Educational Strip

The brief was to come up with an illustrated stip of 5 frames for use in schools explaining to young teenagers how to cope with the onset of puberty. Humour and metaphor are suggested given the age group and the client would also like an illustration of the character for use on the front cover. The title is
'What's Happening to my Body, it's all going Mad'

Having two young boys, I decided I might as well find out what I have to expect in the coming years (oh how I'm looking forward to it) and did some research into what happens to boys and when!!

So apparently, Puberty hits as early as 9 (aaargh) - 13. It usually starts with a growth spurt up to 4.1 inches in a year. 1st hands and feet grow, then arms and legs and finally the torso catches up. Common issues are spots, smelliness, clumsiness, when to shave, how to speak to the opposite sex, greasy hair and rampant hormonal surges...

As this is a leaflet about the onset of puberty, I thought that it might actually be intended for children approaching teenage, otherwise it might be a bit too late! Knowing how 'silly' boys can be, I decided to go for humour so that they could laugh openly without having to snigger behind their hands...

I did a lot of visual braistorming in my sketchbook, with ideas of comic strips, graffitti lettering, journals, diaries, teenage jottings, texting, splitting the issues into days of the week....

I decided that my visual language would not be too 'trendy' as i was worried about a school resource needing to be useful for many years so i went for a pretty timeless style, using the Diary of a Wimpy Kid as an inspiration.

I played with ideas for metaphor, like werewolf hairy feet, a gangly giant trying to escape a black 'puberty' cloud which seems to be pursuing him, volcanic eruptions for spots... jungles for hairiness.

I liked the idea of a gangly individual, feeling like his whole body has gone bonkers.

I began to put these into 5 frames for a standard leaflet that folds out of a page of A4. So I decided on a front cover, and 5 pages covering the following subjects: When to expect it to start, Growth Spurts, Spots, Hygeine and Shaving.

I then worked these up into individual pen drawings. 

After that I scanned them in and added flat colour and corrected a few mistakes etc in in the computer. then I laid them out for printing on both sides of an A4 sheet. 

I like the combination of fluid drawing and flat colour, although some of the images are more successful than others. But I think that the overall idea of a gangly youth, beset by slightly embarrassing problems presented in an easy non-confrontational, non scientific, humourous way with informative hopefully helpful notes and jottings around the charcter works quite well. I also think he is pretty timeless and so slightly less embarrassing, as it doesn't come across as grown ups is trying to 'talk teenage' which is somewhat embarrassing!