Date of Defense

4-15-2019

Date of Graduation

4-2019

Department

Art

First Advisor

Vince Torano

Second Advisor

Patricia Villalobos Echeverria

Abstract

For my Honors Thesis Project, I created a seven page scene from an idea for a comic series, entitled The Landing, that I have wanted to create for a while. The comic series takes place between two planets: the fictional Laterus, and Earth. Upon a worsening planet-wide drought, the President of Laterus is forced to send her son as a scout to Earth to gather information about the possibility of harvesting water there. The son, eager to follow in his mother’s footsteps and prove himself as a worthy leader, is more than willing to take on the responsibility. However, when he learns that the mission is more complicated and ruthless than he could have imagined, he faces a difficult decision: sacrifice the citizens of Earth in order to help the people of his home, or betray his roots to save the people from the alien planet not so different from his own.

The two main characters are Zad, the Laterian, and Stella, the Earthling. Both at important turning points in their lives, they will cross paths on the day of Zad’s crash landing to Earth and Stella’s uneventful eighteenth birthday, in a sleepy gas station on the outskirts of the fictional town of Crater Canyon, New Mexico. The scene I chose to portray is the opening scene of the projected first issue. Initially, I had planned to create an entire issue, but after lots of planning, brainstorming, drawing, and re-drawing, I decided that I would be able to do my best work within a smaller selection of pages. I chose to allow my thesis to serve as a sneak-peek of the series I would like to create, and aimed to leave it on a note that would draw readers in and cause them to want to find out what happens next.

The evolution of my project was very eventful. The biggest and probably best decision I made, was to change my plan from creating the scene digitally, on Adobe Photoshop, to instead doing it by hand. I ended up using mix of media, including pen, watercolor, and colored pencil, because this allowed me to develop a wide range of colors and values. I grew greatly as an artist and a storyteller throughout my time working on this project. It pushed and challenged me to find the best and most dynamic page layouts and angles to present the images and word bubbles that made up my story. I found out that there is so much more than I realized that goes into creating comics and graphic novels, and developed skills that will help me in all of my future artistic endeavors as well.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted

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