The Comic
Brief - Working in teams of four, create an eight page comic in response to a given nursery rhyme. Make sure to put your own "spin" on the text. The comic will contain a maximum of three, double page spreads together with a front and back cover. You can also include inside covers, and you must structure your story using the 9 panel grid, using no less than 3 panels on any single page.
The team I was placed in was given the nursery rhyme 'Pat a Cake Pat a Cake', which is one of the oldest and most widely known surviving English nursery rhymes.
Pat a Cake Pat a Cake
Pat a cake, Pat a cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with a 'B',
And put it in the oven for Baby and me
As a team we took quite quickly to this rhyme, as there are multiple ways to interpret the words and subject matter, meaning we could take it in many different directions. We initially split up and came up with a few different ideas of how to interpret the comic, as we all wanted to put a different spin on it, and realised that we could come up with a large variety and range of ideas independently. This meant we would have more room to decide how we wanted to illustrate the comic, as each ideas would have different tones and moods, giving us more of a range to choose from.
All of our initial concepts verged towards the darker realms, as we all had similar ideas that the rhyme could easily be interpreted as such, and as we all agreed that keeping the tone lighter and more similar to the rhyme would have been quite boring in visuals.
My first idea was to portray the rhyme as the words to a ritual being performed by a pair of witches, with the instructions in the lyrics pertaining to different elements in the ritual eg - 'pat it and prick it' could have been portrayed as someone using a needle and a drop of blood in the ritual. The use of normal baking equipment and ingredients could have been replaced with other, creepier items, such as a cauldron instead of a mixing bowl, and include the use of poison and body parts. Although the witch idea wasn't what we decided on in the end, we did keep some of these initial ideas of focusing on the baking side of the rhyme, and using body parts in the illustration as well.
My second idea was to interpret the words from the line 'Pat it and prick it and mark it with a 'B',' and I came up with the idea of the fall of an angel from heaven. I had the idea of angels being branded before being cast out from heaven from the 'mark it' line, and drew some initial sketches of the concept, but it was put to the side as it was too far fetched from the original source of the rhyme, which I agreed with.
The team I was placed in was given the nursery rhyme 'Pat a Cake Pat a Cake', which is one of the oldest and most widely known surviving English nursery rhymes.
Pat a Cake Pat a Cake
Pat a cake, Pat a cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with a 'B',
And put it in the oven for Baby and me
As a team we took quite quickly to this rhyme, as there are multiple ways to interpret the words and subject matter, meaning we could take it in many different directions. We initially split up and came up with a few different ideas of how to interpret the comic, as we all wanted to put a different spin on it, and realised that we could come up with a large variety and range of ideas independently. This meant we would have more room to decide how we wanted to illustrate the comic, as each ideas would have different tones and moods, giving us more of a range to choose from.
All of our initial concepts verged towards the darker realms, as we all had similar ideas that the rhyme could easily be interpreted as such, and as we all agreed that keeping the tone lighter and more similar to the rhyme would have been quite boring in visuals.
My first idea was to portray the rhyme as the words to a ritual being performed by a pair of witches, with the instructions in the lyrics pertaining to different elements in the ritual eg - 'pat it and prick it' could have been portrayed as someone using a needle and a drop of blood in the ritual. The use of normal baking equipment and ingredients could have been replaced with other, creepier items, such as a cauldron instead of a mixing bowl, and include the use of poison and body parts. Although the witch idea wasn't what we decided on in the end, we did keep some of these initial ideas of focusing on the baking side of the rhyme, and using body parts in the illustration as well.
My second idea was to interpret the words from the line 'Pat it and prick it and mark it with a 'B',' and I came up with the idea of the fall of an angel from heaven. I had the idea of angels being branded before being cast out from heaven from the 'mark it' line, and drew some initial sketches of the concept, but it was put to the side as it was too far fetched from the original source of the rhyme, which I agreed with.
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After this, we came up with the idea of a cannibalistic bake who uses human remains in their cakes. Each member of the team took a line from the rhyme and we agreed to all design one page based on what we were given. I was chosen to design the front and back cover, and I had been given the first line of the rhyme as well. I came up with some concept sketches of the front cover, and while were were talking about the design of the baker himself, the idea of a plague doctor was brought up, as they often 'marked' the front doors of houses of people who had the disease. We all agreed that the iconic plague doctor mask was creepy enough to fit in with the tonal theme of what we were trying to achieve, so I also designed the baker to be wearing one as well.
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The also team decided that we should include inside covers, and we all sketched up ideas. Eventually we settled on the inside covers being a repeating pattern of baking supplies and ingredients, each with a horror theme to them such as egg yolks really being eye balls etc.
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I then moved onto sketching out my ideas for the front and back covers, along with my page of the comic. For the back cover I decided to make it look like the back of a cake mix box, to fit with the theme of it being a bakery even through the horror elements.
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I had two ideas for the front cover, the first being to make it look like the front of a cake mix box, so it would fit thematically with the back cover, while the second was to draw the baker holding a plate of scones or buns. The first idea fit thematically more with the back cover, and it allowed me to design the cake in such a way to show that the inside would be filled with human body parts, such as an eye or a finger. However, after some thought I decided against this cover, as I felt like it wasn't creepy enough to match the tone of the rest of the comic. I liked this front cover more than the other as it showcased both the baker and his pies/buns, effectively bringing together all elements of the comic in one image. This also allowed me to showcase his plauge doctor mask, which I did in the final piece, and for me to bring more horror elements into the piece, such as including splashes of colour onto his clothes and apron, and including more human body parts into the buns, fitting the tone of the comic better. |
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It was from there that I moved onto designing my page. The line I had been given was 'Pat a cake, Pat a cake, baker's man' which let me be narrative with my illustration, and I used it to set the scene with the story we wanted to tell. I made sure to introduce the setting and the baker himself, along with hinting to what he was doing, eg baking a cake. I decided to only hint at the horror aspects in my page, as they would become more prevalent in the other pages the further on you read.
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As we decided to draw each page in our own individual styles, we needed a way to pull them all together. We settled on the idea of drawing the comic in black and white, with the only colour being the middle pink from this colour pallet, as we decided it gave enough of a horror feel without it being a too garish red.
Final Piece
