3 ideas- Summer project
Task: Create 3 story ideas based on these themes: Historical, silent and alternative comic.
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Historical idea
Often in my free time I like to listen history stories on YouTube, so when I heard about doing historical comic, I was very enthusiastic because it meant that I can investigate something I enjoy reading daily. My first thoughts were to do a story about someone known from Europe. It’s because there is lots of graphic novels based on Japan, America, and other popular countries. I was thinking to create a story based on Marie Curie at first, but quickly realized because she is quite popular there are stories based on her life or profession already.
I tasked myself with finding a person who possibly traveled to other countries so that people may have an idea who the person is, but also with some uncovered secrets. I came across name Maria Leszczynska who was apparently Polish Queen of France around 1760. What’s fascinating to me is the fact that many articles that were translated to English don’t mention her full family history, especially the fact that she had a that passed away due to chest infection. It was originally forbidden by the King of Poland to mention Anna’s name after her death traumatized him.
The story I created based on my findings:
Maria Leszczynska called a polish Cinderella goes through struggle of going from poor to rich by becoming a Queen of France. (1703-1768)
Title: Queen’s Misfortune
Maria is a daughter of the King of Poland, and her family is very well off. However, one day her father makes a decision for the family to move to France due to some war conflicts nearby. They end up leaving most of their wealth behind and losing young Maria somewhere on the way. She decides to stay in a small village and hope her family will come back for her until one day she sees opportunity to become a Queen. She started her debut in a society of the wrong foot and made enemies with people with high social status. Despite that she ended up getting married to a king and having a happy family. However, her happiness doesn’t last long due to a curse of misfortune. Her husband left her, and people didn’t want her to get into political matter. She ended up as abandoned Queen with no duties, completely useless. In the end she decides to try to get rid of the curse by using her status to do something good for this country. Building schools for poor girls to get education makes her feel fulfilled in life and brings her peace.
Most of the events in the story are true, but one. The curse of misfortune. I thought it may be nice to add some fantasy element since I don't want to do full biography of her life. That's why I also decided to change the names of characters based on her family that I will develop once I pick the idea I wanna do.
Example picture of the Queen
Character design
This is the character design I made while listening to stories about Maria’s family on YouTube. I also changed name to Mia Hazel, which is shortening of her name and direct translation of her surname to English for the purpose of making the story fantasy genre. It is because I would not like people reading my comic and thinking it is an original, true life story of Maria Lesczynsks. I also don't want to make the reader of this story confused and thinking that is is 100% accurate.
I gave her a purple dress as this colour is always associated with royalty or high quality products or life.
2.Alternative idea
As an alternative comic format I was thinking about doing a Webtoon, which is diagonal panels instead of regular A4 page. There are many fantasy stories on Webtoon, so I believe this is something I could potentially do. I never tried making a Webtoon format stories, so this could be a new experience.
Title: Part timer at a monster hotel
Sara Spellsmith is a 17-year-old girl who lost her parents and lives alone in a small town called Sleepy Hollow. As a college student she struggles to pay for basic necessities, so she decides to take on a job at a local hotel that turn out to be full of magic and secrets. On the very first night of working in a hotel full of secrets and magic she meets a wizard named Jun. They quickly become friends and Jun helps Sara to investigate her family history to find out any family member that may still live in Sleepy Hollows and help Sara out. While working in the hotel Sara finds out that her mother had a twin sister that most likely still lives in this city. However, during Jun’s first attempt to make contact with her Sara eardrops the conversation and ends up thinking that the only member of family she has left doesn’t want to know her. Shocked by the news Sara runs away and gets lost in the dark forest where she is being hunted by evil spirits. Jun comes to her rescue and they both end up going back to the hotel to clear things up. She ends up reconnecting with her family and discovers she comes from bloodline of the witches.
Character design
I designed a teen witch that would be a protagonist of the story that I made up. Since she is a witch I gave her a little hair pin in shape of a black cat. She also wearing lots of great to show that this is a smart character that will go on an adventure to learn about her family history.
3. Silent idea
For the silent comic I was thinking about ways of telling stories without words and what circumstances would the characters be to not be able to communicate. I came up with an idea of underwater story:
Title: Call for Retribution
Rita unexpectedly gets proposed to by one of her friends while being on a boat party. She politely refuses, but he doesn’t seem to take NO for an answer. They end up having a fight; Rita falls into the sea where she is being saved by a pirate mermaid. She received a magical necklace that allows her to temporary turn into a mermaid and get her revenge on the person who almost killed her. To do that Rita and a mermaid called Freya find an underwater pirate boat and fire it’s cannon to surprise attack the enemy. Once their target is close enough to the edge of the boat Freya grabs the man by his arm and drags him into the water to face her in a duel for life and death. Everything takes the wrong turn when the man targets Rita and Freya feels need to protect her from danger. When Freya gets injured Rita takes matters into her own hands and tights the man to the bottom of the ocean with a rope. Upon the victory Freya takes back the magical neckless and says goodbye to Rita by sending her back to the surface.
Character design
This is a little sketch of the protagonist and the pirate mermaid. The idea was that I could show them communicate through emoji or just body language. In the end it turned out that emoji idea is out of question since it is a silent comic, which means no speech bubbles.
