Morty: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Renee Jebe (2016)

Throughout my story of ''Morty'', the main character, Morty, has a flashback to his younger years when the days were much brighter and better. Morty seemed so happy with his girlfriend at the time and just being younger in general. Later in the story, he gets his heart broken and the story returns to the present where you see his life hasn't turned out too well. In my Illustration, I show the end to my story, after he returns from the flashback. I tried to show a depressing looking apartment with peeling paint and a leaking ceiling. I tried to use illustrator to create a ''point of view'' look to my comic and I tried to create tension in this scene by drawing it out from the point of him reaching his apartment to seeing his wife.

Creating this comic was a lot of fun for me, I enjoyed learning how to using gradients, colors, opacity, and shadows to my advantage to create a more realistic looking comic. When I first was creating this comic, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do or how to lay it out. I started with my establishing shot, I knew I wanted Morty's apartment to be in a big city and I enjoyed drawing the buildings. After my first panel, I was able to draw the rest, knowing what I wanted my theme to be. For the rest of the comic I imagined a run down apartment, I wanted the readers/viewers to feel sorry for him. The ending to my story shows Morty being happy with his life and who he is spending it with. Once I finished drawing my comic on the illustration board and took a photo using Genius Scan, I uploaded it to Illustrator. Using illustrator was difficult at times, especially when I first started using it but I definitely felt comfortable with it during my final panels. I feel like I learned the most in my first panel. The first couple of buildings in the establishing shot don't have straight lines and there isn't much detail in this panel overall but, I learned the most about gradients when I made the sky. I had a lot of help from a classmate when creating this sky and sun but after her help, I was able to use the gradient tool so much more effectively. My second panel, the POV of Morty looking at his apartment door, is my favorite panel. After I learned how to use gradient, I learned how to create shadows and symbols to create a more realistic look. I enjoyed choosing colors I thought would be most suitable and learning how to create texture. I am most proud of the wall paper rips you see in this panel and I continued to use them in the rest of my panels. For the rest of my panels I focused mainly on gradients to create dark, dim lit rooms, or to put emphasis on the light coming from the light bulbs. In my 7th and 8th panels, the kitchen panels, I put a lot of small details. There is a fruit bowl that has bananas, grapes and an orange and a cutting board with carrots and a bell pepper. I probably didn't need to put in so much detail into the fruit or vegetables but I really like how they turned out. For the fruit and vegetables I used a mixture of gradients and low opacity symbols to create texture and depth. You finally see the wife in my last panel. I had no idea how I was going to make a person using illustrator so I just decided to go for it only using circles. I put together the head, neck, torso, legs, arms, etc. using circles that I shaped to look like a body part. I am very happy with the way she turned out. Overall I am happy with how my comic turned out and I would like to try another project using the skills I learned from this one. I worked very hard on this project and spent a lot of time on it, so next time I will try to manage my time better and not put in so much detail into less important things (like my fruit) and focus on the overall project.