Salt: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Aaron Atkins (2017)

For this piece, title Salt I wanted to convey a sense of general, vague understanding of a situation clouded by a vast disorientation. I didn’t want to go about achieving this dizziness through optical illusions or effects, being that’s not how I see things in my own day to day life, and opted instead to play around with unorthodox panelling of rather clear objects. The premise of the full comic was also designed to be unclear, and focused solely on the emotions of a runner and his changing face, paralleled by his changing environment. His destination, character, and circumstances are all unclear. Conveying both a direction and a lack of direction simultaneously proved to be the largest challenge in the process of creating this comic, as the two seemed to always be at odds, when they should be mutually pointing to one another, not away. One should inform the other. I could accomplish the feeling of disarray very easily with a complete lack of story, and vice versa. I resolved this issue by trying to make every panel as illustrative of the story as i possibly could, so that the viewer could take the most common factor of each and it would point to the narrative, that narrative being the feeling in a sense.