For the final part of my time capsule, I decided I wanted to create a comic to bring the story to life. My story for this project is going to be called "The End is The Beginning". When I think about how the world will be over a hundred years from now, I think about all the things that are currently damaging the earth and will no longer be easy to ignore. We won't be using gas-operated cars, factories will be non-existent, cities are remodeled into less-crowded, more liveable areas where animals can now reclaim their habitats. We would have learned from our mistakes, understood how powerful Mother Nature is, and made the conscious effort to work with nature instead of against it. I often think about how the earth was already perfect before we arrived and somehow we ended up making life harder for ourselves. Everything we needed was at our grasp and ready to be used as long as we are able to return the respect we are afforded. Further down the line instead of moving in alignment with the earth and seeing ourselves as a part of the ecosystem, we gained a false sense of superiority.
To start the layout of this story, I decided to write out a rough outline of the story. This helped me to get the vision out on paper, reread it, and fill in any gaps. After this was done, I thought about an interesting character that would capture the attention of my audience. I wondered if the character should be an animal, a person, or an inanimate object.
I also thought about possibly making Mother Nature the star of the comic and capturing it/them as a spiritual wind that carried all the stories since the beginning of time. As you probably guessed, I went with Mother Nature. Since it isn't a creature or being that can actually speak I had to be very creative with the storytelling aspect. This was also the point where I had to remind myself that everything didn't need to be structurally correct. Over-thinking here could have overcome me but this was my story. I can make it whatever I imagined it to be.
The next thing to figure out was creating images in the comic that would display the story effectively for the reader to understand. So this is where I began sketching out the images. Questions I asked myself were:
Should the images be in chronological order?
Would it make sense to find the capsule first and then start the story going backward?
Does there need to be any other characters or was Mother Nature enough?
Literal images or collages?
The programs I researched were Canva, Pixton, and Storyboard Creator. I first thought about which program was more user-friendly and gave me the most options to create any vision. Pixton, although a cool site, had the least options while using it so it was crossed off the list. After using Storyboard Creator and Canva, I realized both programs had the ability to do what I needed without any restraints. After drawing a rough draft of my comic on paper and figuring out all of the small details I wanted to incorporate. I decided Canva was the best choice. Using the program was not hard at all. Everything I needed to make a successful comic was provided for me. I wanted my comic to be picture-specific or a silent comic because I thought the words would be too distracting especially since the "narrator" or main appearance in the story is of Mother Nature. I represented them by using wind effects in the comic with the hope that it is easily understandable by the viewer. Overall I enjoyed putting this comic together. It's not exactly perfect but I chose to challenge myself with a new tool and it turned out the way I envisioned.