The General: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Ethan Briens (2017)

Throughout this project I have practiced using the different tools and applications used by professionals to complete their jobs. Photoshop and Illustrator, being the the two main applications we used, have shown me how easy it is with enough practice to create unique and complicated pieces of art and stories. I encountered some problems when I was burnishing because I did not apply enough pressure to trace the images onto the artboard Another problem I encountered was when I did not trace everything using the pen tool in Illustrator. This mistake led to about two full days of work being deleted. I had to redo everything using the pen tool, then proceeding to fill them with the desired color If I could change anything about my project I would aim to spend a longer amount of time on the actual drawing out of my characters and planning of the panels. If I had done this I feel that my comic would have been cleaner and better looking final copy.

I am most proud of the fifth scene and how it is drawn out to look like the streets of San Francisco with the house at an angle and the city in the background. The focus on the Pen tool and the planning and different steps of creating a comic will now help me in the future with planning far in advance using different steps and layers to complete assignments, the act of converting something that was hand drawn to something electronically drawn and the use of the pen tool in future projects. This project helped me realize that everything is not always about the final product, but rather the steps and the complications that happened along the way. Those setbacks are what make the piece of art unique and special. This project opened doors to new ideas and gave me ways to put them down on paper the way I wanted to.