Emily Hoy - Major Project Art Book FInal

Major Project –
Death’s Diaries Art Book
By Emily Hoy

Synopsis
My graphic novel centers
around a young man who
lost his life far too soon,
and after death, was given a
new lease of life, in the role
of the Grim Reaper. Gabriel
is a soft-spoken soul who
takes his job as seriously as
anybody, but when his path
keeps crossing that of his
friend and crush in life,
Nina, he becomes wound in
turmoil, not wanting to take
her life prematurely as his
was. This volume in
particular focuses on his
second climactic encounter
with Nina, and how she is
coping with her first neardeath
experience.
Several more volumes are
open to creation, since this
project has a lot of
longevity.
’When Gabriel acquired the role of the reaper, he knew he
wanted to soothe the souls he was sent to deliver. From
person to person, Gabriel would offer his gloved hand and
lead people to their next phase, with a quiet reassurance
that this was meant to be. Sapphire was his personal choice
of aura, a sign of the rolling waves and the flow of change
along the way; after all, who wouldn’t like a brilliant
sapphire? However, when the reaper was ordered to fetch
the spirit of someone he knew all too well during his days on
earth, he found himself breaking every one of his sworn
rules to keep her alive. On his watch, nothing would happen
to Nina. But nature has it’s laws, and breaking them is not so
accepted.’

My Aims
I really wanted this project to encompass the idea of
survivor’s guilt, and the concept that life after facing death
may be harder than one would initially realise. I also wanted
to personify the reaper as less of a frightful entity, and
instead as a soul, a person who once was and someone with
some understanding of empathy and relationships.
My target audience for this novel is largely teenagers and
young adults, anyone from the ages of 16 and up, as though
it tackles very deep subject matter, I feel anybody with a
lingering fear of death or the unknown, or anyone who is
looking to read something with real emotion could benefit.

Script
I decided to
write the script
and the
characters in
quite a deep,
wistful sort of
way, especially
Death, since I
imagine him to be
a very reflective
sort of being
given his past
life. The dialogue
is meant to be as
accurate to the
portrayal of the
character
subtypes as
possible, as I
want this to
mirror a realworld
situation,
and how people
would truly react
in this situation.

Storyboard
These are the storyboard
panels for the novel, which
were hand-drawn to allow
me to better plot the style
and size of the panels on a
single page. The
measurements aren’t exact
and were up for edits, and
some of the panels are
slightly hard to decipher,
but the planning was there,
and is much easier to read
and follow than it initially
looks.
I have never really tackled
comic strips or anything
that may require panels
before, but I decided to do
fewer panels per page to
allow for more detailing.
Each image here has 4 pages
in quadrants, all numbered,
each with their own panels.

Meet Nina
Meet one of our leading
roles for the volume, Nina.
Though the novel follows
Death through his travels
and his stories, Nina is the
woman he can never seem
to shake from his mind, the
one his path always seems
to lead back to.
Nina as a character is very
temperamental, her
demeanor never quite what
it was before her first run
in with Death. She tends to
go it alone, tackle things
herself to save anybody the
grief of getting tangled up
in her life. In actuality,
Nina is a very outspoken
person, and a dedicated
friend to anyone she loves,
her rough time of things
has simply hidden it away
until she’s ready to reenter
the city life.

Death
Death himself, not what
you’d expect, I’m sure. In
this universe, Death is a
role that is often
reincarnated after the
previous title-owner has run
their course, and Gabriel
just seemed to fall straight
into the lap of fate when
he lost his own life.
In life, Gabriel was always
very soft-spoken,
adventure-loving as many
young people are, but never
one to risk things for a
thrill. He would much rather
have spent his time making
the most of the people he
adored. As Death however,
Gabriel isn’t treated to any
of the luxury of emotion,
existing more as a concept
than a being capable of
feeling. He never lost his
kind touch, though.

Rowan & Bodhi
Rowan and Bodhi, two
companions that the world
decided were next to face
the cruelty of providence.
Rowan can seemingly do no
wrong, just a man living his
best days out with his dog,
never causing trouble for
anybody. But life isn’t too
kind to the best of us, and
Rowan had lived out his
course.
Bodhi is Rowan’s roommate
and dependent in this life,
as well as his best friend, a
small Terrier with a big
personality ready to make
his mark. Though Rowan’s
timeline is coming to a close,
Death knows somebody in
particular who could serve
to benefit from someone
whose whole purpose is to
love, and Bodhi will never
run short of love to give.

