OMG! Best Opening Ever!!!

This is truly untouchable.  Apparently, Francis Ford Coppola pretty much went mad making this film.  Heck, if a brush with insanity is all it takes to make art like this, reserve a room for me in Bedlam!  Prepare to be bowled over if you’ve never had the pleasure:

Your mission is to get some of this sequence (until his unbelievable first line) on at least one 10×15″ page, trippiness intact.   Look at some of the samples of page layout as meta-panels and  graphic design and see if you can find a way to preserve the feel of the overlapping dissolves and visual puns on a static page.  I want your page to include not merely the images, but the entire tone of the sequence, and this will mostly be accomplished through some sort of unique panel arrangement.  Can you find a way to make the connection between the chopper blades and the ceiling fan through well-placed juxtaposition?  How about the crucial correlation (made even more apparent at the end of the film) between Sheen’s face and that of the Buddha statue?  Can you “time” the napalm explosion for shock value?  Is it even feasible that somehow it could draw to a close on the page with that triple image of gun/eye/fan?   Do what Coppola did to film with comics: re-think all the rules.

Action Homework: [insert favorite Chuck Norris joke here]

You cannot possibly tell me this is not all shades of awesome.

Bruce Lee! (You know, the guy every single one of your favorite fighting game characters is based on?) Ripped off chest hair! Kitten as audience stand-in/combatant metaphor!  Inexplicable yet deliberate clothes-removing/knuckle-cracking segment taking up first full minute and a half!  Poignant ending!  Kitten!

Don’t tell me that every one of you can find a page worth of action here you’d love to draw…

Your assignment is exactly that.  Design a page in your sketchbook that incorporates several moments of action from this scene.  I don’t care if it’s a page of flying kicks or a page of a kitten mewing at the action.  However, I do care that you use some of the techniques discussed here and in class to convince me that movement is taking place on a still page merely placing individual drawings side by side.  Above all, as always, make sure the page is eminently readable.  I should have no question what is going on nor where my eyes are moving next.  To ensure these things happen, plan your shots first as we practiced.  Once you have a storyboard of shots you can follow, think about how they will fit on a page.  Decide which ones need the most room (i.e., the largest panel), which ones must be horizontal or vertical, and how you can cleverly control the timing from one action to the next through tricks of panel placement.  Look back at the discussions in the Action! blog for clues.  Once you have a small sketchy thumbnail that will definitely work to portray your action, move on to you 10″ x 15″ page.  I want finished pencils at least.  If you feel the style you have in mind requires some sort of inking, feel free!

WARNING: Do not try to make this work by just perfectly drawing freeze-frames of equal-sized widescreen shots from the video!  It won’t work!  The rules of film are completely different from those of comics.  Change, edit, and exaggerate the shots to fit your page.  The comic that is the most true to the feel of this insane Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris action may in fact not swipe a single frame from the video.  Keep the feel, the characters, the story, and the action, but don’t feel tied to the camera’s framing of the shots.