Illustration & Visual Narrative - Project 3: Digital Triptych

02.06.23 - 30.06.23 / Week 9 - Week 13
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Illustration & Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 3- Digital Triptych

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LECTURES

Week 9: Light & Shadow / Chiaroscuro

We returned to learning about different types of illustrative elements and for this week we started learning about chiaroscuro and lights & shadows. Chiaroscuro is an Italian art style that features the use of strong bold contrasts between light and dark that affect the whole composition. We also learned about other vital elements that play a key role in shaping the way a composition is presented, those elemnts being Visual Depth, Atmosphere and Mood, Symbolism and Metaphor, Visual Hierarchy and Focus, and Contrast and Conflict.

Week 10: Ornaments

Our lecturer showed us how to manipulate the width of shapes that we drew by using the width tool to increase or decrease the widths. 

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INSTRUCTIONS

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PRACTICAL 

Part 1: Idea Development

For our third and final project this semester we've been tasked with taking an Edgar Allan Poe poem and presenting it in a digital triptych style using any art style we want. Our challenges for this project were as follows:

1. Only one story from this website: https://poestories.com/stories.php

2. No, you cannot use other story than the ones from the website

3. Visuals are displayed in a series of three

4. Include short non-spoiler text for each act

Additionally, we were allowed to create small changes to certain aspects of the story if we wanted to, such as changing it so that it took place in the modern day rather than the time period in which it takes place. However we were not allowed to make drastic changes to the story, such as character names, storylines and etc. We are allowed to omit certain aspects if we feel as if they don't play much importance in the story or are more minor details.

Once we understood the rules, I started reading through the different stories by Edgar Allan Poe on the website. Some of the stories that I were interested in doing included "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "Some Words With a Mummy." But the story I chose to do for this project was "The Masque of the Red Death" as I was interested in exploring the story as it is based off of the black plague. After reading the story, I broke it down into three parts.

Setup

Once upon a time, there was a man known as Prince Prospero who fled to a secluded abbey along with roughly a thousand of his friends. During this time, there was a devastating plague known as the Red Death that killed anybody it affected. The abbey he escaped to was well stocked and featured seven different rooms that illuminated with different colours due to the windows.

Conflict

One day, during a grand masked ball that was being held, a mysterious figure dressed as the Red Death appeared. Because of that, the partygoers became scared as it moved between each of the rooms. Because of that too, the Prince got upset and went to confront the Red Death.

Resolution

When the Prince went to stab the figure, the prince was instead killed and he dropped to the floor. The partygoers all rush to confront the figure only to find out it was empty and lifeless. In the end, each of the revellers started to die one-by-one until the Red Death was the only one left.

Meaning

Overall, the story explores themes of mortality, the inevitability of death, and the futility of trying to escape one's fate. It serves as a chilling allegory for the universality and inescapable nature of death.

Once I had the story broken up into the three parts, I started sketching out my three panels for the triptych on my iPad since I had better control. I started out by creating a frame for my artwork and then moved onto creating the art from there. 

Figure 1.1: Three Act Sketches

I decided to base the design for the Red Death off of plague doctors and the masks that they wore as this story was based on the Black Death, which was a plague in Europe during the mid 14th century that wiped out almost 200 million people. 

The main art style that I was trying to emulate for my triptych was that of stained glass windows popular across Europe between the 12th and 16th century, though they were mainly present in churches and cathedrals.

Figure 1.2: Stained Glass Window Art

For Act 1, I decided to depict the exterior of the abbey that the Prince and his friends retreated to in the story, though for my sketch I decided to portray it as a mansion instead of an abbey as I felt that the design would have fit Prince Prospero better. For Act 2, I chose to portray the prince and his friends dancing in a ballroom with the Red Death making an appearance in the background. For Act 3, I wanted to depict the Red Death standing over the corpse of the prince and the knife by his side. This was the first act that I drew as this was the first idea that came to my mind when I started. Once I finished my sketches I began to recreate them on Adobe Illustrator.

Part 2: Digitisation

One aspect about the digitisation process is that I had much better control over the details as on the iPad, there's a limit to how much you can do and how big you can make the art. But with a laptop, I was able to perfect the small mistakes that I made and was able to create the piece with much higher resolution quality. 

Figure 2.1: Three Act Sketches Digitised

I decided to change the colours of the frame from silver-to-black to a dark brown to emulate the colour of wood. Looking back I could have added on a texture to further emulate the wooden effect but as of writing this I've already submitted it so it's late for me to change my mind. I am fine with what I have though. After all of this was done, I moved onto adding colour to the frames, I decided to start with Act 3 since that was my personal favourite act to create. My colouring process for this was simple, I would create one colour first and then create three additional variations of it, with one being a lighter shade and the other two being darker so that I could give some variety to my art rather than having it just be one solid colour.

Figure 2.2: Act 3 Coloured

I decided to make the background black as in the story the Red Death ends his journey in the black room where he kills the Prince. The knife was a key element to add in since it reflected the Prince's emotions of rage, defiance, and desperation as he rushed at the Red Death to try and kill him which reflected his belief of thinking he's strong enough to combat death head on. The knife dropping to the floor represents his failure and inability to confront death, which also serves as a reminder to the reader that no matter what you try, death will always prevail. After that was done I moved onto Act 1, which was the exterior of the abbey.

Figure 2.3: Act 1 Coloured

In the story they never specified what colour the abbey was so I chose to depict it as being a silver-ish white to reflect the nobles who ran away to try and stay clean from the plague. Though it doesn't really work out for them in the end since the Red Death kills them anyways. After that, I moved onto Act 2 which has the prince's friends dancing in a ballroom.

Figure 2.4: Act 2 Coloured

In the actual story there is no mention of a ballroom where the partygoers celebrate and rather have them go through the seven different coloured rooms to experience the festivities and revelry going on inside them. I chose to use a ballroom instead as it would be much easier to portray rather than trying to fit seven different rooms into one panel, especially since it was only 300x600 pixels and I also included a rather large frame. But to try and keep that aspect of the story in, I gave each of the partygoers an outfit based off of the seven coloured rooms that were presented in the story, those being blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. I gave the prince a purple suit as purple is often associated with royalty in media and because I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give a Prince a purple suit.

FINAL Digital Triptych Submission

Figure 2.5: Digital Triptych Submission (JPG)

Figure 2.6: Digital Triptych Outline View

Figure 2.7: Digital Triptych Submission (PDF)

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REFLECTION

Of the projects that we had for this class so far, I would say that this project was the most fun out of all of them. The challenges that we were given for this project felt more tame compared to the other challenges we were given for our other projects as it was mainly restricting us to using the website and it's stories. 

The digital triptych aspect of this project was also interesting as I've never creating anything like this before, both visually and technically. The amount of shapes that I had to create for this project was tiresome but the overall design and appearance of the composition feels satisfying to me personally, though it may be because I made it myself and have a feeling of accomplishment towards it. The limitation to having to condense a story into three short acts was also a fun challenge as it forced us to become creative with how we presented out work and what we could present in the final design. I don't think there's anything negative I have to say about this project, we had a lot of time to work on it, we had a lot of feedback for it and we were able to use any art style we wanted which was a nice benefit. 

The stories that we were provided were also interesting, having studied poetry in the past it was interesting to finally be coming back to the literary form and with the subject being Edgar Allan Poe, it allowed for us to express very dark, harrowing, gothic imagery and stories in a visually unique way while still staying true to the source material for the most part.