Comic Project for Communications Lab, Fall 2020
The way we, humans, make our life decisions is unprecedented. We are presented a series of small events on a daily basis, but ultimately these events are the ones forming our memories. It seems fascinating how small choices add up to have a big influence on our lives, and this is what our team wanted to explore and convey in this project through sequential art and web interactivity.
The storyline evolves around a main character, Yellow, who leaves the house for an important job interview. Throughout the journey, Yellow is presented with plethora of small choices that make up an outcome — a larger story. These small choices form a memory to look and reflect back at.
There are 12 scenes in total, but only 6 are presented to the user; each scene requires interactivity — making a choice for the storyline event. Every scene was made using background images from www.unsplash.com with everything else made originally in Adobe Illustrator and sound recordings.
The illustration choices for the comic are simple yet specific. Soojin and I have deliberately chosen to maintain the black-and-white theme for the background to concentrate on the main character and the storyline. The choice to portray the main character to be gender-neutral is also the one that was made on purpose. There were many design choices throughout each scene, but they all circle around the main character at a specific moment: standing at the hallway, spilling mustard, meeting a friend, riding a car, and so on. This portrayal was inspired by Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics ("Action to Action" and "Subject to Subject" portrayals, chapter 3).
Created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the comic lives entirely on the web. A crucial component of interactivity are the Illustrator strip elements as well as vector icons for simulating the choice, all of which are brought to "life" by Ayesha and Hasin with CSS and JavaScript animations.
What could be improved later on, however, are the UI and UX of the web. We are still in search of an ideal transition between the landing page and the comic elements, as well as the most convenient way of presenting the text description for each scene.
Although the storyline behind our comic has shifted from the first wireframe to illustration drafts, we were able to maintain the initial concept and elements of interactivity. The goal that we set in the beginning of the project — to set the experience of unpredictability of "real" life — was met by giving the user some level of freedom to choose different events.
I feel extremely grateful to my teammates and can state that our collaboration has been the most supportive and productive in my experience at NYUAD.