Astronomy
The following is work I did for Miacademy’s 6-8th grade Astronomy course. This was one of my recent favorites! I loved the creativity I got to imbue into each individual work of art. There was also a high amount of intentionality in creating a cohesive design via color, texture, and symbols across the individual projects. While each of the following comics are for different individual lessons, they fall within a tightly structured course. The goal is that students will be able to utilize the visual repetition as a way to naturally link their work and anchor their memories in key moments. I’ve explained more about my thinking behind each individual project below.
“Io’s Diary” and “The Journal of Mars”
How do you tell the story of a planet from its own perspective? With a journal of course!
The diary format originated with “Io’s Diary”, scripted by my collaborator at Miacademy (one of several who worked on the Astronomy course). We wanted to have the end product reflect a kitschy but not overly childish approach - so we kept the colors bright but consistent, and focused on a simple recognizable shred of notebook paper for each part of the journal entry. The broken-up notebook papers were also useful for shifting the formatting so I could keep each page balanced.
The Journal of Mars operated similarly as far as concept goes — however, it presented slightly more robust, text-heavy material, so I presented a slightly cleaner text. (I also wanted to differentiate between the two, since we were presenting both Io and Mars as their own separate characters). We kept a similar color scheme as well as limited colors, but changed the tint just a bit, again just to differentiate the two while still keeping them cohesive.
A Timeline of Telescopes
The collaborator who wanted to work with me at Miacademy came to me with a vague sense of where we wanted to go with this - to show a history of telescopes, but not in a standard way. How could we make it more interesting, possibly even engaging? This information is tangential to the larger lesson, but was still important to the creator from a pedagogical standpoint.
As such, I proposed we present them as Marketplace or Realtor advertisements. This led us to the format of six listings, in chronological order. This would allow us to show the inner workings of the telescope with “The View From Here”, as well as the creator of the telescope being the seller. Each seller presents a fun fact about the moment in astronomical history linked to that particular telescope or astronomer.
These six illustrations were completed digitally via Procreate. The initial stages of this were higher in development needs and required a lot of back and forth in concepts and colors, which is one thing I love about art direction! You may see that some of the telescope images are traced due to their complexity and the need for precision.
