Everyday, electric cars are sold to people looking for an alternative to gas-powered cars.  Most electric car owners believe that they are doing a great service to the environment, and thus humanity as a whole.  It is true that electric cars are better for the environment, but most people would be surprised by how little that difference is.  Our problem was that electric car dealers were advertising their cars as an amazing way to save Earth.  Electric cars are truthfully not that much better than gas cars.  To address these misconceptions, we made a comic to educate the public.

    Our comic takes the reader through the story of a man who wants to buy an electric car.  He meets, quite unexpectedly, a car salesman who explains to him the truth about electric cars.  The salesman also provides useful statistics and walks the man through the development process, from materials to final product.  All information is arranged in an informative and intriguing, nine-page comic.

We started out by finding the statistics of emissions for the two types of cars.  Throughout the research process, we decided to focus on strictly full battery-powered cars.  We did not include hybrids because the data was not as sound.  After narrowing down our research, we were able build a strong argument about why the customer was being fooled.  After the data-gathering was completed, we moved onto our storyline.  In order to have all of our facts represented in such few pages, we decided to have the electric car salesman, who took the role of our tour guide, be able to teleport.  Writing the script for the characters was not complicated nor that time-consuming.  It only took about half a day to create the script.  The main challenge that we faced concerned drawing.  Neither of us draws well, so we decided to trace all of our images.  We used Photoshop to compile images and then printed them out to trace.  Another challenge was character consistency.  The images we used for the character varied heavily throughout the comic, so we had to come up with a lot of different identifiers.   

  This is a comic about Transit X, a proposal to find a better form of transportation in Boston. The problem that I faced was that not many people knew about Transit X even though it could become a reality by 2018. The only resources to learn about this proposal were text heavy websites that take a long time to read and understand. With this project I came up with a comic that provides a way to gain a basic understanding of Transit X. The comic has enough text to give you an understanding of the major points in this proposal. The comic explains the current options, precidents of the proposal, the senate bill, proposed routes, techincal details, as well as pros and cons. The reason for this project is to create an easy way to inform the general public about this proposal.

      This comic starts on the first page with laying out the current options as well as real world examples of systems like Transit X. The second page gives a more indepth understanding of what Senate bill PRT 1837 is for and how Transit X relates to it. Page three shows the proposed routes for the system in a city setting and in a school setting. The next page shows the technical side of the pod system. I end the comic with a pros and cons page. 

Sexual harassment is a widespread and dangerous problem, often localized to public transportation (walking, riding the train or subway, cycling) and targeted at women. Furthermore, victims of harassment are rarely believed or supported. In response to this, I made a five-page comic to educate those who are unaware of what street harassment really means. I wrote about harassment as an international issue, my own and others’ experiences, detailed the harm of harassment, and concluded with tips for bystanders.

Harassment takes a variety of forms (stalking, catcalling, groping, etc.), but it is always rooted in power dynamics and control―never a compliment, always a threat. Obviously, this is a heavy subject surrounded by misconception. My goal with this comic was to validate the experiences of victims, and provide them with a resource that could be given to others.

Early in the studio, I received the exciting opportunity to confer with a representative for Hollaback!, an organization dedicated to exposing street harassers, and Sarah Mirk, the online editor for Bitch Media, a major feminist media outlet. This helped to push my research forward, and I found that, among other things: 

• 72% of American women have gone out of their way to find different routes to avoid harassment
• 90% of British women were first harassed on the street before age 17
• 88% of Italian women went out of their way to find different routes to avoid harassment

Aided by these statistics, I developed an initial outline and script for the comic. I decided to use the introductory page to briefly detail what street harassment looks like and why it happens. On the second page, I discussed my first experience with street harassment when I was nine-years-old, and in the next panel I “zoomed out” to focus on prepubescent American girls as a whole. The third page is dedicated to parallels and differences between global cultures. Unfortunately, I had intended to describe Japan and India’s interesting methods of dealing with prolific street harassment―women-only transportation―but decided against it in the interest of time. The fourth page is all about the psychological damage of harassment, re-enforcing the frequently-disputed fact that harassment is not a compliment. The concluding page describes resources for victims and tips for bystanders. The script and outline were continually edited throughout the process to maximize cohesion and clarity.

