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I created the narrative, which mainly deals with the problems related to the contamination of food sources. I’ve always thought that the government is censoring the media and not letting us know the significant parts of the aftermaths of the technological development and the reckless manipulation of nature.

My narrative is based on my imagination of the future. The setting is 2040s and all the silenced aftermaths of the technological developments have overwhelmed the World. All the people, who have ingested contaminated food sources, have gone through a serious mutation , which results in subsequent death.


I primarily used Black and white, and used colors only when strong effects are needed.

The story starts with the major character’s nightmare, which is the part of his childhood memory. The setting is a small coastal village beside the nuclear plant. The major character went out fishing with his brother and caught a giant lobster that has been exposed to a nuclear waste. The whole family was excited but the major character was horrified by the creature. Not realizing the presence of nuclear remnants in the creature, the family, except the major character, has a banquet made fully of the mutated lobster.


The day after the banquet, the major character found all his family, dead.


Gasping, the major character wakes up from the nightmare. Having been used to the nightmare, he wares his glasses and picks up a newspaper to start the day as usual. Now days, the newspaper serves as the list of newly found contaminated food sources, causing mutation. Among the lists, the major character finds the article, mentioning that the mutated people have invented the flesh light that can distinguish the ‘uncontaminated’ people from the ‘contaminated’ people. The article also mentions that ingesting the uncontaminated people may be able to stop and heal the mutation.



Mutated people are now madly looking for the pure people who have not been contaminated from the polluted food sources. However, none of the people seems to be ‘pure’.



James, one of the mutated people, goes into the dark compartment to find more people, hiding. Along the way, he notices the light coming from the wall. He looks through it, and sees the major character. James beams the flesh at him, and the light indicates that the major character is ‘pure’.


The major character has been able to stay uncontaminated since he has been paranoid about food sources. After the death of his family, he has started growing everything he ingests. As usual, the major character was preparing his brunch after reading the newspaper.


After putting his food into the oven, he hears the doorbell. He goes upstairs to check who’s there, and when he opens the door, James, ready to endeavor the character, waves his hand.

Pictures

cover (back and front)

4 and 5

2 and 7

6 and 3

8 and 1

My Narrative Story about a death angel

My narrative starts with my main character , a death angel, walking around a city with his suitcase. The leaves on the ground show that it is fall (I think fall is a sad season with fallen leaves)
Then he stops at a window and looks inside. There are people dining in this huge hall around a long table, which is supposed to be a happy scene. But, the death angel finds that everyone is depressed and their unhappiness forms a lot of purple bubbles with skulls and numbers on them.
He thinks this is weird because it is his job to determine when to end a person's life. So, he uses his power and his death pet (a cat-shaped devil) to read those bubbles.
In the first bubble he sees that because the economy is bad, a man loses his job. So, he goes home and has a conversation with his wife, after which she chooses to leave him. He is desperate with the loss of money and love, so he shoots himself.
In the second bubble, still because if the of the economy issue, a woman loses all her money in stocks. ( So i drew a skinny piggy bank to show she has no money now) She is walking on the street, thinking about how wonderful her life used to be, when there were clothes, wine, vip cards and lots of money (fat piggy banks). She senses no hope of life, so she commits a suicide by jumping off a building.
So the death angel sees blood. His world turned into a bleeding inferno. He smiled, because now, his work is done.
For the front page, I drew a shadow of the death angel on a wall, his shadow has a skull face and a skull heart. And the back page, there is a skull on his suitcase. Both of them show the identity o the main character.
The reason I choose this style is because I want to use the cute harmless look of the death angel to show that this economy social issue causes more fear than death. And that death pet adds cuteness to the whole taking people's lives' mission. And, those eyes are always something I wanted to try, because it gives out a sad feeling while maintaining to be simple circles.

I'll upload pictures later=)

Waste

My comic is entitled ‘WASTE.’ Unsurprisingly, it is about waste management. It is very unrealistic, and the future I present is not a future that I believe will come to pass. However, I hope to engage the readers on the seriousness of the issue. If our waste is not managed correctly it can have a serious negative impact on the environment. Waste pollution is an issue that we must be concerned about in the United States as the most waste is generated in this nation. There is an average of 4.5 pounds of municipal solid waste generated per person per day. The first page opens with a dream sequence. A girl is sleeping and we see her bedroom disappear from around her bed. Then her bed appears to be on a watery surface which it then glides through. She falls through the air until she reaches more water. She swims through this water and finds herself in an underwater museum. She swims past cases holding relics from our present and the next two thousand years of history, suggesting that it is probably four or five thousand years into the future. I put a lot of robots in to give the idea of technological progress, however I wanted to stay away from focusing on that too much. This is why in the rest of the comic there are things that are clearly recognizable from our present whereas, most likely the styles will change. I thought that if I tried to think up what daily objects would be used in the future it would be harder to get my message across. She swims out of the museum through a window and finds that the water she is swimming through is incredibly polluted. There are cans and other objects floating around and she swims by a trash heap. She swims up out of the air and starts to fly. She flies over skyscrapers that have been submerged underwater. In this future the icecaps have melted and the sea has risen. Even five thousand years into the future, it is uncertain that the Earth will actually be submerged in water. However, for the purposes of my story and due to the fact that there is no dialogue, I wanted to make things drastic and therefore make my message clear. She comes upon a small city that is standing unsteadily on poles coming out of the water. She lands and goes through a pair of doors into a corridor. She goes through another door to find a room. She finds multiple rooms that are all completely deserted. There is a strong prevalence of trash bags that are not noticed at first, but later are seen everywhere. I chose the last panel of this series to be a doll on a trash bag because I was hoping to give the impression of desolation. There is no trace of human life and dolls are something that a loving child would not leave behind. I didn’t want to suggest that humans have all died out however I did not want to paint a hopeful picture. She then has a reverse falling process and wakes up. I copied the pages of my comic as they would have been bound together. The order is 8,1, 2,7, 6,3 4,5.

