Character profile: Mary Poppins= Cherry Robbin

Like most of the names in my comic the name Cherry Robbin is adapted straight from it's original Mary Poppins. I thought the name change had a more modern ring to it and was hopefully different enough to get rid of a direct link but keep some sort of association if you looked for it. Where as Mary is magical Cherry id drug filled, due to all her drugs things often seem magical but in fact have a sad reality. (Image source: http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/mary-poppins-vs-dr-doom-712037/)
Where as in the film Mary makes wind blow all other nanny applicants away in the comic Cherry's fowl disposition drives them away although due to her being high at the time she sees them being blown away. Also in the film Mary stays as a nanny until 'The wind changes', this is parodied in the comic by he having to stay 'until the stock market turns' (when the family will be able to afford a better nanny).
In the original Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a word that Mary uses and is a running motif throughout the film that characters use when they feel great joy and learn the true lessons that the film promotes, importance of family etc. In my version the word is a name of a drug that Cherry helped create and likes, I planned for all characters in the film who started to use the word to take the drug in the comic thus putting a dark spin on the seemingly innocent, good intentioned motif.
In the film Michael and Mary talk about her bag made of carpet, in the comic a similar conversation takes place except Cherry's bag is made of hemp.

Cherry's appearance is based on the visuals of girls today but mainly ones who come up on tumblr if you search: hipster girl, grunge girl or indie girl. Here are some examples of images I used to inform my depiction of her to make her contemporary.
(Source:http://greatdreamsfordreamers.tumblr.com/post/77208641895)
(source:http://berlinunpredictable.tumblr.com/post/77629782483)
(source: http://somehowunoriginal.tumblr.com/post/77542678295)
(http://indiegrungefashion.tumblr.com/post/77074997233)
(http://juliebratteng.tumblr.com/post/76946247202)

I've decided to go more in depth about my reconstruction of Mary Poppins by doing character profiles on every character that I have adapted for my comic and how they have changed from their film version to suit a contemporary audience and the darker more nihilistic world of my comic.

For now I'm done with creating new pages of my comic. This is mainly because I've reached a poin which I think works a a sort of ending. This is with the introduction of a drug called 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'. I've had the idea of turning the famous word from Mary Poppins into the main drug of my reconstruction of the film almost since I started the comic. I also think it would make a good title to the comic as there is a clear link to the film yet the fact that the title isn't just a variation of Mary Poppins (like calling it after the Mary Poppins character in the comic, Cherry Robbin) hopefully suggests a certain amount of removal as well from the original source.

 Here is a reference photo I took of myself for the final panel in the comic in which the drug is introduced. I used a pound coin as it's the same shape and a similar size to what I imagine the drug to look like. I needed a reference for this panel because it's important so I didn't want it to look overly crude or awkward. I'd have also had trouble drawing the hand and getting it correct in relation to the face without a reference .
 


Here are my designs for the drug and a practice sketch of the above. I settled quite quickly on the face that I wanted to go on it. I made sure it was a simple design and could be easily replicated. I then decided I wanted it to be in colour so I tried it in a range of colour. I finally settled on using red ink which actually comes out pink. I've decided that in every appearance the drug will be in colour. This is something that I may do with most or all drugs in the comic. Similar to how in Sin City comics certain objects/figure have touches or colours on them to draw attention to them or show them as somehow important or dangerous.
I also think that the pill design could work for the front cover of the comic which is something I've been thinking about recently. It is simple and I'd hope for it to be iconic. When coming up with front cover ideas though I realised the reason I'm so drawn to this idea is because it's like the cover of the graphic novel 'Watchmen' by Allen Moore, artist Dave Gibbons. I've posted pictures of both the iconic symbol (source :http://www.comicvine.com/forums/gen-discussion-1/what-was-a-better-flim-watchmen-or-the-avengers-686407/) and the front cover to the complete graphic novel (source: http://www.amazon.co.uk/WATCHMEN-TP-Alan-Moore/dp/0930289234). As you can see there are some strong similarities between that design and mine. I think this is even clearer if you look at one of my ideas for a cover where the pill is only partly on the page (not a great concern though since I'm not using that idea). I think that while the ideas are similar I can still go on with mine, especially as Watchmen is known as one of the all time greats of the comic medium so it would be natural for another comic to be seemingly paying some sort of homage to it.

A major problem I've had with designing a cover is that Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is such a long word that it doesn't really fit straight on the page. I thought of several ways around this: I could call the comic 'Supercalifragilistic' or split the 'Supercalifragilistic' and 'expialidocious' part of the word. I didn't want to do this because I wanted to keep the whole word and all the connotations that come with it so that my comic can play upon them.

This left me only one option. Figuring out how to put the whole word on the page without it being really squished. My solution was very simple, I scrapped my idea of only having some of the pill on the cover and instead put the whole thing on so that I could write around the top of the circle the name of the drug and it could fit with ease.

 Here are some sketches I did to try and figure out how to depict the next drug hallucination scene. This is the scene in the movie where all the nannies applying for a job at the Banks' get blown away in the wind. I tried a range of methods using felt tips, pens and inks. While I think there are problems with either the: intensity, clearness, psychedelic feel or abstractness of each of these sketches I thought that if I combined a few of the techniques I used then I could achieve my desired effect. In the actual panel there are several potential nannies blowing away but for these sketches I concentrated on just one.


For the final panel I went for a style much like the second picture here, except I used a wider range of colours to create a more hallucinogenic experience. I also used a black sharpie and some other felt tips to help define the figures and some other aspects of the panel (the lamp post) a bit more.

Here are some snapshots from the original scene in the movie

 Source:http://amandanowyhed.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_01_archive.html

   Source:http://500daysto50.com/tag/mary-poppins/

 Here I've tried two different ways of putting in block black sections into panels of my comic. I tried once with ink and once with a black sharpie pen. While the ink was blacker it also varied in tone more and was a lot harder to control than the sharpie. The control was a big issue for me as I didn't want to ruin the drawing that I had already done because I placed an excess of ink on the page. I'll use a black sharpie to add a back layer to certain panels or when I want just pure black backgrounds of panels.

 I also experimented with borders. I tried using sharpie for the panels but feel it clashed to much with the pen work of the rest of the panel. I also tried colouring the spaces between the panels black. While it made the page bolder I don't think it necessarily improved the page. It was also more time consuming so I wouldn't do it on every page. This would be a problem since there are a lot of comics which use a black page to connote flashbacks or other disruptions in continuity/chronology. To avoid confusion I've left the idea for now.
I've also been messing around with colour work. I didn't try full on colour because I thought it would take away from the dark atmosphere I was trying to create and it would also take away from the drug induced scenes. Due to this I tried different ways of putting in suggestions of colour. The method I thought worked the best was colouring the clothes of figures and using different tones of black ink in the background. I thought the colour added some life to the characters while the black ink tones in the background kept the dark atmosphere I like. If it wasn't for time issues and wanting to progress further on with the story I may have used this method throughout.

Here is my copy of a page of 'Black Hole' by Charles Burns. I liked how the figures were at angle to create an unsettling, disorienting atmosphere. I also took note of the POV panels. Most of my similar panels are over the shoulder shots so putting in an occasional  POV panel may make things more interesting and add another dynamic to my comic.

Here are some pages of my process, from the rough sketches of what needs to be in each panel (and more roughly each page) above to a more finished page to the left. This was also one of the first pages composed complete from my imagination, while some of it works well and it condenses a lot of storyline there are things like the emptiness of the bottom left panel that really bother me.