To make each page of the final comic, I started by drawing layout previews of the page and subject or character studies. From there, I made 1-2 full drafts of each page, with sketches and text bubbles laid out. Drawing was the most difficult aspect of the project, so drafting gave me substantial practice and made the final much clearer. Due to my messy handwriting, I laid out all the actual text within the panels in Photoshop, printed out each page accordingly, then drew over the prints with tracing paper. Then, I inked the drawings, scanned the text and drawings together, and cleaned up the scans in Photoshop.

     This is a comic about Transit X, a proposal to find a better form of transportation in Boston. The problem that I faced was that not many people knew about Transit X even though it could become a reality by 2018. The only resources to learn about this proposal were text heavy websites that take a long time to read and understand. With this project I came up with a comic that provides a way to gain a basic understanding of Transit X. The comic has enough text to give you an understanding of the major points in this proposal. The comic explains the current options, precidents of the proposal, the senate bill, proposed routes, techincal details, as well as pros and cons. The reason for this project is to create an easy way to inform the general public about this proposal.

      This comic starts on the first page with laying out the current options as well as real world examples of systems like Transit X. The second page gives a more indepth understanding of what Senate bill PRT 1837 is for and how Transit X relates to it. Page three shows the proposed routes for the system in a city setting and in a school setting. The next page shows the technical side of the pod system. I end the comic with a pros and cons page. 

     The project started with reasearch. I learned about Jpods, which is the system that would be used. I learned about the senate bill's propsed problem, and how Transit X fixes it. The next step was to start drawing concept images and page layouts. I started with two concept images. One of the system on a Boston street and the other of a pods station in front of Fenway Park. Then I created page layouts and a script. I combined the script into the layout and drew preliminary drawings to create the rough draft. To make the final draft I started with the panel layout. I would draw the lines lightly across the page to map out where each panel could fit. Once I found a layout that would work, I would erase the uneeded lines. To layout the text I would first line the text box and then write the text lightly. After that all I needed to do was draw in the pictures and go over the needed lines with a pen. Throughout this project most of the problems that I faced dealt with the panel layout. I would need to draw lines over and over again because the lines needed to be both straight and in the right position, so it dealt with a lot of calculations to make the panels fit.

     The first iteration or rough draft of the comic was made up of finalized drawings and text, but without the final page layouts. The pages were very loose and were drawn freely without rulers and such, but it gave the general look of the page. In the second iteration, I finalized the panels with a ruler. I also changed the text to flow better in the comic. The biggest change was to add a concluding paragraph at the end of the comic. I wrote about the potential future of the proposal. The drawings didn't change, so I just drew the same drawings to the final draft. Though in this draft, I traced the actual maps onto the page.  In the final draft, I also went over it in ink and cleaned it up in photoshop.

Sexual harassment is a widespread and dangerous problem, often localized to public transportation (walking, riding the train or subway, cycling) and targeted at women. Furthermore, victims of harassment are rarely believed or supported. In response to this, I made a five-page comic to educate those who are unaware of what street harassment really means. I wrote about harassment as an international issue, my own and others’ experiences, detailed the harm of harassment, and concluded with tips for bystanders.

Harassment takes a variety of forms (stalking, catcalling, groping, etc.), but it is always rooted in power dynamics and control―never a compliment, always a threat. Obviously, this is a heavy subject surrounded by misconception. My goal with this comic was to validate the experiences of victims, and provide them with a resource that could be given to others.

