The King is Coming! Senior Thesis Project Joy Heil I had an idea! I took a class about Korean Tea Ceremony while studying abroad in South Korea. It interested me so much that I started thinking it was a shame that very few people know about this ceremony and it’s impact for the Korean people. And so the idea was born! Simple, but a lot of work All I had was a vague idea of what the story was going to be. I knew I wanted it to be fun and silly, coupled with education. I wanted the story to tell of culture and history but also of respecting your elders and humility. So then I created a short synopsis: A palace messanger comes to the house of a Noble with the news that the King will be arriving shortly. Everyone suggests own grand plan to treat the king, but when the wise old grandmother suggests a simple tea ceremony, everyone laughs at her. The king arrives to find everyone unprepared except for the little old grandmother. How best to do it? This project required a lot of research to get right. Not only did I need to know about Korean Tea Ceremony and green tea production, but I also needed to know about historical Korea. Many articles later, I was able to piece together my character design. Thumbnail, revision, thumbnail, revision, etc... I started off with writing the story. Just simple stuff, to get the story out of my head and onto paper. Then came the thumbnails. What I ended up going with ended up differing a lot from my initial idea. And then there came color The style I settled on was cut paper, a style I’ve been fiddling with for the past year to some success. I wanted this book to have a more “paper theater” feel to it. Nostalgic, yet modern, just like my story. Production I decided on doing only a book dummy, a sort of half-book I could send to publishers, rather than a full and complete book. I feel like that leaves me time for improvement even after school is done. I ended up with 4 completed pages and cleaned- up sketches of the rest. Take Away This book is meant to teach and instruct, but also be a good laugh. I want the children, and adults, reading it to be able to connect to that culture in a new way and maybe take an interest in tea where they might not have before. Thank You for Reading!.