‘Her’ is a graphic novel about memories, and the journey to rediscover passed family members through conversations with those close to them. This is based on the real lives of my own family, June, Joyce and Annie.
Throughout this, it is revealed that the memories shared conflict the version of these women that Sarah and Tracy had, and how they deal with the initial reactions of this. The contrasting recounts of how each women acted when they were younger, compared to when they got older explores how people can change over the years, but you are remembered by others during the small window of time that they knew you.
BRAINSTORMING PHASE: FAMILY PHOTO SKETCHES
June and Joyce are two of the main characters within ‘Her’, and I wanted to ensure that their designs contrast each other to reflect certain parts of their personality.
Joyce is the middle generation in ‘Her’, and due to this she is remembered in a variety of ways by different interviewees. The white outfit is created to be angular and boxy, to suggest how she dominated the space with full control over the family. How ever, the second outfit features a blue cardigan that contains much softer and gentler shapes. This is to reflect her time as a grandmother, where her attitude shifted, still respected but much kinder and peaceful. Even though it is the same person, these two characters did not exist in the same time period, and people firmly remember her as one or the other, never both.
1. June and Joyce Development:
June on the other hand, is described as the more welcoming and optimistic member of the family, so I selected the yellow scarf design to visually contrast with Joyce by using a warmer colour palette, to challenge her more muted, cool design.
It was also important to replicate the subtle yet glamorous way she used to dress, whilst also making links to the appearance of her younger self. I first studied the outfits fea tured in photographs from the correct time period (Such as the red coat) and noted the most im portant elements, which are the longer shirts, and tight jeans or leggings..
2. COLOUR AND TYPOGRAPHY
Photographs are a reoccurring tool I use in ‘Her’ to place each interview / memory in a physical location by showing the reader real life images of the people that are being talked about.
A big portion of the graphic novel will be in the past, and I wanted to experiment with a creative way to show this by linking it back to the time period the photographs were taken.
I picked the key colours out of the images I would be using, and slowly limiting the palette to only the most essential range. This gave them contrast to the full colours that are used in the present day scenes, but also are unique enough to differentiate each past moment from each other.
Another important element for my graphic novel was the text that the audience will read to understand the story. It has to be something that is accessible for many (Serif), blend into the pre-existing art styles I’ve created, and something I have the rights to use. However, regardless of how many fonts I tested, they all felt too corporate and lack the personal feelings that the graphic novel is built on. Especially as written notes have been a key part of my research so far.
As June is the most featured character, and as I have the most physical research documents about her, I collected samples of her handwriting from old notes, address books and shopping lists to make a full font.
I separated the individual letters I needed to into a grid so I could be see my process. I selected styles of letters that are constant/repeated, to be authentic to her original writing Then I added the letters to a guide to ensure they were all the same size and proportional with each other, and then imported it to a font website to build ‘June’s Handwriting’
3. DIGITAL COPY OF ‘HER’
