orokonui Ecosanctuary needed a designer to create a visual resource. A booklet that would talk about their aims with an ongoing kaka project that young people could connect with.
we decided to do this through the real life story of a kaka named mrs roto. She is over 30 years old and may or may not have squashed her partner...
After exploring orokonui and talking with the staff to gather the story I jumped into outlining the events into comics form.
I made a bunch of thumbnails. These tiny scratchy versions of each page let me beat out the story while deciding about the dialog on the left.
The thumbnail scribbles are indiscernible to anyone but me, but are an important step where I can easily get through a lot of bad ideas without getting attached to any of the drawings.
Each thumbnail page is taken and made more presentable as a storyboard to be read and critiqued by others and the client.
Once it's all approved the bread and butter of comic making begins, the drawing! I always start with good ol' paper and pencil to keep that fluid loose look.
After inking and scanning in the pages It's digital time. The word balloons are added and the text placed. made from a very loose typeface This keeps that 'drawn' feeling through the whole thing.
Finally the tones and colours are added. This part is the most fun, but also very time consuming! SO i deliberately leave it till the end so I can change anything else along the way.
The final booklet all dressed up and posed for a photo shoot.
