Part ONE - Starting Research

In The Beginning..

To begin my project, I had to take a step back from what I wanted to do and really look into what inspires me as an illustrator, mainly in the comic department. While it's still hard to shake off my influences from anime and manga I feel I should somewhat embrace it for this project, I feel combining that influence with my other influences from media and artists it could make an interesting and unique combination. 

I started by really looking into what comics are, they're a series of images that tell a story, right? and it depends on you as an artist and writer on how you convey that story. But I found, really, I had no idea what I was doing. My knowledge on graphic novels and comics were limited, so I went back to the storyboard and decided to read up on what they really are. 

I started by reading Making Comics by Scott McCloud, which I bought back in second year of uni. It was actually very enlightening to read, and it gave me a broad variety of things I needed to consider when going to draw the comic itself. 

The book itself is segmented into different areas of consideration when it comes to making comics, so I went full on A Level student studying English Literature and Language and sticky noted the whole thing (colour coded of course) 

Perceiving Others

​I really wanted to look into the artists who are massive influences to me. Junji Ito and Paru Itagaki are the ones that come to mind immediately as one of my bigger influences. The flowy watercolour artstyle of Paru Itagaki's work paired with her ability to create convincing and human characters even if the characters are inhuman. Junji Ito's ability to create horrific artworks has always been a major influence for me, the way his artwork can create a sense of primal fear that there is something out there beyond my comprehension and it's utterly disturbing. I took a deeper look into their artwork, what made them so appealing to me and many others and why as a graphic novelists they work. 

I had a focus more on looking at monochrome or greyscale graphic novels while I was looking, because I believed it was the type of direction I wanted to go forward with, with my own comic. I found myself more attracted to the books with an off white paper, for some reason I felt the darker tones looked softer, it felt more like I was reading a novel then a comic and that was exactly the kind of vibe I was looking for with my comic, it fits in thematically.







Below is a collection of other graphic novels I have been looking at for consideration, which include: The Umbrella Academy, Mob Psycho 100, Ghost Club and Dark Red. I was looking at these for a variety of different reasons, whether it was for the art, the story, or a combination of both.