SMALL WORLD

In an increasingly small world, the impacts of globalization are visible in almost every element of our cultures. The United States in particular is a nation whose influence is felt throughout the world… our culture is contagious. In traveling abroad last semester, I was astonished at how much of an impact our culture has had on other nations around the world. It was usually the little things that startled me: hearing an American pop song on a battery-powered radio in a rural village, or seeing advertisements for an American brand over a highway in Europe. In some ways, this global connectivity is awe-inspiring… Through the internet, telephone, and television, it’s getting to the point where we can communicate with almost any part of the world. However, the impacts of globalization are negative too.



Cultures are being homogenized, and usually, this homogenization is characterized by Western nations taking over important elements of other society’s music, religion, language, art, and education and replacing them with our own. Small World is a story about these negative impacts of globalization.
A old man (representing previous generations) gazes out over a modern city. The buildings are lit up by flames, which will come to represent our “contagious” culture, but in the distance, there is another city, unexplored and untouched by this man’s civilization. He blows smoke (the precursor to the flames) from the roof down the drainpipe, where it encircles a young man sleeping below. This young man has a dream of an unfamiliar and fascinating girl, and when he wakes she is standing before him. The young woman is startled and flees, but the young man, entranced by the idea of this foreign culture, follows her, stowing away on a ship. A rat, who was also encircled by the strange smoke, becomes his companion. The rat, which in the past has spread diseases, is the perfect symbol for contagious spread of civilizations, inspired by the transmission of plagues to the new world. During his search for this mysterious young woman, the young man is in awe of the new sights, knowledge, art, music, and people he encounters, but the rat, tagging along beside him, often ruins his idealistic view of the foreign city.

The rat, who spreads his own sort of plague, changes the tone of a foreign song, eats the words in a foreign book changing its meaning, and carries disease to this foreign culture. It serves as a symbol for the spread of Western culture.

In the end, when the young man finally finds the elusive woman, he convinces her to travel back to his home with him. But, the next day, when they arrive in his city, she is disheveled by the journey and the rat has marred her exotic appearance.

Her dress is ragged and her long hair has been gnawed away by the rat. The young man is disillusioned by the foreign woman being present in a familiar city and quickly falls out of love with this shadow of his ideal, and retreats to the building top where he and the old man gaze out on the foreign town, which has now been invaded by his culture.

I enjoyed playing with color in this piece. Usually, i go a little crazy with lots and lots of colors but it was nice to limit myself to black and white, only using red representing the main character and his civilization and yellow to represent the foreign city and the young woman.

Cultures and traditions are diluted by globalization, and i think that most things don't stand up to the process of translation. Much is lost in the conversion between cultures... but also, it's alarming to think that elements of our own culture are supplanting the rich traditions of other cultures as well.

Ascension of the Watcher

Ascension of the Watcher narrates upon the wastes of war through a sequence illustrating the element's of mankind's downfall as he is tempted by sin and driven to conflict. Skulking within the scenario of each panel, whether physically or symbolically, is the leering pose of a black crow, historically an icon of cunning and contempt, marveling at the capability of destruction in man's character.






The progression of panels emphasizes the escalation of conflict. Outbursts of sinful drive fighting in the first panels: a child bullied for a prize possession and a victim jeered in a bar fight. Overlooking both scenes are crows, silently scheming in the background. Humanity submits to forces of envy, malice and greed.






Violence ramps up in the next panels as mere squabbles turn into full-fledged war. The rush of movement in the style illustrates the plight of the soldiers, committed to savagery over an unseen cause. Dehumanization begins as humans start to lose track of their enemies, their vision blinded by a hail of metal and chaos. The original conflict may be all but forgotten in the struggle for survival.

Terror reigns as humans lose their rationality. Machines of war, suited for no other purpose, replace people in the humans' delirious attempt to win, rather than resolve the conflict. The crows are ironically unaffected as they make a mockery of the carnage.



The style of the comic sequence was chosen to reflect the festering mood. Each panel is black and white to drain the spirit out of illustration, with grays added to show movement. Some panels are augmented with blurs for a sense of capturing a specific moment in time, such as the bar fight right before the killing punch landed, or the rocket explosion rocking the core of the victims. The gritty lines and boundaries that compose the figures are put into place to show turmoil and instability.

The final panel completes the "survival of the fittest" theme. Mankind has been so hell-bent on achieving dominance that they overlooked the cost that it took. The panel shows the rotting carcass of a once prosperous city, derelict and plagued by destruction. It matters not if the city was part of the winning side or the losing side, it is simply uninhabitable. The crows converge, blocking out the sky, their ascension to this abandoned kingdom apparent.



Image/Inspiration source credits go towards:

(sun, last page) Damnation, credited to Kevin Walker, licensed to Wizards of the Coast

(city, last page)Ginza Chuo Dori, credited to Hisaharu Motoda, "neo-ruins" collection
http://hisaharu-motoda.petit.cc/0engine/tokyo_bbs.cgi