Environment
Art
Since most of my
environment pieces will be
quite small and less
detailed, I though I would
channel my energy into
creating one of the bigger
pieces of artwork for the
novel, being one of the
home exteriors. I really
wanted this piece to set the
scene for the novel and the
character, with lots of
purple hues to match the
depth of her struggles.
The style very much mirrors
those I found and
researched in my time
leading up to production,
with thick black outlines and
mostly flat colours, save
from the soft glow of light
here and there. In tandem
with the character art, this
style will be pleasing to look
at.

Line Art
Digitizing my sketches
proved quite a challenge,
since going from very basic
shapes and expressions to
something a lot more
detailed took a huge sink of
time, but overall I am
incredibly happy with the
resulting line art. The style
is crisp and sleek, the
boldness of the thick black
lines makes for a very easy
way to amplify a facial
expression to make it much
more recognizable. I also
found it easy with this thick
linework to create features
on my characters that are
identifiable to them and
them alone, such as Nina’s
hair and it’s coily style, or
Death’s cheekbones. I think
more than any amount of
colouring, nailing the line
art in this project was key
for my style.

Front Cover
I had a lot of ideas as to
what the front cover for
this volume could possibly
look like, since I went and
referenced many existing
graphic novels and comic
books and their styles. I
ultimately settled on
something a little more
abstract that utilized my
already completed work for
convenience.
I wanted the cover to really
reflect the main elements
of the novel that I had
been perfecting since last
summer, being the
characters, and the grand
city the novel takes place
in, so I chose to combine
these elements into a
bright, eye-catching, but
most of all recognizable
front cover.

Promotion
I was somewhat stuck with
what to produce for my
promotional material, since
in all honesty I wasn’t even
sure where to begin with
promoting a novel. An
animation would have been a
lot easier to promote with
posters and whatnot, but
here I hit a brick wall. I
eventually settled on 3 ways
to promote my book. The
first being a website unto
where I can upload my
portfolio, showreel and
other assets. My second
idea was a trailer, which I
knew would be a hard
undertaking considering I
have struggled to finish the
novel in itself, but a good
promotional step
nonetheless. My final
promotional material would
be simply uploading my work
to my personal Instagram.

Scheduling
Perhaps the hardest part of
this project for me was the
scheduling. I have a hard
time sticking to written
schedules and much prefer
to just work at my own pace
and get things done, but
this wasn’t an option for
the final project for obvious
reasons. I decided to create
a spreadsheet schedule
which actually both ended
up helping me and making
things harder in the long
run, since it kept me on
track most of the time, but
also gave me a lot more
stress to see things written
out on a page, knowing how
much there was left to do.
Ultimately, I didn’t manage
to stick to the schedule as
well as I’d have liked, but I
still made some good
progress in my personal time
management skills.

End Product
My unfortunate circumstance is that my end product graphic novel
simply wasn’t completed in time. I tried and tried to keep up with
my scheduling whilst making my work the best it could possibly be,
but I fell short by a good margin, especially with the panel
colouring, which I had to abandon by the end in favour of block
backgrounds. I wasn’t pleased with myself for allowing my project
to fall behind like this, but I think it’ll serve to be an important
lesson to myself in how important time scheduling truly is in
situations like this, and I endeavour to complete the rest of the
novel colouring in my own time regardless, since I’ve formed quite
an attachment to my characters and the world I’ve created.
I want this circumstance to be a grave point of reflection for
myself in lieu of my applying for a masters and hopefully taking my
projects and career even further, I don’t want to let it
discourage me entirely, just to motivate me to be even better.

What’s Next
In all honesty, I never expected myself to fall in love with my
project as hard as I have done, and because of this, I fully
intend to keep going with it, since it’s morphed into a passion
project of sorts.
The first order of business is to finish the graphic novel as it is,
and to continue with it’s promotion to try and gain it some
traction. Potential future volumes are on the cards too, done
right this time. One thing I know for certain is I want to keep
exploring with this newfound art style of mine, since I find it
quite therapeutic to create, and I want to se just how far I can
take it, whether in future personal projects or into an industry
workplace, places which I have the full intention to begin
applying to soon. I also hope to produce freelance work in the
coming years and to grow my following and portfolio, as I think it
will be beneficial to my time management skills.

Thank you for Reading!
Thank You for Reading!