ART450 FINAL reflective essay *sniff*

SOOooooh, for my final project I finally made a comic that meets up to my standards! And by "I" I mean "we", the "other" (in a non-existential way) being Jenny Kladzyk. With her unique writing skills/overall badass-ery and my meticulous drawing skills/Photoshop wizardry we executed 6 pages of bizarre, real-space fun! Our working title is "Melting Patterns" and we hope to one day turn it into a graphic novel. The original content was the brainchild of Jenny and myself. We were loitering in our backyard one day, shooting the breeze, when we came up with the idea. We discussed the phenomenon of the average person playing out idealized scenarios his/her head in response to stressful situations. There's always that "I wish I would have said that" moment after the fact. Who doesn't fantasize about telling their egocentric boss to "F*#k OFF!"? "Melting Patterns" expounds on this idea-Ban, the main character, internalizes everything he wishes he could say to the cold, selfish individuals that plague his life. This, combined with mysterious pills and mixed feelings over a young women, bring him to a breaking point.

I learned that while drawing panels comes effortlessly to me, as does writing to Jenny, the editing process kills. It's so tedious and time-consuming to design page layouts in Photoshop and then make sure everything reads well. Hours in the lab may or may not have led to a few meltdowns. The salty-tear-filled time in the lab took much longer than anticipated. We had planned to pump out 8 pages every two weeks, but editing and various classes I took this term made that goal difficult.

Although we only got 6 pages finished (more to come before the term ends), Jenny and I are pleased with our result. We may have strayed from the production schedule, but we both went in knowing this might happen. A big draw back, however, is that we've only executed a dream sequence, so the actual story isn't apparent...yet. Still, overall I'm pleasantly surprised by the fruits of our labor.