Unit: 53 Graphic Narrative Production

 

In Unit: 53 graphic narrative production, I created a digital comic strip that tells the story of Salvador Dali’s life. Before I chose what I was going to put in each frame I did some more research into Salvador Dali’s life. I chose the most important and memorable events to happen in his life which included things he did, his date of birth, the day he died, and also included his wife in the comic strip. I created the comic strip by first creating many boxes and placing them carefully while keeping the proportions of each box correct. I then chose what I thought were the most important parts of Dali’s life.
The 12 points of his life that I found were the most notable were:

• Birth – May 11th 1904
• Moved to Madrid to study in 1922
• Expelled from Academia (Arts School) 1926
• He collaborated in a film with Luis Bunuel known as “Un Chien Andalou” 1929
• Meets Gala, his future wife in 1929
• Joins the Surrealist group in 1929
• Paints the “Persistence of memory” in 1931, one of his most memorable paintings
• Published his autobiography known as “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali” in 1942
• Married Gala in 1958
• He designed the Chupa Chups logo in 1969
• His wife Gala dies in 1982
• Salvador Dali dies in 1989

MY FINAL FOR THE DIGITAL COMIC STRIP.

What I liked about this comic strip was that it wasn’t like other comic strips where they take so many frames to explain something so small. Since I only do have 12 frames I had to compress Dali’s life as small as I possibly could. I chose those events in his life as his most important because although there were other parts of life that could’ve been as significant as my choices, I felt that these moments were probably very important to him since they also focus on his

personal life.

The way I designed this comic strip is similiar to how I would design a storyboard. I chose to use that texture as the background because since Dali’s work never involved any single colours, I thought it’d be more suitable if I used a texture that gave off the idea of something that is old or something that has aged. Each image I used for each frame is relevant to the description of that time of his life. E.g. the scene where he joins the Surrealists in Paris. I decided to search for an image of a group of people in a silhouette because to me the Surrealists were very elite and mysterious so I decided that a silhouette would be a perfect way of presenting them. Another thing I liked about this comic strip is how clear everything is. Although it does tell a story, it is very straight to the point. What could’ve been improved here is that I could’ve told the story of his life in more depth and included more illustrations to show his life and some of the significant things that happened. I also think that perhaps the layout of the comic strip could be changed. Although I do like the way it is set up and the writing and the images are clearly seen. If I wanted to give the layout more of a stranger look to suit the ideas and thoughts of the Surrealists then in my opinion, I could’ve made the work look better.

I then created a version of the comic strip on Flash CS5. I basically took all the frames from the original .JPEG file on Photoshop saved them as seperate files on Photoshop again as .PNGs and dragged them onto Flash where I animated each frame. I found this pretty easy and animating on Flash pretty simple. I saved each file as a .PNG because when dragged onto the Flash canvas the background on the image file becomes transparent. I didn’t have any constraints while producing the animated comic strip. What I liked about doing the comic strip on Flash was that I got to animate different parts of it. For example, the transitions where I made each frame fade in and out from one another. I also enjoyed animating some of the scenes such as the Chupa Chups logo and the first frame with the image of the baby. The way I animated the Chupa Chups logo was I imported the image of the Chupa Chups logo onto Flash then I keyframed each movement I made with F6 then I made it rotate 360 degrees altogether.