This project started out with me very excited about the concept of creating my own comic when it was initial mentioned. Once I realized it had to be based on a true story I was not quit as excited because I struggled to come to a decision on a story I was willing to share, and that somebody else wouldn’t get offended I shared with the class.
I went through a few stories in my head I could use and discussed it with my father to find the most interesting story to use for the assignment. We were discussing one of my friends from childhood “Mandy McGee” and some of the strange things she did. We agreed it would be the most interesting story to tell so I called her and got her permission to do the story, as I said in class she said she wanted me to change her name , so I did just that.
When it came to actually creating the comic I had initially wanted to had draw the strip, but when it came down to it I just didn’t have the time to hand draw the entire thing. I can be such the perfectionist when it comes to drawing I could imagine me not sleeping for days trying to make all the images come out perfect so I decided to do the digital Adobe Illustrator format for the mini comic.
I started by illustrating Mandys face (and I am no illustrator) I decided to go away from making it actually look too much like the person the story was about also and make her look fairly like the generic “goth” or loner kid in school. After finishing her face I had the idea to take mockup clothing I had for previous projects in Viscom and live trace them and use them as her clothing. From there I started understanding the word iw ould use to tell the story and understanding how to make the story fit on the page and not drag on for too long, which was a challenge to shorten it down and not let it drag for too long because I would not have had the time to make it go on for pages.
I had a general idea of how to start it and the idea of the last 3 panels and from there filled in the reaming panels and made the necessary information for the story to make sense fit in between the beginning panels and he end panels. I then went and found existing imagery for the other characters and took them into illustrator and live traced the images and placed them with in the panels where threes roles would be played in the story. I added all the dialogue and text panel at a time as I added the imagery.
Also when ti came to choosing the type and the speech bubbles I felt it was a good idea to give Maxwell his own typeface and a different shape speech bubble to stronger emphasize the concept that Maxwell was not a real person.
All and all this was an interesting and enjoyable project and iw ish I had more free time to have been ablel to commit to the project and make it exactly what I had wanted. I had hoped to have an actual book style hand drawn colored book to show, but itw as just unrealistic to fit that sort of project in with my schedule.
