Flat Plan

In developing the visual layout for my graphic novel story, I produced a flat plan that showed some of the details of each panel and how they would fit together on a page. I used information from my primary research to incorporate visual themes, dynamic angles, and a balance between intensity and clarity throughout the novel.

As I am only creating one graphic novel for my Final Major Project, I could spend more time making sure the story that I wanted to tell had room to breathe, as well as keeping the action and events clear for a reader new to the story. I believe I managed to do this effectively through my flat plan, which underwent several changes to reach a 'finished' state that would become the foundation for the illustrated graphic novel.

This plan is mostly accurate to the designs I produced for the initial storyboard, but has since been expanded upon or altered for better visual cohesion in a comic format. I am pleased to see the ideas for my story develop naturally through adapting it to a graphic novel, but am disappointed that I will only be able to produce the first chapter of the four-part series. Though this would have been unrealistic for my FMP, it would have presented the complete story of the Invasion of the Cryp'lar in a visual medium.

Now that every page and panel of the novel has been planned out, the next steps are to add prepared text and start production on the final illustrated version. By making a flat plan, it has been useful in helping me understand how I would communicate elements of my story, and made me confident in producing the graphic novel to the highest quality I can achieve. For these reasons, this was an important step in planning the Final Major Project.