Lauren Engle Graphic Design/Illustration

Currently I’m working on the final touches on all of my comics and I’m in the shading stage. The shading stage is literally the last thing I have to do and I’m doing that on only two of my pieces. The others are done and I’m very happy with how everything has come out. I will be posting up everything next week when we present our finals.

This is Storyboard #3: “Worst Enemy” involving two of my animal characters, “Chester”, the main protagonists dog and “Arthur” a squirrel that lives in the tree where the tree house is located. 

So far, I’m deciding on color and selection on stories. Some of the storyboards I won’t be posting up until the very end due to the fact that I want to keep some of the stories a surprise until the day we present. It looks like I will be able to get 5 of these comics done after weighing in my schedule but I’ll be glad to get them completed and finished. One of the comics will be rendered completely in India Ink and will still be fully colored but featured at night. So far, I am on schedule to complete this project and estimate now after planning out my schedule, to complete at least 5 of these. I will have 5 completely done, but if I can, more will be created as planned.

At the moment, I’m getting the details of the stories down more for the comic. Some of the stories I’d like to be strictly visual and others I’d like to have some text, but still stick with the traditional media I wanted originally. Since my comics are going to be based around 8 to 9 year old’s, I’ve been thinking of things that children that age would do and through my brainstorming I have come up with a few ideas:

1. Picture Day 

2. Jumping in the leaves at fall

3. Dealing with a bully

4. Running of the pack (Story of a character’s dogs)

5. Building the treehouse

6. Daydreaming

I would like to do all of these if possible. I’ll have to pace things as I go, definitely going down the list because the way I have everything set up right now are the stories I have the most worked out. However, now that I concise plan to go about doing the comics, I’m looking forward to officially starting them up now.

I’m beginning to brainstorm some ideas and have a few ideas as to what I want to do. Since I’m still in such an early stage, I wanted to go ahead and post a colorized version of one of the characters going to be featured in the comics.

Character Name: Chester

I propose for my project a series of comic strips based around a group of characters I have been creating for a series. It will be in a traditional newspaper style with everything being done in traditional art. The materials I plan to use will be:

1. Copic and Prisma Markers 
2. Prisma Color Pencils 
3. Pen and ink
4. Photoshop CS5 (for editing)
5. Gel pen 
6. Either marker paper or a smooth, heavy pressed paper (nothing bigger than 11x14 inches.)

I want to make this is as detailed as Winsor McCay’s creations from Little Nemo in Slumberland. My comics will be much more exaggerated in character design as well as the overall feel of the settings. All of the stories will be fully rendered in color and will vary on how many panels between them. I will do no more than three individual comic strips seeing as how I would like to finish this within 3 to 4 weeks. Before Thursday, I will begin posting up character designs as well as storyboard ideas I have for this project. Later on when plots are set up, reference photography for faces as well as scripts for each of the characters thoughts and speak will be posted up as well. 

Here are links to various comics that have inspired me:

• http://looky.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/little-nemo/ - Litte Nemo by Winsor McCay
• http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/ - Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
• http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/zits/s-1115497 - Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
• http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy - Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley

UPDATE!

I was just invited to be apart of my previous group that was created for the Ron Saks project. It looks like we will be doing a similar concept except based around the students this time. I learned a lot during that project so I’m sure we’ll make the  book even better than the last. I will be under the same role as last time; layout and design!

We are done! The book being completed came out overall very nice. The team was wonderful to work with and everything will be posted after the presentation! 

All layouts including a link to the actual book will be done.