Ocean Spree
What in the world is Ocean Spree?
Ocean Spree started out as my senior thesis for college during 2020-2021, which included the creation of the comic book issue, coloring pages, keychains and stickers, which eventually became it's very own kickstarter project, in which I launched the story and it's merchandise into the world.
1/3/23 Edit: So, with that being said, because this is a long journey, I'm only going to show you the first part of this, and take a closer look at that of Senior Thesis. The Kickstarter is it's own project, and deserves its own space, as this is quite long already.
Senior Thesis
With Senior Thesis, we had to create a body of work that best represented all the skills we had learned over the year(s), and to put our best work out there for the world to see. We could choose what we wanted to do, in terms of where we saw ourselves going in the industry, so long as it encompassed 5 or more pieces of excellent quality that could serve us for the next few years as we make our start in the world as professional illustrators.
For me, I wanted to do a comic book. I love telling stories, especially in this format that utilizes both writing and drawing, and wanted to challenge myself with doing a 28-page comic book issue over the span of a year.
And, not only did I manage to do so in the midst of a pandemic, but I also was able to not only complete the book, but go on to design stickers, keychains, and coloring pages to go along with it.
But, to break this down even further, lets subdivide this and explore the different sub-projects I created, looking at the Prep Work, The Book, Coloring Pages, Stickers, and Keychains.
Prep Work
Prep work, as the name would imply, was anything concept-related that had to do with figuring out what the story was about, who the characters were, what world they were in, etc.
As I decided this would take place in Western Europe, primarily England at the start of our story, in around 1780, I needed to do a LOT of research. Which meant a lot of reading. And a lot of note-taking and tracking of sources. This might have been a chore for most people, but for me it was very fun and probably one of the more enjoyable parts of the process. If people are interested in a formal bibliography of sources, that in addition to the other documents will be in the source files.
And, also being that this was a self-initiated project, I had to come up with work timelines and checklists to keep myself on track and that aligned with the goals and deadlines associated with the project. These were physical checklists that I kept both at my cubicle at school, and at my desk in my apartment at the time. Both were updated to be consistent with the other, as time went on and I progressed through pages. It kept me on track and productive, and acted as a measure of how good (or bad!) I was doing.
But, asides from that, I also had a lot of writing to do. Because not only was I wanting to be the illustrator, but I also wanted to be the writer of this story as well. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess. This meant making a lot of documents. A lot of world-building. Making decisions as to how closely I would stick to history, and how fanciful would I get over the course of the story.
I decided to play it pretty straight and not deviate too much; the characters and story are fictional, but the places, events, history, clothing, are all pretty close to that of 1780's Europe (with the exception of Mags - the main character's - dress, I'm not sure what i was thinking with that one! She would have had stays and other undergarments which would have changed her silhouette entirely, but I didn't take that into account...whoops!).
Needless to say, I don't have a lot of early visual work, as a lot of it was writing-based, but I do have the following to show you...
Initial attempts to create turnarounds for the characters of the story, but were eventually redone to be the ones down below...
The Book
With all the prep work done and out of the way, we could finally get into the actual making of the book itself.
As stated before, I set out to do 28 pages over the course of the year, and figured if I could roughly complete two full pages over the course of a week from sketch to final I would be golden. The 28 pages I roughly divided into sections: Beginning Papers (Cover, Copyright Page, Initial Illustration, "Blank" Page) The Story (the 20 pages of action) and then the End Papers (more "Blank" pages, an Acknowledgements Page, and the Back Cover).
Roughs for story pages 2-3
Beginning the sketch phase for story pages 7-8
Tight Sketch and Beginning Inks on story pages 3-4
Full inks and blacks for story pages; added text and sound effects as well
Semi-finished page 1, awaiting critique notes
Finished story pages 1-2
It should not be understated how crucial the critique and the feedback were from my classmates and professors. After having looked so long at pages, it was invaluable to have fresh sets of eyes and new thoughts come my way. Sometimes, when we couldn't meet in person for various reasons, we would use Google Jam Boards to put up our work and receive feedback, which while limited in some ways, was very useful in others. We also used Google Classroom a lot for being all on the same page, and for submitting our projects both intermittently in terms of progress updates and for our final pieces.
And these are the finished story pages...
Finished pages, though page numbers would be added later in formating of the actual book.
Both covers took the longest amount of time and consideration - these are the books selling point, after all - and had a lot of revisions.
Iteration 1
Iteration 2 - Took out the wonky handwritten text and changed the cloud/fog transitions to be more in line with the overall style of the piece.
Semi-finalized version, minor tweaks would be done later.
Final published version of the Front Cover
The Beginning Papers Initial Illustration - Iteration 1
After some wonderful feedback from classmates and professors, this was the final version of the Initial Illustration.
Finalized version of "Blank" page...as stated previously these were pretty straightforward and didn't need much revision.
Final version of Copyright Page
First attempt at a Acknowledgements page, until I realized I had a whole lot more people to thank than was listed here...
Aaaand the final version of the Acknowledgements page.
Who knew it would take at least 30 people to make a book? Not me when I first started out, that was for sure.
And that leads us to the final version of the book where everything is put together.
I was so excited when I finally got my own book in my hands!
Dream. Come. True.
Coloring Pages
Now, since I got done early and still had a couple of weeks left at the end of the semester and needed a few more projects to keep myself occupied, I set out to create some extras in the form of Coloring Pages as an easy project after the long slog that had been the book.
So, I set out to create five story-based coloring pages (one for each character) to go along with the book.
Mags Story Page
Captain Gil Story Page
Boatswain Ben Story Page
Ol' Sam Story Page
Millie the Cat Story Page
I have since continued to make more pages with the intent to make a coloring book out of them all when I am finished, but that's a little further down the road.
Stickers
And, then there came stickers. Because who doesn't like stickers? They would make a fabulous item to sell, or to giveaway at an event or something. Thus, I set out to design miniature forms of the characters in a squished cute Japanese style called "chibi".
And because I thought this would be a nice personal touch, I made an extra one, firstly as a thank you to those who worked with me on this project, but also as a bit of a internal joke to fans of my work later on, and designed this other bonus sticker.
Keychains
To add a little more variety, I also decided to do some cute keychains, using the same design from the stickers. Turned out pretty well! Because these were a bit more expensive, I only did Mags and Millie the Cat as keychains. They hang on my purse to this day.
Now, I don't have individual photos of them as of yet, but here is a photo from my Kickstarter where I have all of my products all together...
Which is a great segway to that of our next project: the Kickstarter!
1/17/2023 Edit: You can find the kickstarter project here at this link, should you want to view it yourself before I go into the behind-the-scenes of that part of the project:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hmillustrations/ocean-spree-issue-1/
(For whatever reason, Behance would not let me add this edit as a comment down below, even though it's my own work. 🧐)
