Passion Project: Comic Book Making

“With great power comes great responsibility.” One of the most iconic quotes in comic book history. Everyone knows at least one superhero by memory whether it is Batman, Spider-man, Superman, Captain America, or Iron man. These comics always show people with enhanced skill or superpower but I want to look at someone that lives in a world with superheros but was not born with extraordinary powers which allows them to lift a building or stop a train. I will be creating my own comic book and seeing how hard it is to actually create a full fledged story. Throughout this process I will be improving my art skill and learning what it takes to create an interesting and original comic of my own. The community impact that this will have is that I hope it will get people to look back on what they have done and understand that they could also take steps to improve the community. During this project I will first take the steps to brainstorm and come up with a story, draw it out, ink it, and then color.

First Progress Update

In the first week of this project I was mostly thinking about the story I was going to make. I brainstormed ideas for what to do until I came to a conclusion for what I wanted to do. With lots of time and effort put into creating a captivating and interesting story that would be fun to draw I finally came up with a story. My story will be about a guy that lives in a world filled with superheros but instead of being a superhuman he is just a normal person. Throughout his journey he has to face the reality that he has to live in and learn to accept. He will have to face the emotions and the fears that he may have. I have decided to do this because you don’t really see many comic books with superheros but you are following a non-superhero person. It might be hard to create an interesting story but I am determined to create something that will be entertaining. I also decided to do this because there are a lot of opportunities to create something that would be more relatable and impactful.

Second Progress Update

In the second week of this project I had to draw out my scenes and plan out where it was supposed to go. I had the whole story figured out and now it was time to plan it out so all I had to do was add the lines into final product. I quickly drew really rough sketches of the panels I was going to use so I would know what to do when it came to filling up the final pages. With a lot of thinking about the different combinations panels I could set the page up with I could actually start. I quickly drew really rough sketches of the panels

Third Progress Update

In the third week of this passion project I realized that the ending that I had was not good enough so the only option that I had was to figure out a different ending. I came up with an ending that I thought sounded right to the story and to the character that I created. It allowed the story to have a happy ending that would also hopefully inspire others to do better. I think that this was beneficial for me because it allowed me to see that nothing is ever perfect the first go around when you are creating a story. After that I started sketching out how I wanted the end panels to look. Overall I just wanted this story to be exciting, entertaining, and inspiring. To create a story that I like I think it is crucial and important that I face some trial and error so that I know that it will come out as good as I have hoped. In this week I also started adding panels to the final pages and mapping out where I want to put things.

Fourth Progress Post

In this week I started to add in the actual drawings into the panels. That just means that the ideas for the panels that I drew out with the story boarding would just need to be enlarged and more detailed. The other thing that I did in this week was outline all of the boxes that I drew in the previous progress post. I also started outlining some of the drawings that I did but I only had a couple of drawings done. This allowed me to to really enhance my skills and challenged me because I am not really good at drawing consistently. It really brought the small part of my story that I had done to life.

Fifth Progress Post

In this last week I finished up all of my drawings and ink. Originally I had planned to color whole panels at the end but I decided that I would just add touches of color where I wanted it to stand out. There are two reasons for this change. The first reason is that this project was coming to a close and I did not have enough time to color multiple whole panels. The second reason is that there are only a couple of panels that would need a little bit of color that would make a piece of it stand out. This week was also the day of presentation so we had to create a speech about what I had to do for the project and the meaning behind the things that I did and the reason why. The next part is the speech that I presented with a slideshow.

Speech

We all know about comic books especially with all of the exposure comic books have been getting with the movies. From DC and Marvel to Charlie Brown and Calvin and Hobbes I have and still love comics to this day and so that made me wonder what does it take to actually create a comic of my own. When, my teacher, Ms.Casey asked us to choose a passion project I was terrified. The possibilities are endless for the things that could do. For the first couple of days I was lost and I had no clue what I wanted to do for this project. Eventually I went to one of my favorite things and decided to come up with my own comic book. From the very start of this idea I decided that I didn’t want to do the same story that follows a superhero that has to deal with being super powered. At first I was scared to do this because there are so many things that could go wrong with a story like this: it could be boring and lame, it would not translate well to paper, or other things but I was dedicated. Throughout this process I have gained a new perspective on comic book creators. To be a comic book creator it takes a lot of perseverance, dedication, and heart. It takes a lot of time to craft a story that is interesting and meaningful. On top of that it takes hard work and patience to come up with panels of art that will help progress and enhance the story for the reader.

First of all you need a good story. To come up with a good story you need to have a lot of creativity and heart. In this part of the project I had a rough time coming up with a good and mostly original story. Whilst also having to take into account the slightly limited amount of time that I had to create the whole thing drawings included. In this project I had a hard time making a story that would be meaningful to me and relatable to mostly everyone. So overall it took about two weeks to create the whole story and get it to a point where I thought it was enough to start story boarding. Throughout this process I would fully write out all of the scenes in quick and small sentences. Although I wish I had more time to fully think out a story this process in the very beginning it opened my eyes to just how hard it is to come up with a story that I can actually draw out by hand and wouldn’t be too ambitious to the point were I wouldn’t be able to complete it.

During this project I have also learned that it also takes a lot of patience to draw in panels. For my first time I hope that it turned out alright but if I was to spend a little more time on it just like all great comic book artist I might be able to make one of my own. In this project I was also able to try out this skill and practice my art skills by drawing in all of my panels for my comic. During this process I had to think carefully about the panels I needed and draw it in. Through this process I learned the patience that it actually takes to draw in everything. When I think about all of the things that I have to draw in I have a clear picture but when you put it to paper it is not that simple and it takes longer than imagined. This process also opened my eyes but to a different part of comic book making. This opened my eyes to the artists perspective because I thought the art part would be a easier but in reality it was hard to find the time and motivation to sit and draw for a long time.

Through this process it opened my eyes to what it takes to do something like that but it also did more. I have taken some time to think about possible things that I might want to do when I grow up and being a comic book artist has come to mind a couple of times. While I have never fully drawn my own comic book this passion project has definitely shown me that it is definitely possible and that if that is what I want to do I can achieve it. If I can have you leave thinking about one idea it would be that if you really put your mind to it and follow your passion you might surprise yourself with how much you could achieve.

The End