A Page on a Page

Introduction

My latest Area 5.1 comic, (A Tall Tale) is based around a real-world scam email that Shiela received the other week. The premise here is why would anyone respond to being called an idiot? But "dummy's guides" have been around for a long time now covering all sorts of topics, so perhaps we have become desensitised to this sort of insult. Or maybe the meaning has altered so most figure dummy just means noob. But it still feels like a bold sell!

I decided to take it in a slightly different direction and speculate about what is it that you'll be buying. I wanted to include the email, portrayed as a more traditional junk-mail letter, so it needed to look like a real piece of paper. Here's my starting image taken from the original screen grab.

The starting image

This blog takes you through the image processing required to create a 3D version of this page.

The Transformation Process

I used the open source GIMP software, but I'm pretty sure the tools I used are available in other graphics software (Pixelmator, Photoshop, Paint.net or Pixl Editor on the web). It was a relatively simple process using a few simple transformations.

(nb. Before you start, increase the width of the canvas otherwise you'll lose the sides of the text when you stretch the page.)

•  Rotate the image by 90 degrees and then use the Curve Bend tool to curl the edges.

(In GIMP you can find this in the menu: Filters > Distorts > Curve Bend)

Adding a curve to the edges

• Do upper and lower borders, then when happy with the results, click OK and then rotate it back through 90 degrees.

• Finally use the Perspective Tool, dragging in and down the top corners to make the page appear to tilt away from you, then press enter.

(In GIMP you can find this in the menu: Tools > Transform Tools > Perspective)

Applying Perspective

I then imported the image into Sketchbook, rotated it a little and then drew the page turn-up on the bottom right corner. I later added the background graduation so that the page edge didnt get confused with the frame edge.

The final result of the transformations

It didn't take very long to do and the results are quite effective. I hope somebody found this useful.

Providing Location Clues

Introduction

This week's comic is based on the notion of mistake, or a couple of them to be more exact. But in order to make the joke work, I needed to make one or two things clear, ideally without having to write it into the dialogue. I'm a firm believer that people are turned off by cartoons with lots of text, so I try to minimise it as much as I can.

If you've not seen the cartoon yet then read it here first:

http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/65/

I'll show the artwork for each of the frames and explain my use of location clues.

Frame 1

The opening shot needs to set the scene and capture the audience. I needed the LGM's to be somewhere in the vicinity of earth so that a telescope would be feasible, or the joke wouldn't work. I chose Mars and made it as red as I dared.

Location Clue #1: I added the Curiosity Rover, because it's highly recognisable and commonly known to be on Mars. I could have used a sign saying "Welcome to Mars" instead, but it feels like a cop-out. It's better to infer it some way.

A Zoom with a View - Frame 1

After drawing the martian rover I wondered about why it hadn't spotted my Aliens and then decided that perhaps it had been de-activated. So I had it clamped.

Finally to give it that "Grand Day Out" feel, I added the deck chair and tartan thermos. I think there's something very English about those things, despite the fact it might sound a bit Scottish.

Frame 2

This very simple frame delivers the punch-line, but the joke's not obvious until you see the last frame. 

A Zoom with a View - Frame 2

Early plans had the zoom settings indicating scale:

• Ultra - 1m
• High - 10m
• Med - 0.1km
• Low - 1km

I discarded that idea, realising it would be too confusing. (KISS - keep it simple stupid!) I decided to devise a visual way of showing sizes in the last frame.

There's not much else to say about it really, other than I thought a background was unnecessary.

Frame 3

This one gave me a few problems because everyone knows that ants are tiny. If you draw them too small then it's not obvious what they are. Yet if you draw them large they look like monsters and the joke doesn't work. (Plus, I really didnt want to re-use the word 'ant' in the dialogue.)

A Zoom with a View - Frame3

The answer was to draw them both ways,.. small ants in the background appearing like cars on a highway, and a huge ant in the foreground for recognition purposes, so I put it on the branch of a tree.

Location Clue #2: I chose to add a matchbox to the scene because it was the right size (in comparison to ants), it's a recognisable discarded object and a common brand. It serves two purposes here; it confirms the location as Earth and sets the scale for the background insects dimensions.

But there's still a danger that the branch could look like it was on the ground with a huge ant upon it, so I used ground shading. It's subtle, but seems to work well.

Location Clue#3: It's not shown here, but I added a circular mask to the final frame to make it appear as a view through the telescope.

Come the Revolution

Lining Up the Ideas

OK, we like to steal ideas, borrow themes, or more ethically, be inspired by other peoples work and recently we were discussing line-ups, or identity parades (as we call them in the UK).

Shiela had an idea for the Yvonne the Sheep web cartoon; an identity parade featuring sheep, which are well known for looking identical. The joke pretty much writes itself... but there was a slight issue,.. what was the crime? (what misdemeanour could sheep do?)

We noticed when looking at other artists work that the dialogue appears to tell you very little, but it does serve to confirm who the protagonist is, so in the end we deduced the reason was unimportant. This meant that the focus could be moved onto someone in the line-up that didn't look anything like those around them. It's a well used idea with loads of good examples and sounded like a job for her boisterous crow character.

Take a look at the finished work here:-

Yvonne the Sheep #149: http://handspinner.co.uk/yvonne/149.html

But, it got me thinking and it wasn't long before I came up with my own line-up idea which revolved around different branded smart phones all looking the same - essentially copies of Apples original iPhone. It was to be a slightly surreal line-up featuring just smartphones.

Evolution or Revolution?

The more I thought about my line-up idea, the more things I threw into the pot. The policeman was going to say to Steve Jobs, "Can you tell me which one stole your IP", but that gave me a few problems...

1. How many people understand what IP means,.. and is "Intellectual Property" any less of a problem?
2. Everyone knows that Steve is dead,.. so do I show him as a ghost, or somehow backdate it?

Maybe it could be Tim Cook who's picking out the IP thief, and I could show Steve spinning in his grave. I pictured the late Mr Jobs being so animated about this that having him as some sort of power source popped into my head. This turned out to be a strong idea, but it now didn't fit in with the original line-up plan, so I needed something else that would famously have made him mad. What had Apple released to their consumer base that had given them a bad reputation, something that would have never happened under Steve's control?

The answer was obvious really - Siri

When The Internet Lets You Down

It's at times like this that I hit the internet, I needed a Siri fail that epitomised its shortfalls and wasn't a joke in its own right. But I couldn't find that simple idea, they were all too funny or ironic. Here's what I came up with in the end:-

OK, I gotta say right now, it's not my idea, Julie came up with it. Not sure where she got it from, but it's simple and it's perfect. I knocked up this quick hand and phone sketch and pasted in an image of the wibbly "Siri listening bar" to save time.

The main effort went into the last frame which I drew as a blueprint plan. This is the jokes punch, it had to be obvious what was going on yet carry enough detail to portray the well known idiom.

Starting to Draw The Blueprint

See the completed comic here --> http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/8