Over this past summer, a group of visual communication design students were given the chance to participate in an internship opportunity with a local comic book studio, known as Route 8 Studios, creating a comic book entitled “Flash Fiction.”
This book will be available in comic book stores around the Kent and Stow area in November.
Route 8 Studios was founded in 2024 by Dan Gorman, Damion Kendrick and Mark Taylor. Their intentions are to give local talent an opportunity to be seen, published and represented within both the community and globally, said Emma Patchin, a third-year visual communication design major.
The book is over 100 pages of 12 individual stories and ranges from a variety of genres, all the way from fiction to sci-fi and more. Some of these stories serve as narrative fragments, while others are complete narratives lasting about 12 pages or less.
The students had a short timeline of completing the book in just a little under three months, Patchin said.
“Due to the time constraints of this project being done completely during the summer, our schedule mimicked that of a professional artist’s deadlines,” she said.
This made the process very enriching for the students, as it taught them what to expect when working in the real world of illustrating. It also allowed the students to publish pieces within their portfolios.
The students first had to make a pitch for their book to give to the faculty of Route 8 Studios, then wrote a script and outline for the project. They then drew their thumbnail sketches, and from there, they were able to pencil in each of the pages before completing the last step of lettering their pages, which is the process of adding text to the comic.
“Our intent was to give the students in the program an opportunity to work on their own creative concepts and to tell their own personal stories all in their own way, without having to do it for a classroom assignment,” Route 8 Studios said in a statement.
Patchin explained how many of the students who worked on this project didn’t receive any credit towards their degree due to Kent State having a low cap on the number of students allowed to receive credit for an internship at a certain time.
“We believe that internships in our desired fields of work are immensely beneficial, and so permitting more students to receive credit at one time would only encourage more people to participate in said internships,” Patchin said.
The students who participated in “Flash Fiction” are appreciative of the staff at Route 8 Studios for their dedication and continued support.
“None of this would have been possible without [their] commitment to our success, and [their] steadfast support in the past months has become invaluable to our future careers,” Patchin said.
Ava Drozd is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].