The Bolt Comic is a favorite illustration project of mine. The project began with a story idea of mine and I ran with it. Creating the first comic in the series was a long project, as it was my first attempt at creating a graphic novel.

The first step was creating a plot map for the story. From there I began to flesh out the project a bit more. As I was doing this I began creating illustrations of what the main character Flick aka Bolt would look like. Below are my original character deliverables. These contain an expression sheet, character turn arounds, and different color scheme ideas.

Once I had completed the turn around and decided on what colors were appropriate for this character the next step was to create a model sheet. I created two different model sheets: one for Flick and one for Bolt. This was important to me because I wanted to go ahead and establish what he would look like in a casual setting as well as what his superhero suit would look like. They follow a similar color scheme.

At this point the story line had been nailed down and I began to write a script. The script came to be a total of 9 pages, rounding out at roughly 1,300 words. An excerpt from the script can be viewed below:

PAGE 1-

Chapter 1

[3 months go]

Wide screen panel at top, 2 panels in middle, 3 equal sized panels at bottom

1- Wide shot of Flick walking on the sidewalk, on his way home in the rain.

It looks like Seattle suburbs during a storm.  Grey, rainy, and dark.

2- Close up on Flick’s face, with his hood up. Sort of hunkered over to stay dry. “what the-?” Looking upward.

3- Semi-wide shot. Here we see Flick getting struck by a lightning bolt. Hair sticking straight up.

4- Flick is knocked back on the ground in disbelief. We see a glimpse of his hair, now white instead of black.

5- Flick is sprinting home.

6- Here we see Flick pushing the front door open from behind.

TURN PAGE

PAGE 2-

6 panels

1- Flick running through the front door, the see this from inside the house now.

2- Flick resting on the front door, which is now closed. He looks wet, tired, and out of breath.

3- Here we see the top of Mr. Bolton’s head barley visible from behind his newspaper.

4- Flick: Semi-wide shot. “Dad!! The craziest thing just happened to me!”

5- Mr. Bolton: Looks up from newspaper, with one eyebrow slightly raised only halfway paying attention. “Yeah… That’s crazy.” “Wait, Flick, did you change your hair?”

6- Flick: Close up on a confused Flick. “Huh?”

Once I had written and established what each page and individual panel would hold, I began creating each pages layout. From there I could determine exactly what size and shape I needed the illustrations to be for each individual panel.

Overall, there were more than 75 panels to be sketched. This was probably the longest stage in the project.

Once all of the rough sketches were finished, I was in the endgame. The next step was creating the finished illustrations. This was a pretty tedious process but still fun. After each individual panel was finished, they were placed into the indesign layout.

After this, I had to create a cover page for the project. Once this was finished, so was the comic.