Adrift
Process Portfolio
Summary
The short story revolves around a lonely alien wanderer who finds the ruins of a crashed spaceship, containing the last recordings and reflections of a stranded astronaut.
Character Development
Scrapper:
The first protagonist of the story is an alien who wanders through a desolate desert planet alone.
Because of the setting, the initial character designs were inspired by common animals that lived in that environment, like lizards and fennec foxes.
The idea was to have this character who could not speak the same language as the reader, but through his emotional physical reactions and turmoil, still be a sympathetic protagonist.
First character concept for Scrapper
The first character concept I came up with was more reptilian in design. It was an interesting concept, but I thought that this particular design felt too alien, and perhaps, harder to visually be attracted to in a sympathetic way.
Second character concept for Scrapper
Compared to the other concept, I felt like this particular design was more familiar and sympathetic, mostly out of personal taste (okay, I'm a dog person, I'll admit!).
The second character concept is what I ended up developing more and ultimately the final design that ended up in the issue.
Concept cover art for Mad Worlds (working title)
This cover was created to partially test the new character concept in action, as well as to work on the overall tone of the story.
Although I did have the general outline of the story in my head, at the time of creating this cover, I did not work on a proper script yet to fully flesh out the overall tone of the story. So, for this cover, it was geared towards a more action-packed story.
However, as I developed more on the script, I realized that it would take too much time to pace the story with action and risk losing the focus on the overall message of the story I wanted to communicate. In the end, I moved away from the action-packed tone of the story to prioritize telling the arcs of the central characters in the story.
Also, working on this cover gave me some time to work on the actual title of the short story. My initial idea was Mad Worlds, which was a title lifted from another story concept I have been working on (stay tuned!). However, I felt like it did not really suit this particular story, and it was something that I would need to develop further.
Second character development page on Scapper
After a brief hiatus from the project, I came back to it and decided to rework the style of Scrapper's design to be more cartoon-like and simpler, partially to make it easier to draw him within time constraints.
However, I wanted to work more on Scrapper's facial and physical expression, since I wanted to make him a sympathetic character with almost no dialogue.
Scrapper character development: further study on emotions and expressions
Tess Tompkins:
Tess was an astronaut who was separated from her crew during a mission and was left stranded in space. The only other company she has is her A.I. assistant and friend, J.A.N.E.T. (Just A Neat Exploration Tool).
Character development page of Tess, J.A.N.E.T., and Tess' spaceship
I already had a clear picture of how I saw Tess in my mind, so I chose to stick with the initial concept and run with it.
Instead, I conceptualized other aspects of Tess, such as her spaceship, her room, and most importantly, her only friend.
The design shown on Tess' shirt is lifted directly from the album cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. The first song of the album, Disorder, was something that would come to affect the initial creation of Tess' character and situation. Without spoiling too much of her arc, the song encapsulates Tess' struggles with isolation, as well as the melancholy tone of the whole story. Because of their strong influence on the story, I chose to acknowledge Joy Division's work through Tess' character.
Story Development
Storyboards:
After having the basic outline of the story in my head while creating these characters, it was time to put their arcs onto the page. Before writing a script, I first came up with basic storyboards for the earlier pages. However, due to deadlines, I did not have time to complete storyboards for all of the pages.
Having incomplete storyboards certainly did hinder the development of the final pages a little bit. For instance, I was not entirely sure how to pace the point where Scrapper first finds Tess' ship. I went through multiple drafts (two images on the left) before deciding on the final version (two images on the right).
Additionally, I did consider breaking this story into multiple issues. However, breaking the story up with break its flow, and I was focused on telling a single, concise story, so ultimately I decided to tell one complete story.
Alternate image of page 7, with the "To Be Continued" text tacked on below
Despite this, I left the ending of the story completely open-ended, so that I have the option to revisit this story and these characters in the future.
Final Story:
Below is the complete first issue of Adrift. Thanks for reading the process behind making it, and I hope you enjoy!
Feel free to download and share this comic!
Author's Note: Currently reworking this comic and expanding it into an ongoing series. I'm open to comments and feedback! Thanks for reading!
