Submittable Comics

An illustrated comic showing a dolphin holding a briefcase of fish. The above text reads "did you say corporate porpoise?"

Goal

Create a unique visual style for Submittable’s social media comics. Design and illustrate each comic using the team’s incredible writing and concepts.

Role

Design, Illustration, Animation

More Info & Credits

Submittable posts fun, sometimes funny comics on their socials to engage audiences and convey their brand’s personality. Blessed with amazing writing and ideas from the Submittable team, I had the opportunity to develop an original look for the comics.

Credits

Writing: Laura Steele

Direction: Submittable

Design: Levi Boughn

Illustration: Levi Boughn

Look Development: Levi Boughn

Animation: Levi Boughn

Are You Comic-ing me?

The goal was to create a style that felt one step above a quick napkin doodle. We wanted the message behind each comic to be the hero, making sure the illustration sat back a bit.

Illustrated comic showing a group of dolphins wearing business attire, text above reads "find your corporate porpoise pod."Illustrated comic showing an office presentation. Presenter is showing diagram of lettuce, person in audience says "I said CSR strategy, not caesar strategy."An illustrated comic showing a pie with a small slice lifted out on a spatula.An illustrated comic showing that the real work in a social impact career is keeping inspiration going. There is a book of matches and a campfire.An illustrated social graphic showing a person daydreaming of volunteer work while at the office. A smaller illustration shows a group of people actively volunteering at a food bank.An illustrated, four-panel comic about the way equity truly functions.

Adding Motion

Some minimal animation added another dimension to the comics. I kept the handmade feel with a mix of frame-by-frame animation, lower frame-rates, and avoiding fussing over details.

Even More Comics

Keeping a consistency in visual style (weight of brush strokes, amount of noise, variety of color) was essential, but I didn’t want such a rigid system that prevented these comics from evolving.

A loose, sketchy illustration of Hugh Grant. Text above reads "managing a huge grant?"
An illustrated venn diagram.
An illustrated comic where a girl is standing in the dark with a small flashlight.
An illustrated comic with a group of several people, all shining flashlights and guiding their way together.
An illustration of a balloon about to be popped by a thumbtack.
An illustration of a person standing next to a pile of office supplies, the person is looking up at the text heading on the graphic.
An illustration of a person standing atop a precarious stack of office supplies. The person is replacing the letter in the comic's heading.
An illustrated venn diagram showing similarities between grantmakers, a 3-point basketball shot, and parallel parking,.

Long-Form Comic

Some ideas for these comics just didn’t fit within a single composition, or even two or three panels. That’s where a longer format came into play, and took great advantage of slider-style posts on social.

An illustrated graphic with text reading "you might be a government grantmaker if you..."
An illustration of a government building with coffee spilling from it's roof. A mug with a smile is catching the liquid.
Illustration of a t-shirt with a design on it.
Drawing with person in foreground being surprised by an Audi car in the background.
Drawing featuring a nervous person biting their nails while thinking about a complex application.
Illustration of a messy stack of papers with post-it notes and binder clips and pens.
Drawing of a corkboard showing a complex map of the differences between using the words should, may, and must.
Illustration of a restroom sign, but person icon is rolling their eyes.

Look Exploration

An early, vector-based approach with clean lines didn’t exactly fit with the copy for these comics. After a lot of Photoshop brush testing, we were able to settle on a direction that felt handmade, but not too rough.

A dolphin illustrated in a very clean vector method.Illustration of dolphin holding briefcase, wearing a tie. The lines are thin.Dolphin illustration, with a painterly white texture filling the body of the dolphin.Dolphin illustration in black, sketchy lines, but the body of the dolphin is filled with a white texture.Illustration of dolphin with thick, messy lines.Illustration of dolphin with thin black lines, and a subtle gray texture.Illustration of dolphin with thick, black lines and a loose gray texture.Drawing of a dolphin with briefcase full of fish.Drawing of dolphin.Drawing featuring a dolphin with a tie and briefcase that has fish in it.A diagram showing various styles of brushes used in digital illustration of social media comics.