The final project at last! It’s different from the others in that it’s a group project. We were given a choice between writing a storybook for young children, or a comic strip for teenagers. We brainstormed a few ideas, and decided that a comic strip would be the most suitable for what we wanted to do.
The following were some of the ideas I offered during the discussion:
Story Idea 1:
A man wakes up and finds himself in the middle of a devastated city. Everyone around him is dead, and everything has been destroyed... But he can’t remember why. Then he spies a movement nearby and rushes over, only to realize that it’s his fiancé... dying. Frantic and sick with horror and anguish, he asks her what happened. But amazingly all she does is smile, and whisper:
“You did this.”
Story Idea 2:
A man is standing on a cliff overlooking the sea, listening to the sound of waves crashing. He has a thoughtful expression – thinking of his childhood, his family, the woman he loves and his friends. One by one, the memories fade away, until there’s nothing left but silence, even the waves cannot be heard. And suddenly, the wind picks up, and the man smiles, putting on a pair of goggles.
“I don’t doubt what I am about do.”
The man then turns around and walks away, leaving no trace of his passing.
“I am a Kamikaze pilot.”
Story Idea 3:
A community is having dinner by a fire, and everyone is happy – there’s fun, laughter, good-natured teasing, good food and camaraderie all around. The protagonist, leader of the community, is conversing with his friend when the topic switches to that of his son, who went exploring and hasn’t been seen for a while. Just as the protagonist is about to go look for his son, the little boy comes running back to the community, carrying a strange object in his hands. Passing it to his father, he curiously asks what it is. The protagonist looks at the object in his hands, and is taken aback for a moment.
It’s a DVD. The protagonist then smiles ruefully, ruffling the boy’s head and dropping the DVD to the ground.
“It’s nothing, son.”
He then turns to stare beyond the edge of the community, gazing upon a ruined city.
“Just a memory of what we’re better off without.”
Ultimately, story idea 3 was chosen as the plot for our comic strip, and we set about to refining the concept and fleshing out the characters. The story was changed and reworked and the final storyline that we decided on was:
The year is 2819 A.D., and technology has advanced so much that humans are now able to live on other planets. Earth has been drained completely dry of natural resources, and most of humankind has already left. Those that still remain are those who were too poor to buy a ticket for a one-way trip off the planet, and have resigned themselves to dying on Earth. Jaded and despairing, their only wish now is to live out the remainder of their lives peacefully.
However, a duo consisting of a father and son fervently believe that nature still exists somewhere in the world, and they’re constantly trying to convince their community to move out of their comfort zone and find nature. Nobody else is keen on the idea, however, and the duo become reviled and ridiculed. It escalates into a minor scuffle, ending in the father and son leaving the community behind in search for nature.
We also came up with character bios for the 4 main characters of our story:
Biggs Barnum Wolfe
A man who lived a simple, honest life prior to the Exodus. Unable to buy tickets for his family of three, he resigned himself to being abandoned on Earth. Shortly after, his wife vanished mysteriously, leaving behind only a letter stating that she had gone searching for signs of nature. Firmly believes that nature still exists on Earth, and that when he does find it, he will find his wife as well.
Toivo Biggs Wolfe
A young boy who was born a few years before the Exodus, he doesn’t have a clear memory of who his mother is, or what she even looks or sounds like. His favourite childhood tales are of nature, trees, the deep blue sea, the brilliant sun in a clear sky and animals. His name means “Hope” in Finnish.
Eric Wesley Manfred
A man who grew up in the slums, living a harsh life comparable to the one he’s living now, post-Exodus. Extremely jaded and wanting nothing to do with the world beyond his comfort zone, he detests the notion of searching for nature, and as a result has come to hate Biggs and Toivo.
Melchior
Nobody knows his full name. However, his incredible shrewdness and wisdom has enabled the community to thrive like none other in such desperate times. As a result, he’s looked upon as the leader of the community, and his authority goes unquestioned. His wish is for everyone to live out the rest of their lives as peacefully as possible.
The moral of our story is: Don’t take what you have for granted, and treasure our planet. We target this comic at teenagers who are growing increasingly materialistic due to the influences of society.
All our hard work finally cumulated in our comic, titled Halcyon Days:
One major lesson learned from this undertaking was that creating a comic strip is much, much harder than it looks. The line-art alone took 9 days to complete, and the coloring and adding of dialogue took 2 days. Many things had to be taken into consideration – the panelling of the comic, how to pace the story over the limited number of pages, which angle is most suited for a particular panel, the choice of colors, typography were just some of it. Thankfully we had already accounted for a margin in our comic pages, because we had heard horror stories from other groups about how they wanted to print a solid background but ended up with white margins because they forgot to do bleeding for their documents. Little details that never seemed to matter before suddenly surfaced and became huge chasms between us and our final goal.
Working on this project, and NM2208 as a whole, has been extremely draining, but extremely rewarding as well.
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