"A Story of Hope for the Bullied"

I wrote and illustrated this book in 2012, during my university studies in the UK, as part of an assignment that required us to enter various art competitions to get exposure for our work. I chose to enter the Creative Conscience Awards, a competition that encourages young artists to use their creativity in support of a cause they believe in. My inspiration and motivation to create a graphic novel that aims to help victims of bullying came from a young girl in Canada, named Amanda Todd. At just 13 years old she took her own life because of the horrible bullying that she endured for multiple years. Before committing that act, she had previously posted a clip on YouTube sharing her story and saying how much she needed a friend. Unfortunately no one who could help her saw that video, it became viral only after the media shared the case.

How heartbreakingly sad! A child taking her own life in the darkness of despair... I wept thinking that maybe I could have helped her, had I only known about her… That is why I decided to create this story that could reach children in similar circumstances, all over the world, children and teens that maybe I will never know of.

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I published “A Story of Hope for the Bullied” in 2012 on the internet, in a format slightly different than this one (the current version has additional text and an extra 13 pages). Within a month I received hundreds of messages from teens all around the world thanking me for having made this story and for helping them. Many shared their own experiences with me. I was profoundly touched...

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The style of the illustration is different than any other work I ever made. Being a university assignment I only had 4 weeks at my disposal to hand it in (the assignment itself never required us more than 5-6 illustrations), so I had to work very fast and very sketchy in order to finish all 150+ illustrations. The format of the pages is also slightly unconventional for a graphic novel, given that it was destined to be read online in a interactive Flash format. Although it doesn't have multiple panels per page, it still follows the conventions of comic strips by describing the evolution of the character in time and space through multiple panels (one panel per page, instead of multiple panels per page), by inserting the text within the images and describing the acting of the character in multiple poses.