How to Rule the World is a 2020 Comic project I did back in my Junior year of high school. This is a personal project I impulsively pushed myself to work on in hopes of changing and improving on my art style, voice, and my skills in writing and developing comics.
In the end of this 5 month process, I ended with not only my first short comic book, but a huge directional change in how I want to make my art.
Unfortunately, this is the only copy (haha)
Synopsis
The world has ended, and there isn't much left to go on. As generations pass and the world as we know it long forgotten, we find ourselves in a city run by the children of the aftermath. Not knowing what life was before the end, they live a perfectly 'normal' life.
That is, until their leader dies from unknown causes. Fortunately, his younger brother arrives in in the city, heir to the throne, he finds himself in the immediate position of watching over all the children living in these ruins. He doesn't know what he's doing, or where to begin. Fortunately, his late brother's 4 best friends and trusted advisors are there to teach him how to rule the world.
Hope you like it! :)
Insight and Process
Even though I have written and worked on original stories older than this, I wanted to create something new when I started this project. What motivated me to start this project was the impact of my first National Portfolio Day event in 2019. The experience is something I would never forget, and will forever be grateful for, as it inspired me to push myself out of my comfort zone and make something new, try a different direction in my art- resulting in this book.
I was motivated to make art that was completely different than what I was making at the time. If anything, this became my first story written in the moment, with real insight and passions rather than making up a story just for the fun of it.
Though it is ultimately a fictional story, I made it more personal than how I would normally write my content. My main focus was to make something entirely different and go beyond what I was making at the time.
Hopefully, I did just that.
I already had the blank 6x6 book in my possession, I just needed a story for it. At the time, I was still a high school student with other responsibilities, so I ended with a total timespan of 5 months in creating this book. (Nov.13 2019 - Feb.8 2020)
The first two months were dedicated to the story and characters: I originally had a script that exceeded the room and space the book offered, so I had to make multiple revisions in order to divide each chapter into the book evenly.
The end layout was as you see it: a total of 5 chapters, each chapter with 4 pages, the final chapter tied together to overall message I wanted to convey in the story.
At the time of creating this project, I was heavily experimenting with ways of using mixed median methods. More specifically: taking materials from real life and incorporating it into my work. At this point, I have already made previous projects that had an interactive element to the pieces, so while creating the chapters I included that same mindset to make the book a little more interactive and fun to the reader- intensions of immersing them into the world of my characters.
Since the paper quality of the book itself was thin and could only handle light mediums, I layered the pages by drawing each individual panels and character who stood out from the panels on sticker paper, combining it all together on the desired page in the end.
For Lesson 1, I Incorporated this character with the color scheme of blue, and included the mix medium of newspaper clippings and ink in the background in some of his panels. Using modge podge and layering the panels made with sticker paper, I added it all on top of the book's pages.
For Lesson 2, I Incorporated this character with the color scheme of green, and included the mix medium of Gum wrappers in the background to indicate the metal in the scene. Using modge podge and layering the panels made with sticker paper, I added it all on top of the book's pages. It was also fun having to collect all the gum wrappers, it was half a pack's worth.
For Lesson 3, I Incorporated this character with the color scheme of yellow, and made the element on here simple, using a brown paper bag for the character's head. Using modge podge and layering the panels made with sticker paper, I added it all on top of the book's pages.
For Lesson 4, I Incorporated this character with the color scheme of red, and included the mix medium of old map clippings cut out from an old atlas in place of the maps in the room. Using modge podge and layering the panels made with sticker paper, I added it all on top of the book's pages.
For Lesson 5, these spreads were mainly focused on the dialogue of the story. I worked on these spreads as I would normally work on a regular comic. Each page is layered with panels drawn on sticker paper, illustrated using alcohol based markers, fine liner inking pens, and white gel pens. For some of the pages, the paper is darkened with ink to indicate a memory and past event in the story.
These 2 spreads were my personal favorite to create, as they are made with old film strips to give the feel of "memories". Much like the rest of this chapter, these spreads were layered with sticker paper panels, drawn with ink fine liners and alcohol based markers. Ink was also used to darken out the pages, and transparent paper was used to give the foggy effect of the first panel in the first page.
Fun fact, the film used to make the background in both pages with The End and Hope, are real film strips I obtained during a Columbia College Chicago campus tour in 2019, they were a fun souvenir from one of the studio buildings we went to. I cherished the material, and incorporated some of the film strips into this book.
Finally, these covers and inside pages are made with alcohol markers and fine ink liners. I used a mix of colored pencil on some of the pages to give a bit of texture feel. The "Newspaper" itself is a separate piece of paper I tinted with watercolors, and used a black crayon to write the script inside, the purpose of that was to indicate how it was a child who writes and makes "The Daily Herald! Big News!"
As a fun little project after the big project- and one of my first ways of documenting the progress of my work, I made this little booklet that puts together the scrap loose sheets of papers I worked on and worked with during the time span of creating the book.
The video down bellow is a flip through of the fun little book
Found progress pictures
during the making of the book
Dec 2019 - Feb 2020
Overall, this project means a lot to me, becoming the first of many ways of how I experiment and make my art. It inspired me to keep on improving as well as develop my style and creative voice. Little by little each day since I finished this comic I try to get better and keep on experimenting through the different subjects I study and different mediums I try! This book project being a few years old now, you can say it is a bit of an old comic, a first and a bit rough around the edges! It's not perfect, but it was a major curve in my artistic journey and I'm excited to see where my future projects take me!
Thank you so so much for reading this far, and checking out my comic How to Rule the World!! <3
