The “Lead Soldiers,” a team of DTU students majoring in Graphic Design, adapted the original story “The Girl From Yesterday,” written by Nguyen Nhat Anh, into their first comic book, entitled Lovesickness. When they first posted it on their team fan page, the comic book attracted many followers, who encouraged the team to release sequels.
The Lead Soldiers team
“The Girl from Yesterday,” the famous work that inspired them
After two months of developing ideas and implementing the project, the “Lead Soldiers” team released their first comic book, “Lovesickness.” This is the first part of the story, illustrated and adapted from “The Girl From Yesterday,” authored by Nguyen Nhat Anh.
Nguyen Khanh Hien, leader of the “Lead Soldiers” team, said:
‘“Lovesickness” is free and is posted on our “Lead Soldiers” fan page at: (https://www.facebook.com/truyentranhlinhchi). We want our viewers to enjoy it and communicate their thoughts to us. At the outset, we assigned tasks according to our personal strengths. After developing some ideas, we then sketched the backgrounds, characters and dialogues and drew them in Photoshop. Because we were all busy with
our studies and personal lives, we mostly worked together online. However, we usually met in person to discuss and edit each page twice a week.”
The team developed storyboards for foreign films at the beginning and spent much time drawing characters and designing logos and posters. That experience was especially useful when they started working on Lovesickness. They became more confident in adapting a famous story to a comic book, with increased creativity and flexibility to express the personalities of the comic characters.
The Lead Soldiers team, a group of young people with passion for comics
Comics are an integral part of our youth, and many adults still love reading them too. Nguyen Khanh Hien is the team leader, who won the 2021 American Graphic Design Awards Trophy. She said: “Our love of comics and the art of creating them brought us together and we shared our enthusiasm. Then we discovered others who were equally enthused. However, groups actually creating the comics were rare. That’s when we founded our Lead Soldiers team to help others learn about drawing and comics.”
Le Thi Anh Thi, from K27ADH2 is in charge of editing the comic book and said: “We named our team the Lead Soldiers because everyone is familiar with the image of someone who demonstrates great courage in face of extreme adversity. We want to build a group of artists who can overcome all difficulties to achieve their goals. We currently have 10 members, including a leader, an editor and a character designer, and are mentored by Mr. Nguyen Tien Viet, a lecturer of the DTU Faculty of Architecture & Applied Arts, who is our inspiration.”
(Media Center)