Rebecca East UWE Illustration

 'Squirm' is another short I created inspired by an old sketchbook drawing. With this short I didn't just want to create a comic I also wanted to play around with some concertina binding techniques.  This is another very simple short, this time about a boy who eats a worm and then turns into a pile of worms. I'm finding that I really enjoy these kinds of narrative pieces; very simple horror stories where the focus is less on any real plot or characters and more just on strange concepts and interesting ideas. I've found narrative work difficult in the past because I find myself getting caught up on certain aspects that are necessary to a more traditional story structure, that just don't interest me. But with this more bare-bones approach I'm finding it a lot more engaging as I'm able to explore my ideas without feeling tied down to a more long-form structure.  I developed this mock-up into a full concertina, however due to time constraints I was unfortuna

 During the bookbinding workshop I made my sketchbook for the rest of the project. I made a a5 case-bound book that I covered in latex. I used liquid latex, painted onto a sheet of parchment paper and then peeled off to work as a sheet to cover the book with, as you would use any normal piece of fabric. It was a little challenging to use as it's a somewhat unpredictable material; after peeling off the parchment paper backing and covering the latex in talc to stop it sticking to itself, there was a lot of shrinkage, which made it challenging to cover the entire book, as the sheet I had measured and painted out was considerably smaller than I had planned for. With a little stretching this wasn't too much of an issue.  I chose to work with liquid latex as I'd had quite a bit of experience with it in the past and I knew it could have a skin-like appearance, and for the body horror theme of my project, I thought it would be quite fitting. Another aspect of liquid latex that I en

 A short story I created called 'Strands', inspired by this drawing from one of my old sketchbooks (left), which was in turn inspired by a panel from Junji Ito's 'Tomie' (right). I initially came up with the idea when I was looking through old personal sketchbooks, as I used to do a lot of inkwork, which is something I want to venture back into with this project. Similarly to the 10 Panel narrative workshop, I wanted to find an image to use as a visual reference to then form a story around; I feel like this short story format is a good one for horror narratives, as it allows me to explore ideas and concepts without the need for a lot of exposistion or any real world building, which i find can often lessen the effectiveness of horror stories with a lot of ambiguity.  I also took a little conceptual inspiration from the japanese horror film 'EXTE' (2007). I wanted to play around with textures and contrast within this short. At this point I'm pretty much de

 I've decided that throughout this project I want to look at the specific kinds of narratives that I enjoy; those mostly being horror-themed. I want to look at examples from the genre and analyse what I believe make them a successful narrative piece.  As a starting point, I did a short analysis of Junji Ito's work, as he is my favourite narrative artist, and I feel that he has mastered the format of the physical visual novel.  Here are some sketchbook pages of notes on my feelings about his work alongside some sketches referenced from his story 'Gyo'. 

 As a part of the 10 Panel narrative workshop, I was assigned this image set: I knew that throughout this project I wanted to look at horror narratives, so I decided to approach this brief from a body-horror angle, mostly because of the medical/scientific look of the first image.  I took inspiration from a few of my favourite body horor films; 'The Blob' (1988) and 'The Thing' (1982). The second image made me think of crowds of people huddled together which lead me down an idea of something consuming people and merging them together.  I then circled back to the first image of a doctor/scientist and came up with the idea that the mass was actually some kind of bacteria being observed by a scientist.