Found at Sea: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Estelle De Zan (2016)

My flash fiction is a story about the depths of social anxiety and how it impacts the landscape of an individual's mind. Starting off with the feeling of alienation, the main character reflects on the complexities of communicating her thoughts to other people. Having the impression that individuals tend to be self-centered, she observes loud social scenes from afar. Her disconnected involvement revolves around the fact that we consciously project images of ourselves because we want to be perceived a certain way. To escape these all consuming thoughts and situations in which she feels invisible, the main character finds shelter on the beach. Serving as a therapeutic coping method, she watches waves wash upon the shore and imagines them washing away her problems, leaving an unblemished surface exposed to the elements.

For the initial sketches, we started out by illustrating our narrative in the form of a graphic novel. We then selected the climax of our story, drawing it out on graph paper and then outlining it onto an Illustration Board using a burnisher. Once that product was finished, it was digitally scanned and uploaded onto Adobe's Illustration. The process had various folds to it, primarily consisting of an array of layers we simultaneously edited, from the background of the panel to its surface details. Throughout the project, the hardest part was transferring my drawing into a digital illustration. The pen tool was used to both fill and outline components of my illustrations, meanwhile the gradient tool was used to add dimension. As the project progressed, so did my method of employing tools. What started off as a slow experimentation of different methods then turned into a more efficient, and therefore more enjoyable process.