Mapped Out: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Ada Parnanen (2016)

My story is about a girl who is doing homework at home and is tired of her daily routines. At her desk, she drops some of her papers and finds a map under the table. She unfolds the map and realizes that it will lead her on an adventure, so she starts to follow the clues and path, in hopes of finding where X marks the spot. She walks around a park and a neighborhood, asks someone for directions and help, and eventually makes it to a place that looks similar to what is on the map. She approaches the place, hoping that she has found the treasure.

For the initial sketches, I made two different versions of each panel and tried to play around with perspective. I used linear perspective several times, for the path twice, and once for the table. I realized later on that for some panels I did not like my layouts, so I changed them around in Illustrator. It was time consuming to draw the comic as many times as we did, but it ended up being helpful because we chose the colors before we used Illustrator. I was already familiar with Genius Scan and liked how useful it was. At certain times it was difficult to use the burnisher because I tried to add too many details on my graph paper, so I made my drawings a bit simpler when I traced the markings of the burnisher. At first, it was hard to adjust to using Illustrator with the pen because I had only used Illustrator a few times on a laptop, not with the tablet. I also had to adjust to using the pen tool since I am used to using a pencil which can make strokes on paper, instead of enclosed shapes. Making layers, using the pen tool, and using the tablet are slowly but surely becoming habits and easier to use. Overall, I am pleased with my work, but if I could change something, I would add even more details.