sketch 3 was the young girl blushing.
Sketch 4 was the girl and boy introducing themselves to each other.
Sketch 5 is when the couple walk away together in the park.
Sketch 6 is with the young girl looking happy and smiling and very pleased with herself.
Now I need to add in some backgrounds to scenes 4 and 5, to make the frames have some point of difference to the others. I did the scene behind them in the coffee shop, then in frame 5 park scene with them walking away chatting together.
Now I’m going to colour in the comic strip, using the limited colour palette. I started with trying textured brushes but I thought actually it looked much better with a studio pen in a solid colour, it looked more graphic, and more like a comic strip would be.
Although I did use a few other colours then the limited colour palettes, the tones were just hues not completely different colours.
I now need to add the speech bubbles and words to the art work.
What went well?
The compositions went well and the colour palette, I like the different compositions, some that are zoomed in like the coffee cup, and others that show the whole scene, like the park.
The colours turned out well, although I did use more hues and tones of the original 5 colours selected, they did help to add some depth.
What I would do differently or better?
I would double check I had the right layout first of the panels, although I did this wrong it helped using the iPad as I could change it quickly and easily, whereas on paper it would have meant drawing it out all over again.
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