Mission/Purpose:
I worked with Portland Harbor Community Coalition to figure out how to effectively communicate the work they do to people they meet. The big thing they found is that even though they do a lot of work advocating for the homeless and indigenous populations around the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, they have difficulty spreading their message because people are resistant to reading the articles and large bodies of text they have. As a result, they reached out to me to condense their message into a bite sized summary of what they do.
I worked with Portland Harbor Community Coalition to figure out how to effectively communicate the work they do to people they meet. The big thing they found is that even though they do a lot of work advocating for the homeless and indigenous populations around the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, they have difficulty spreading their message because people are resistant to reading the articles and large bodies of text they have. As a result, they reached out to me to condense their message into a bite sized summary of what they do.
What was the role:
Creative Writing, Creative Direction, Comic Illustration, Book Design, and Coloring.
Creative Writing, Creative Direction, Comic Illustration, Book Design, and Coloring.
What was the process:
The process with this project was similar to many of the project I do in comics. They had a lot of information I read up on top of meeting with them to come up with a plan for the story. Reading included a 28-page dissertation, a 3-page newspaper article, and a 28-minute document I took notes on. From that research I created an outline with dialogue that placed my original characters from Iltopia in the world of PHCC.
The process with this project was similar to many of the project I do in comics. They had a lot of information I read up on top of meeting with them to come up with a plan for the story. Reading included a 28-page dissertation, a 3-page newspaper article, and a 28-minute document I took notes on. From that research I created an outline with dialogue that placed my original characters from Iltopia in the world of PHCC.
Next step was to draft the composition in Clip Studio Paint. I usually do drafts in Photoshop, but because the project is multiple pages, I decided to save time by working in a program that can handle multiple documents at once. There was not a lot of variation in the drafts because the story was pretty straight forward. The hard part was figuring out how to balance the text heavy script with visuals that told the story. That meant constantly parsing dialogue and text for months as I drew the pages.
From the rough draft, I used a digital pencil to add detail to the pages then a digital pen to clean the linework up.
For coloring, I brought the pages into Photoshop where I colored them all individually. The combination of clean vector line-work and robust colors really brought the project to the next level.
For the cover, I had an illustration laying around that seemed to fit the theme of the book. Something quirky and lighthearted that makes the topics discussed in the book more accessible for kids and adults alike.