This team assignment tasks small groups of students with the creation of a short comic. Students work in collaboration on story development and comic scripts. The series of panels must convey a coherent narrative over a passage of time, so pacing and clarity of both plot and character development are pivotal. Each student completes their share of panels through the production pipeline in alignment with character, world, colour and inking guides made by the team. Style flexibility and consistency are a big challenge in bringing these pages of sequential art together.
The Character Surfacing assignment tasks students with creating surfaces for the unique character models they designed and created earlier in the year. This process involves combining real world reference and concept art in the production of convincing and appealing surfaces. In order to do this, students must deconstruct photographic reference in order to correctly establish all aspects of an object’s surface response to light and combine this research with their own creative input and decision making. The aim is to achieve surfaces that appear to be tactile, varied, convincing and appealing.
The Character Portrait assignment tasks students with developing their own interpretation of a randomly selected title and using this title to develop a clear and engaging visual narrative and richly detailed and appealing set. All of the characters and the worlds that the inhabit are of the students’ own imagining. These students were encouraged to base these narratives on their personal experience as South Africans. The students were also tasked with adhering to a style cue, and could choose from: film noir; period; western; grotesque; theatrical; idealised.
The Character Study Assignment serves as the second year summative assignment and, much like an end year exam, tests all aspects of the students’ learning and skills relevant to every part of the production pipeline. Students are expected not only to produce every aspect of these productions on their own, but also to manage these solo productions independently as well as actively participating in weekly peer review sessions. Students are also encouraged to source local audio for their monologues and to ensure that their productions look and feel South African. The curriculum aims to contribute to the development of an identifiably South African CGI aesthetic.
