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Description
Page 1 for a very short comic book about Pokémon that I made as part of my high school magnet senior research project.

Front cover: [link]

Page 2: [link]
Page 3: [link]
Page 4: [link]
Page 5: [link]
Page 6: [link]
Page 7: [link]
Page 8: [link]
Back cover: [link]

I would have put this in the Cartoons and Comics section, but seeing as the world is still the world of Pokémon, I decided to play it safe and submit it under Fanart.

The story behind the creation of this comic book is kind of interesting.

You see, I was in a math and science magnet program in high school. The high school itself was a normal high school - the "academy" was simply a program that went on within it where eggheads like me got to take a whole bunch of advanced courses. One important part of being in the magnet program was the magnet senior mentorship/research project.

Some kids did mentorships over the summer, some did science projects (one group in my graduating class built and tested a working laser) - the biggest requirement was that it had to be somehow related to math, science, and technology. I loved math, science, and technology - but I also liked art and, being a rabid Pokémaniac, wanted some excuse to involve Pokémon in the project that would culminate my high school career.

The way I pitched it to my former Chemistry teacher (who was the head of the science department, the city's Teacher of the Year, and the advisor for everybody who did a research project instead of a mentorship) late in my junior year was this: I would make a comic book using Photoshop (I didn't realize yet how common this was) and "test" it by getting about thirty kids in a local elementary school to read it, read a professionally-made Pokémon comic book, and fill out a survey comparing the two.

It was a stretch - this wasn't exactly the sort of thing you'd enter into a science fair - but he bought it, and I spent the next summer researching the art and industry of comic books, writing a script/outline, sketching thumbnails, and drawing the final pages. I scanned, colored, shaded, and added text to the pages early in my senior year.

(In my research, I read Scott McCloud's books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. If you've never read these before, go to your local library and read them NOW! You will never look at comics the same way again. And if you make comics, for fun or for a living, you will learn a lot of really important stuff.)

Everything went mostly according to schedule, except that I only created eight of the sixteen pages I had planned - I had to end with a cliff hanger before I had even introduced my villains - but that didn't stop my elementary-schooler survey group from ranking my comic as overwhelmingly better than the professionally-made ones.

Granted, the professionally-made comics were black-and-white mini-mangas that I had gotten for free with some Pokémon DVDs a while before, but they had a lot more pages and the art quality, I thought, was much better than my crummy, squiggly lines.

Anyway, I had to write a full-blown research paper on what I'd done (that went okay) and then give a PowerPoint presentation on my project. I signed up as the very last presenter of the year (so I'd have as much time as possible to prepare), but I worried that I'd be overshadowed by other research projects that were actually science-related.

Then I gave my presentation. And got a standing ovation. And was told, repeatedly, that it had been the most interesting, most informative, and best-presented project of the year.

Description
Page 1 for a very short comic book about Pokémon that I made as part of my high school magnet senior research project.

Front cover: [link]

Page 2: [link]
Page 3: [link]
Page 4: [link]
Page 5: [link]
Page 6: [link]
Page 7: [link]
Page 8: [link]
Back cover: [link]

I would have put this in the Cartoons and Comics section, but seeing as the world is still the world of Pokémon, I decided to play it safe and submit it under Fanart.

The story behind the creation of this comic book is kind of interesting.

You see, I was in a math and science magnet program in high school. The high school itself was a normal high school - the "academy" was simply a program that went on within it where eggheads like me got to take a whole bunch of advanced courses. One important part of being in the magnet program was the magnet senior mentorship/research project.

Some kids did mentorships over the summer, some did science projects (one group in my graduating class built and tested a working laser) - the biggest requirement was that it had to be somehow related to math, science, and technology. I loved math, science, and technology - but I also liked art and, being a rabid Pokémaniac, wanted some excuse to involve Pokémon in the project that would culminate my high school career.

The way I pitched it to my former Chemistry teacher (who was the head of the science department, the city's Teacher of the Year, and the advisor for everybody who did a research project instead of a mentorship) late in my junior year was this: I would make a comic book using Photoshop (I didn't realize yet how common this was) and "test" it by getting about thirty kids in a local elementary school to read it, read a professionally-made Pokémon comic book, and fill out a survey comparing the two.

It was a stretch - this wasn't exactly the sort of thing you'd enter into a science fair - but he bought it, and I spent the next summer researching the art and industry of comic books, writing a script/outline, sketching thumbnails, and drawing the final pages. I scanned, colored, shaded, and added text to the pages early in my senior year.

(In my research, I read Scott McCloud's books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. If you've never read these before, go to your local library and read them NOW! You will never look at comics the same way again. And if you make comics, for fun or for a living, you will learn a lot of really important stuff.)

Everything went mostly according to schedule, except that I only created eight of the sixteen pages I had planned - I had to end with a cliff hanger before I had even introduced my villains - but that didn't stop my elementary-schooler survey group from ranking my comic as overwhelmingly better than the professionally-made ones.

Granted, the professionally-made comics were black-and-white mini-mangas that I had gotten for free with some Pokémon DVDs a while before, but they had a lot more pages and the art quality, I thought, was much better than my crummy, squiggly lines.

Anyway, I had to write a full-blown research paper on what I'd done (that went okay) and then give a PowerPoint presentation on my project. I signed up as the very last presenter of the year (so I'd have as much time as possible to prepare), but I worried that I'd be overshadowed by other research projects that were actually science-related.

Then I gave my presentation. And got a standing ovation. And was told, repeatedly, that it had been the most interesting, most informative, and best-presented project of the year.