Coping With A Loss: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Cameron Fitz (2016)

A young boy, Benny Williams, at the age of 16, is at his best friend, Joey's, funeral. Benny and Joey shared myriad memories together and that is all he could think about as he watched his friend's casket sink into the dirt. They would go on hikes and Joey would talk about his fondness and dream to reincarnate as a lizard, they'd play sports together, but most importantly, sit in Benny's room as he would shred on the guitar. Joey was the only one that knew about Benny's musical talent. It wasn't until a few months after his passing, when Benny ran into a lizard on a hike by himself, that he dedicated a song to his dear friend. After recording it, he threw it up on to the internet and it went viral… People from all around wanted Benny to represent them and get his story out there. Benny was eventually approached and asked to perform in front of his school at their Homecoming football game. On the night of, he stood in front of his entire student body, parents, teachers and sang his song. Benny and Joey received a roaring standing ovation.

My project was originally from a comic I drew for English. I picked out my favorite panels of the rising action of my story and drew them on graph paper. Then, I placed the graph paper atop the illustration board and used a burnishing tool to make indents that would be later outlined in black marker. Next, I filled in all of my colors. When the illustration board was completed, I used Genius Scan to make a digital file of my work that I could then upload to Adobe Illustrator. While in Illustrator, I mainly used the Pen Tool to outline my illustrations and then filled them in with the according color to achieve my desired look. In the grand scheme of things, I am very proud of my work considering it was my first time using the program. I have continued to do other projects using Illustrator on my own time.