Graphic Narrative.

Mind Map:

Written Concept:
British WW2 paratroopers sit nervously on a plane, which is flying over Europe in order to reach their drop zone. The plane is then unexpectedly shot and the pilot is killed. A hole blows open in the side of the plane and people are sucked out. People begin jumping out of the plane to parachute. One paratrooper is separated from the rest of his platoon. He lands badly, with his parachute caught up in a tree. Nazi soldiers surround the paratrooper and aim guns at him.

The British paratrooper is then locked down in a chair at an unknown location, which looks like a laboratory. An evil looking scientist appears and begins injecting the paratrooper with different substances. The paratrooper's veins begin to pop and his arms bulge, as he is screaming in pain. He breaks the locks in the struggle, which were keeping him down. He lifts the scientist up by his neck and throws him at the wall, killing him. The paratrooper then escapes the bunker using the strength he's gained during the experiments.

The British soldier uses the extra power from the experiments to kill Nazis as he heads for Berlin, where he plans to kill Hitler. He goes to Hitler's main headquarters in central Berlin, which has a large Nazi sign all the way down the building. He stands with Hitler on the top floor, facing him. Hitler attempts to kill him, firing off a few rounds of his small handgun, but the British soldier then grabs Hitler and throws him out of the window, smashing the glass of the top floor room. Hitler plummets to Earth, as the paratrooper stands victorious.

Target Audience:
My target audience for this piece is for mainly males, aged 15-20 and people who are interested in superhero/ war hero stories.

Style:
The style for this graphic novel will be very dark, with lots of contrast. I'm going to only use black and white for the entire novel, as it will fit in with the theme of the story and the dark tale. I also love the look of classic black and white comics, but it also works, as black and white is often associated with the past.

I really love when comics have drawings that go beyond the boundaries of their little box on the page. It makes the images pop and generally makes the comic look more interesting to readers who love that classic 'comic book' style.

In this one, we can see the contrast between the plane and the background clearly, as they have used dark blacks for the plane and white with some different shades of grey for the background elements.

I really love the use of different 'camera angles' in this one. The close up of his eyes show clearly his emotion at that time, which doesn't give away too much of the story, it just builds suspense.

Inspiration:

It's hard to generalise, as we pick up inspiration from everything we do and see. I consume a lot of TV, films and video games in my spare time. Some of the information has inspired me to create this type of graphic novel/ comic. The main films and TV series' that have given me some ideas for the graphic have been 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Superman', 'Man In The High Castle' and 'Spiderman'. I don't personally read many comics or graphic novels, but I have seen some great drawings from war scenes in the past on the internet, which I've always wanted to replicate. I also did History as a subject in school and have been fascinated with Hitler and war ever since. I have visited Normany on a school trip a couple of years ago in which we visited the beaches which were invaded, walked around bunkers and gun placements which the Nazi's used and I even went to Pegasus bridge, which played a vital part in D-Day and also visited the mass memorials. My Nana always tells me stories of her time in the war and I wonder how things could have turned out differently. There are some creepy, but interesting videos and articles online, which tell of the horrors that happened with Nazi experiments and how most of them went horribly wrong. I thought it would make for an interesting story if an experiment went wrong for the Nazi's, giving someone super-human powers that would then strike back against them and help bring down Hitler.

I spent a lot of time researching different variations and styles of uniforms that Nazis used to wear. I wanted my Nazi Scientist character to be wearing a lab coat and a gas mask, so I searched for similar images, which I could use as a reference later on.

Storyboards:

Progression of Concepts:

I went through many different sketches, when thinking of concepts for this graphic novel/ comic. I've provided images to some of my previous drawings, which will not be used for the final piece.

Note: Some of these sketches weren't drawn for the final narrative I came up with.