Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Neat Freak: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Shayla Tonge (2016)

Casey is the kind of girl who needs everything in it's place. Each night she packs her lunch just so, and selects a sweater from a pristine closet. She walks the dog in the same route every morning and arrives back on the front matt at 7:50 on the dot. But when she experiences ridicule about her habits, she begins daydreaming of living a wild life. Instead of her rigid rituals, Casey imagines replacing them with spontaneous and adventurous decisions.

Creating this comic was quite a process. We began by sketching ideas that would include linear perspective drawings, and playing around with the best layout. It took trial and error to dream up one that fit nicely. Once I determined this, however, I began drawing out the panels and content onto graph paper. The next step was to mount it on foam board and then use a tool called a burnisher to trace the images I'd created to reproduce an outline. I roughly colored the outline on the foam board before photographing my piece to work with in Illustrator. I have a love-hate relationship with this program. I adore what Illustrator can do, and the ways it makes my comic look much more professional, however, it is a very slow going and tedious process. I learned to use the pen tool, gradients, layers, and more. I had a difficult time with getting the hang of the tools and really achieving what I had envisioned, but as I practiced it became a much more fluid process. I'm proud of what I've accomplished, because it shows me my growth. If I had more time, I would have added more detail and depth to really make the character's world come to life. Overall I'm excited to use these skills again for new projects to come
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