For this project, I decided to illustrate one of my favourite short stories, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story tells of a utopian society where everybody is always happy. However, beneath the picturesque city, a child is locked in a cage and brutally abused. In this, the suffering of the child is meant to teach the citizens of Omelas the precious price that they have to pay for their happiness. Upon learning of the child’s existence, each citizen can either choose to stay and bear the secret or leave Omelas, never to return.
From this story, I decided to take the perspective of a girl on her birthday, whose parents decide that shes old enough to learn about the existence of the child. She is horrified upon seeing him, but her parents – used to the burden of the knowledge that they bear – merely tell her that this is how it has to be. She decides to leave Omelas and the comic ends with a scene of her walking away from the city.
I chose to illustrate this story for multiple reasons. Firstly, I felt that it posed very interesting philosophical questions on the nature of happiness, and the lengths we as humans are willing to go to obtain it. I also really wanted to experiment with different Japanese manga styles and I felt that this story enabled me to easily switch between techniques as certain parts of the plot lent itself better to a certain style. For example, in the full page illustration of the boy, I drew direct inspiration from the work of Junji Ito, a manga author renowned for his otherworldly horror stories and the distinct art style he uses to communicate them. In other parts of the comic like in the illustration of the girl, I drew influence from more traditional manga artists to achieve that cute, innocuous look that I felt was better suited to show her naivety of the city she lived in.
Overall, I’m quite happy with how the comic turned out although I would like to add a couple more pages to expand on the story in certain areas which I felt were rather rushed. I would also like to spend more time in touching up the ink work (perhaps even in Photoshop), as I felt that the quality of the pages tended to fluctuate quite a bit. In all honesty, I wish that we were given more time to complete this project as I felt that three weeks was nowhere near enough. (although I did gain a whole new respect for comic authors that work on a weekly deadline)
Girl Character Design:
Layout Sketches:
