During the pandemic of 2020, Studio Niyet brought together a group of 14 illustrators, writers and narrators, across the country, came together (virtually) to create an anthology of comics, Hope On. Six real-life stories that talk about hope, kindness, compassion and self-worth during testing times. I got the wonderful opportunity to adapt and illustrate one such story in the form of a comic.
I received the story in the form of a transcript of a phone conversation between the editor Nithin Mathew and the narrator, Sneha, who is the daughter of the main character. It was all factual information about the what's, why's and how's of an incident which had to be converted into a story.
So I first sketched a story flow; who was the main character, the supporting characters and the sequence of events. Then I wrote down the script; parts that could be dialogues, parts that could just be described through the panel, things that I wanted the reader to understand from a particular panel and filtering out the information that was unnecessary.
It was important to have clarity on the overall message so that I don't lose it in trying to make the storytelling attractive.
The next stage was making a rough thumbnail of the entire comic. During this stage, I felt the need to add a narrator's voice to connect the entire story together and to emphasis on the message of hope. I was very inspired by the storytelling technique of artist 'Zen Pencils', and following his method, I decided to add a quote as the narrator's voice.
The next stages were inking, adding text and coloring.
Order your copy of Hope On comic here!
