For my project, I wanted to create a narrative that was symbolic, dark, and left an impact on the audience. With this in mind, I chose to create my project based on the idea of depression. Specifically, I wanted to explore the outcome of depression from the perspective of loneliness. Although I personally don’t suffer from depression, I have family who has suffered from this issue and their experience helped me in crafting this narrative.
The story begins with the main character (aka “The Hero”) waking up in the morning and turning on his bedside light. From the start of his day something doesn’t feel right to him, but he decides to not think much of it. We then see the character eat breakfast and make his way out the door to work. But as he is leaving, he stops and thinks for a moment. The audience doesn’t know what, but it is something of importance to make him suddenly stop. The story then continues later in the day when the hero gets home from work. The hero decides that he needs to take a drink of his Mighty Liquid of Escapism, and when he does he unleashes his arch-nemesis; The Demon From the Bottle. The Demon possesses him and forces the hero to walk toward the window and open it (this is suppose to be a discreet way of saying that hero has gotten drunk and his drunken self has taken over). The hero takes a seat on the edge of the window and, as the hero takes in his surroundings, The Demon whispers into his ear how horrible the world is and tells him that he is depressed (the audience is then shown an image of the city from the hero’s perspective. But the image is upside-down to show that the hero views the world as an “upside-down” place). Taking into account what the demon made him realize, the hero decides that the only way out of his personal darkness is by taking his own life.
One of the main goals I had for myself when I sought to create this piece was to insert subtle details that added more symbolism to the story itself. First, in almost every photo, I wanted a shadow to be casted onto the hero. This is suppose to be symbolic of the depression that is constantly looming around the character. Another minute detail that I put into the story was through the use of color (or lack there-of). In the story, the only color the viewer sees is blue which, in and of itself, is symbolic for peace. The only two places that the color blue is shown is on the label for the Mighty Liquid of Escapism and on the final page when the entire background of the page is of a blue sky. Showing the color blue on the liquid’s label is suppose to emphasize the drink itself and make sure the audience knows that its important because it eventually will be the main contributor that drives the hero to his demise. Finally, I chose to use a small, wooden figure to show that the character suffering from depression feels small.
When writing the story itself, I wanted it to be in the form of a comic book because comic books are the most visual form of story-telling in book form. Specifically, I wanted this book to be written in a way that is an homage to comic books from the 1960s and 1970s. The comics back then had more spacing in-between drawings and tended to use overdramatizing language. With my story, I wanted the language to be over-dramatic because the actions and body language of the main character are very somber and heavy. The contrast of the dramatic/heroic descriptions of somber actions way is suppose to be a subtle hint to the viewer that every little thing that this character does takes more energy than usual and, therefore, is a big accomplishment to him.
