This is the Graphic Novel that I created in English class. We began by writing two different short stories and heavily proofread them with other classmates. Then, we chose the best story and drew it out into rough draft of a graphic novel, which is shown below along with audio of me reading out my story. After spotting out the issues and getting some hands on experience drawing, we sketched out our final graphic novel, where we utilized all the different kinds of comic book panel-to-panel progression like action-to-action and scene-to-scene transitions. Our final product we used as an outline for our Animatics, so we were restricted from using unorthodox frames or non-sequitur transitions.
Friends
Neil waits patiently outside his best friend’s house to walk with him to the first day of school. He hasn’t seen him since the last day of school last year. Tired of waiting, he barges open the front door hollering “hurry up we’re gonna be late!” He is greeted by his best friend’s grandma sitting on a rocking chair. “He’ll be out in a moment” she says. Sure enough, Bob walks out and greets Neil. “Hey I haven’t seen you since last year!” Bob proclaims, “Are you psyched about the first day of school?” Neil stares at him and says “Another year of being bullied and failing all my classes, I can’t wait!” They both laugh and walk out together. They are conversing fervently on the sidewalk about a new video game, when they are approached by a tall and pretty girl. “Hi I’m Rachel, I’m new to this school!” she says. Stuttering, Neil replies “Hhhi, I’mm Neil and this is my ffriend.” He turns around to look at Bob, but he is nowhere to be found. “Did you see a guy about this tall (he gestures his hand and positions is slightly below his head) run off?.” Rachel replies “Umm… Nope.” Neil says “O...h well I guess.” and begins to walk away before she asks him “Hey, can you introduce me to your friends?” Neil nods while looking around for where his friend might have ran off to. Since Neil had no friends other than Bob, he introduced her to a girl who was in his History class last year. As they start talking, the guy standing next to her starts a conversation with Neil. “Hey you’re Neil right?” he asks, already aware of the answer “Nice Dark Age IX Tshirt, you play that game?” They trail off into conversation. *RIIIIIIIING* Seated in a new classroom surrounded by strangers, Neil raises his hand and asks for permission to use the bathroom. He goes into a stall, and is surprised that he hasn’t been bullied and actually made friends this year. That’s when he overhears two people talking outside his stall. “Hey have you seen Neil this year?” says the guy who was talking to Neil outside. “Oh, you mean the guy with an imaginary friend” the other guy responds. “Yeah him, he’s pretty cool actually.” As they finish up their conversation and walk out of the bathroom, Neil is dawning on why Bob never had any friends either, and disappeared that morning. In fact, they had never shared any classes or hung out over the summer. How had they met? Just as these thoughts were racing through his mind, he raced out of the stall, school and ran straight for his best friend’s house. Yelling at Bob to open the door while violently rattling at the door knob, he kicked it open and inside he found a decayed corpse on a rocking chair and the entire room covered in a fine layer of dust. Cobwebs lined the ceilings, and rats audibly scurried around the house.