In this final project, we decided to do option 2, which is the Teenage Comic.
The theme culture in this project was defined as:
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group
Brief Ideas
1. 1. Country mouse VS City mouse
2. 2. Ratatouille
3. 3. Wally- make believe robot culture
4. 4. “Little ghosts”
5. 5. Time travel- medieval to future
6. 6. Exposing cultures of different countries- fairytale-like
7. 7. Guy who takes things for granted
fairy brings him to an undeveloped/developing place to show him how blessed he actually is
8. 8. Spoilt brat gets lost and kind people help him to survive through the ordeal
reflecting 2 different cultures within 1 country (Poor vs Rich)
Conceptualizing the different ideas into storylines
The Supernatural (rich-poor culture):
Once there lived a villager and his family. On a stormy night, they find an unexpected visitor on their doorstep. The visitor is a little boy, dressed in strange foreign garb. He speaks a strange stilted version of their language and his ways are shocking and different to them. At first, they experience strong culture clashes…
Yet as the days pass, they adopt different habits from each other’s cultures. The villager is more open to giving his daughters more freedom and the boy learns how to respect the traditions and cultures practiced by the villagers.
However, in a shocking twist of events, it is revealed that the boy is actually the ghost of a rich boy who died tragically whilst holidaying nearby. The villagers help to contact his family and the boy is put to rest.
The Brat (rich-poor culture):
The story is set in a big house with a couple of maids serving a boy. His parents are busy working, which explains the lack of discipline in the boy’s life. The boy always abuses his power and is mean to the maids and people around him. One, day, he sees on TV some fabulous place and decides that he is going there. However, he soon realizes that he booked the air ticket to somewhere else instead by mistake as the two places have similar names. He was horrified when he reached a run down rural village and quickly tried to return home. However, there were no more flights back as the lone airplane suddenly crashed into the sunset. Thus, he was stranded there.
He behaved as he did back home and tried to bully those around him with his money, but that’s not legal tender in an isolated village so nobody paid attention to him. A kind soul helped the boy on the condition that the boy helps out in the field.
Then, we show examples of the virtues of that culture and how these virtues wake him up. Eventually the boy’s parents locate him through GPS and he returns home as a changed person.
The time travelers (past-present culture):
The story initially takes place in medieval time. The King of a kingdom and his servant get transported into the future by a magician. Once arrived in the future, a family welcomes them. But the king and his servant still behave as they would usually behave back in their own time, wreaking havoc wherever they go. This causes cultural clashes between the behaviour and mentality of the different eras, and this leads them in all sorts of troubles.
The geek (IT culture):
This is the story of a little girl whose addiction to video games leads her to be secluded from others. His parents, being busy professionals, barely have time to spend with their child, and usually spoil their child with gifts as a substitution. The girl lives a rather lonely life, until the day she meets boy, who is very outgoing and extrovert, at school. The lad is friendly to the girl, and he is interested in her games. Reluctant at first, the girl agreed to share her videogames with the boy. In exchange, the boy teaches her how to play non-virtual games. They soon developed friendship towards each other. Bit by bit, the girl learns from this exchange of attitude, to be more outgoing and to open up to others. She then makes more friends and lives a happier life.
Discussion and Selection
In deciding which storyline to use for our project, we faced a very predictable problem: All the stories sounded interesting and yet we had to choose one. Thus, we decided to extract the most interesting elements from each story and weave them together to form a captivating plot.
The rich-poor divide storyline was chosen as the backbone of our final plot to ensure consistency and comprehension. Supernatural elements were then added to spice up the storyline without deviating too far from its core intention.
It was tricky to juggle the two main themes that of Love and Culture within one story plot. However, we quickly managed to weave them together to produce a final storyline.
Main changes
The boy was changed into a girl to provide more visual appeal.
A fantasy theme was included along with a witch, and an enchanted forest.
The story was tweaked to emphasize more human elements and made more emotionally moving.
The “brat’s” personality was changed into a more quietly evil girl instead of an outward spoilt brat. This would later help to show the contrast between her “before” and “after” personality. It would also appeal more to the age group that we had in mind, that of the young teenagers.
The final storyline
There was once a spoilt urban little girl, whose parents were too busy to pay much attention to her. So she ends up being a rude and naughty brat who wrecks havoc on her servants in a bid to attract attention from her parents and also because she doesn’t know better.
Then, one day she overhears the servants talking about a wonderful witch in the forest who can grant any wish. So the little spoilt brat, who thinks that the world revolves around her, goes to find the witch thinking that she can force the witch to be her servant.
She meets this old woman in the forest and is mean and rude to her.
Then the woman reveals herself to be the witch and asks her, "So what would you have me do?"
And she declares in childhood idiocy "I want you to be my servant from now on!"
And the witch laughs in disdain and brings her to a village where she dumps her. "Learn something."
The brat finds herself unable to go back and has no choice but to stay and work in the village to get by. As she lives there, she sees the people around her, how close they are and the ties that bind.
Gradually her heart melts and she ends up enjoying the village life.
The witch returns to bring her back to her parents "It was never a servant that you needed, but love."
Her parents, who were frantic about their missing daughter, now treasure her and love her more.
And the little girl who lost her naughty ways became a good and happy girl.
Development of main character:
Shanelle’s hairstyle and look was inspired by Merryweather in the manga Count Cain Godchild. She has long hair which she occasionally ties up into two ponytails. She also dresses in frilly laced dresses and is very girly. 
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