Pick Me: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Lauren Gerughty (2016)

My story is about a christmas tree, who is smaller and less desirable than all the other trees. All he wants is to be chosen. In the beginning he is excited and optimistic about being in the tree lot, with each family that comes in he sees an opportunity to be picked. But as the time goes on and all the other trees start to disappear he starts to worry that he will never be picked.

The first step of this project was to develop a flash fiction and graphic novel in English. We then adapted the story for our final illustration. There were sketches and drafts that were created prior to the final product. These include brainstorming in our sketchpads, a sketch used to trace for the illustration board, and the final illustration board. We were required to used linear perspective in this assignment to create dimension, and depth. I used this in my second panel to emphasize the amount of trees in the tree lot. Once I had finished my illustration board, I scanned and imported it into Illustrator. In Illustrator I used the pen tool to trace the illustration board. The biggest problem I encountered was with creating dimension, I had the used different colors to create shadows and highlights on my illustrations. The other issue I had was with the spacing of my panels, because they were not evenly spaced on my illustration board. I fixed this by finishing all of the panels first, then rearranging them. Overall I am pleased with my final product.