Today, we finished our personal comics.  My idea was to show how important lacrosse is to me.  I started off with panels of me doing different lacrosse related activities.  It showed my dreams of lacrosse, me thinking of lacrosse while working, and finally playing it in real life.  There were also two other panels with random lacrosse equipment in them.  After some constructive criticism, I changed the whole layout of the comic, and strengthened the theme.  Instead of having different size panels, like my first draft, most of them were uniform.  I made the last panel bigger than the rest on purpose; it is supposed to represent that actually playing lacrosse is a big part of my day.  Another piece that I changed from the original was the layout of the panels.  In the original, the thought bubbles were small, but in the final they take up most of the panel.  I also got rid of the random lacrosse equipment and replaced them with more images of me thinking about lacrosse.  These changes made lacrosse a lot more prominent in the comic and helped clarify the theme.  

The purpose of this project was to make a comic about something in your life.  I think that I accomplished goal of the project, and shared a little about myself.

Everyday, electric cars are sold to people looking for an alternative to gas-powered cars.  Most electric car owners believe that they are doing a great service to the environment, and thus humanity as a whole.  It is true that electric cars are better for the environment, but most people would be surprised by how little that difference is.  Our problem was that electric car dealers were advertising their cars as an amazing way to save Earth.  Electric cars are truthfully not that much better than gas cars.  To address these misconceptions, we made a comic to educate the public.

    Our comic takes the reader through the story of a man who wants to buy an electric car.  He meets, quite unexpectedly, a car salesman who explains to him the truth about electric cars.  The salesman also provides useful statistics and walks the man through the development process, from materials to final product.  All information is arranged in an informative and intriguing, nine-page comic.

We started out by finding the statistics of emissions for the two types of cars.  Throughout the research process, we decided to focus on strictly full battery-powered cars.  We did not include hybrids because the data was not as sound.  After narrowing down our research, we were able build a strong argument about why the customer was being fooled.  After the data-gathering was completed, we moved onto our storyline.  In order to have all of our facts represented in such few pages, we decided to have the electric car salesman, who took the role of our tour guide, be able to teleport.  Writing the script for the characters was not complicated nor that time-consuming.  It only took about half a day to create the script.  The main challenge that we faced concerned drawing.  Neither of us draws well, so we decided to trace all of our images.  We used Photoshop to compile images and then printed them out to trace.  Another challenge was character consistency.  The images we used for the character varied heavily throughout the comic, so we had to come up with a lot of different identifiers.   

In our first iteration, we drew everything as it was on Photoshop.  We traced everything to the best of our abilities, but after looking over our drawings, we could not tell which characters were which.  The character consistency was non-existent.  Although the characters were not correct, we were happy with the backgrounds and actions of the characters.  We had spent a lot of time planning all of the movements and gestures on Photoshop and paper.  We also felt that our dialogue would be able to clear up the confusion of identity.  Overall, we had a strong first draft that was ready to be improved upon after review.

In our second iteration, we came up with several ideas on how to identify the different characters.  We tried drawing a logo and words on one of the character’s shirt, and it worked.  Using this technique, the reader would be able to connect the dots using dialog and visual cues, even if the character did not look like his previous self.  A good example of these visual identifiers is on page seven of the comic.  Originally, the car salesman was just wearing a plain white, collared shirt.  At first we thought that the shirt would be enough to distinguish the character.  After further thought, we added the “CARS” logo to his shirt.  This way, the reader could make the connection, even if he looked different in the next panel.

In our third iteration, we created more character clues.  We decided that it was unclear who the “guy from the dealership” (the man showing the potential electric car buyer the truth) was.  This is why we wrote “Tesla” on the side of his pants.  In the comic, the man is from a Tesla dealership.  We concluded that this was not necessarily a visually appealing design decision, but it was one that need to be done.  This change assured us that the reader would not get confused about which character was which, even if they looked different.  

After all of the major changes had been completed on paper, we scanned the pages onto our computer and perfected them in Photoshop.  Our last step was to make sure all of the text fit in the panels and were not blocking anything important.  This took some time, but when we finally got it, the comic was complete.