Final Project Ideas

Main Plan: Graphic novella

For my final project in AHIS 430, my plan is to create a graphic novella about the short story “On The Sidewalk Bleeding” by Evan Hunter. The story is about a young person named Andy who is a member of a gang called “The Royals”. Andy is lying in the middle of the street because he was stabbed. Being in excruciating pain, he asks for help but people ignore him due to his affiliation with the gang.

I chose this story because it is fairly easy to understand the plot and theme and because of that, I feel that it offers more versatility in how I can approach drawing the graphic novella. My goal, I hope is that I can try and focus on the desperateness of the situation that Andy is going through. I’m thinking of doing this graphic novella digitally on my iPad and have the pages be in black and white along with one other colour as a way to emphasize something(right now I’m leaning towards red).

Backup plan: Essay

In case I don’t have the time to draw a graphic novella because I’m busy working on other projects; my other plan is to write an essay on David Small’s “Stitches”. Stitches is a graphic novel memoir about the early life and childhood of Small. The author was born in the suburbs of Detroit and grew up with an emotionally abusive and secretive mother. At a young age, Small developed cancer on his neck which was hidden from his parents. Throughout the graphic novel, the viewer sees how Small tries to cope through an emotionally repressive life and family by drawing art.

I chose “Stitches” because of how the story and the theme hits home with me. While I didn’t have the same dark life that Small had, I can still relate to Small’s upbringing. The idea that there is now voice for the voiceless, how silence dominates one’s life, and trying to cope with hardships by creating and being in a different world like art.

Small’s story is dark but incredibly effective especially when considering that he uses a very little text bubbles and also has a limited colour palette. When looking at a bigger picture, Stitches is a relatively simple story to understand; but that simplicity and the techniques that Small uses are what make Stitches such an impactful graphic novel to begin with

For the essay, I want to take a look at the strategies that Small uses to make his story impactful to the viewer. I will be taking a look at his composition, his use of shading and lighting, how he shows a scene instead of telling, etc. I also hope to occasionally drop in my personal experiences to show what parts resonated with me as a viewer.