Ellis Broadhead EPQ

Here's the feedback I received from my presentation:

As part of my evaluation of my comic, myself and the four other students doing the Extended Project Qualification this year had to present our final products and the steps and research it took to get there. Therefore, I prepared a PowerPoint and some flashcards for this presentation, which can be found here: This is the brilliant drawing I used by Amelia as a resource during my presentation! And these are some photos of the event:

This is some feedback I received on my comic club from the teacher supervising it: Throughout the process of the club, I feel that my skills teaching young students have majorly improved. When I first started the club, I remember being excessively nervous to present it, and perhaps a little harsh when discussing their ideas, but as the club continued over the year, I grew more confident and speaking in front of the students became quite easy. Furthermore, I developed a bond of trust between the students and myself, in the sense that they felt that they could ask me for feedback and that I was happy to talk to them whenever they needed. 

Here's Page 2 of my comic:

Where I'm At: Last month, I aimed to get at least two pages done of my comic, but unfortunately, I only managed to do one. This is because the page took a lot longer than originally realised, and with all the other commitments I have in and out of school, pages are very hard to complete. This month, I would like to try to get two more pages done, but I think it's more realistic that I will only be able to do one, especially since the project is very quickly drawing to a close. Goals for April and May: -  One More Comic Page. The last page took me around two hours, so it will be hard to do more than one this month. I will try to add more details and panels to this page though, to make it look much more effective than the other. - Present my Project. My EPQ supervisor has arranged a date to present all of the work we've been doing to an audience of teachers and school governors. Therefore, over the next month and few weeks, I need to develop an effective presentation t...

Here's page 1 of my comic:

Finally, I finished titling the chapter and outlined what would be happening in it. In this first chapter, Scorpio heads home after a long day of work, only to find his apartment invaded by his neighbours and friends, Raphael and Luce. Here's the Chapter 1 Page: Since Scorpio is a very cynical person, I decided to go for a humorous chapter title that represents his personality and sets up the premise that the comic is going to be a mixture of comedy/horror.

Where I'm At: During February, I managed to get a lot of drawing done. I did some concept ideas in order as to get a feel for how the comic would look, and I also practiced drawing for other people in order to force myself into drawing more, to develop my skills. Furthermore, I settled on a title of 'Prophetic' for the comic and designed and drew the front cover. Within the comic club, the students seem to still be working out ideas for their own comics. I have set a loose guideline for them, that by the end of the project, they need to have at least one fully finished comic page, in order to spur them on. Goals for March: -  Design a Chapter Page and Draw at Least Two Pages of the Comic. By the end of this month, I'd like to have finished a chapter page (as well as decide on a chapter title, if needed), and have drawn the first two pages of the comic. - Encourage the Students to Have Drawn At Least One Page. Despite how much their attention seems to drift during...

Finally, I've finished the cover page for my final comic! Here it is:

In order to prepare for my comic, I've been taking on much more commissions (drawing requests I earn a small amount of money for) in order to improve my drawing standard and reduce the time spent on each drawing. Here's a small selection of some drawings I've been doing!

In order to prepare for drawing my comic, I decided to find and watch a video on YouTube from a webcomic artist to give me some tips that could help me to figure out how to draw an appropriate layout and decide upon a colour scheme, along with giving me an idea of how long it would take to draw each page. Here's the video I found:   Session Date: 16/02/18 Resource Used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ThbqfsfHA Brief Summary/Description of Source: A video by WebComic artist LavenderTowne, which details how she draws a page of her webcomic. What Was I Hoping To Find Out?: I was hoping to find out some tips on how to set a layout for a comic, for example, where to place text bubbles and what kind of colour scheme I should pick. Brief Summary of What I've Learnt From the Source: This video was extremely helpful in understanding how experienced WebComic artists work, and how they make important decisions which impact upon the comic. I learnt tips on where to place ...

In order to give myself an idea of how long each illustration would take for my comic, I recorded myself drawing one of my most recent commissions, and posted it to my YouTube. I sped up an hour and a half's worth of drawing into four minutes, which can be seen here: As you can see, this drawing took me an incredibly long time, and I think I was wrong to assume that I could originally manage to produce a page of the comic each week.

As shown in my last post, I decided that I really liked the black border/colourful rectangles look for a comic, and so decided to draw out a small comic which I eventually used for a CD Digipak in one of my final products for A2 Media. Regardless, this was easily practice for my actual comic, and so I've decided to post the comic here: Despite their limited colour scheme and sketchy drawings, this comic actually ended up taking me a very long time, and I've begun to realise that my idea of drawing a page a week with all my other commitments might be very ambitious. I've decided to therefore scrap the idea of the system of 'a page a week' and instead just do as much as I can based on how little time I have.

Where I'm At: During January, all three of the final taught sessions of comic club went smoothly. Unfortunately, this last week had to be cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, but next week, the students will be able to start their own comics! For my own comic, I settled on a final idea, so now I can finally get to work on it! I wanted to practice my drawing a little more and get some more concepts done, but due to a lack of time I've decided to do that during February, this month, instead. Goals for February: - Comic Club. Now that comic club is going into sessions where they'll be taking the time to draw their own comics, I no longer have to do as much research. Instead, I'll be providing feedback and answering any questions that they have for me. - Practice My Own Comic. This month, I'd like to focus on practicing creating comics and drawing digitally, in order to gather an understanding of how long the comic is going to take me.  - Design a Cover Page....

This week, I decided to try out different formats for my comic, in order to test how I wanted my comic to look overall. First, I tried a colourful colour scheme with black borders, like this: I also tried a much more traditional comic format, this time of Scorpio, in order to get a feel for potential colour schemes I wanted to use: I prefer the format of the first comic idea a little bit more, due to the fact that it feels original and vibrant. At the moment, however, it is a little too sketchy for me to consider it as a fully recognised comic idea.  The second comic idea is quite fun, and I love the fact that I've used smaller graphics in white in order to illustrate his thoughts much more clearly. However, I'm not currently too keen on the fact that everything is neatly contained within the box.

This week, I didn't need a PowerPoint. Instead, I sat down with Isaac, Logan, Amelia and Henry individually and wrote down their comic ideas, which I'll post here: Henry's Idea Isaac's Idea Logan's Idea Amelia's Idea What Went Well: Sitting down to talk to the students encouraged them to discuss their own ideas and receive feedback on how to improve them from myself. It was really interesting to see all their different ideas, and you could tell that they'd given the topic a lot of thought. Areas for Improvement: The students' ideas were often very underdeveloped, leading me to become a little bit concerned as to how they're going to actually start their comics next week. I did inform them that they might need to think a bit more about their comic ideas over the week.

Here's the link to the PowerPoint for Week 5: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BdoK541gywgJ37iTcdAhoshp3w6FaDlV/view?usp=sharing What Went Well: Finding the 'Shakespeare in 3 Panels' examples was a great choice, considering that the students found them funny and loved them. Areas for Improvement: This week, I gave my students the entire time to create short, three-panelled comics to practice for when they created their own comics. Unfortunately, a lot of them chose not to complete this, instead focussing on their own discussions and drawings.

This week did not require too much research, due to the fact that I just intended to show the students a few examples of short comic strips and let them loose with their drawing. Therefore, I decided to find a few examples of comic strips to show them, and soon found these adorable 'Shakespeare in 3 Panels' comics: