Beowulf tells the story of a heroic Geatish warrior who travels to Denmark to aid King Hrothgar, whose mead hall is under attack by the monstrous Grendel. The hero, Beowulf, bravely battles Grendel in hand-to-hand combat, tearing off the monster's arm and mortally wounding him. Soon after, he descends into a hellish mere to slay Grendel's vengeful mother, securing his fame and earning great rewards. Beowulf then returns home to Geatland, where he eventually becomes king and rules wisely for fifty years. In his old age, he faces his final challenge, a fearsome dragon, and though he defeats the beast, he is fatally wounded in the conflict, dying a legendary hero.
To bring the ancient tale of Beowulf into the 21st century, students were challenged to reimagine the epic narrative for a modern audience. This required them to preserve core epic conventions while translating them into contemporary contexts; for example, the epic hero Beowulf might become a renowned scientist, the vast setting could be a global pandemic, and the monstrous Grendel a seemingly unstoppable, man-made virus. To effectively tell their modernized stories, students had to research and master new technologies, moving beyond the traditional essay. They utilized digital illustration software to design compelling graphic novels, learned audio production to create immersive podcasts with sound effects and scoring, or used music composition programs to craft albums that chronicled their hero's deeds of great valor.
Definition: The central character of an epic who is a figure of great, sometimes superhuman, stature and national or international importance. They embody the ideals and values of their culture, such as courage, loyalty, and honor.
In Beowulf: Beowulf himself is the classic epic hero. He possesses the strength of thirty men, travels to a foreign land to perform great deeds, and represents the ultimate warrior-king of his people.
Definition: The action of the story takes place over a large geographical area, involving different nations or even supernatural realms. The setting is grand in scope and reflects the hero's far-reaching influence.
In Beowulf: The story spans across Scandinavia, from Beowulf's home in Geatland (southern Sweden) to King Hrothgar's kingdom in Denmark. The setting also includes supernatural locations like the monstrous, underwater mere where Grendel's Mother lives.
Definition: The involvement of gods, monsters, demons, or other supernatural beings who actively participate in the plot and interact with the human characters. These forces often represent the struggle between good and evil.
In Beowulf: The entire conflict is driven by supernatural adversaries. Beowulf battles Grendel and Grendel's Mother, two monstrous descendants of Cain, and ultimately faces a fire-breathing dragon. Fate (wyrd) and Christian God's will are also frequently referenced as powerful forces.
Definition: The plot is centered on heroic deeds and extraordinary feats that require superhuman courage and strength. These actions are far beyond what a normal person could accomplish.
In Beowulf: Beowulf's primary actions are all deeds of immense valor. This includes his decision to fight Grendel unarmed, his descent into the hellish mere to kill Grendel's Mother, and his final, fatal battle with the dragon as an old king.
Would you try to outcode a powerful AI that is taking over the world, even if you had promised yourself never to code again—because coding was the very thing that got your family killed?
We chose to create a graphic novel because we felt it was the best way to bring our story to life.
By combining both text and images, we could make the plot more engaging and easier to understand.
Using AI-generated pictures also allowed us to clearly illustrate emotions, and settings in a way that words alone might not fully capture.
We believed this format would not only hold the reader’s attention but also help them connect more deeply with the story.
We were trying to display Beowulf in a futuristic setting while keeping the core epic conventions. We chose to do a Graphic Novel and we think it was the best option because we were able to explain what happens through pictures and dialogue. We believe that gets the story across in the best way possible. This story is similar to Beowulf in that it follows a lone hero, immune to the threat that plagues others, who bravely enters the monster's lair to confront and slay a powerful, man-eating creature - ultimately triumphing, but at a tragic personal cost. It was a difficult process at first trying to create AI images. We used Adobe Firefly to create images at first but the AI was not being cooperative. It would take every word very literally and sometimes just generate unrelated stuff all together. We then switched to chat gpt to create most of the images. We put this all together using adobe express and eventually I published this novel online through globalcomix so the entire world could see our creation.
Our high concept premise consists of 5 songs based off of our story we made by referencing the outline of “Hitchhiker's Guide to a The Galaxy”
The medium we chose was a concept album explaining our story in 5 different songs.
The “big idea” that got us excited was using our own creativity to make a story into a fun story of our choice and get to make songs about it.
The reason we chose to do a concept album was because our group has experience with making music.
One thing a concept album can do that a film or book can’t do is tell people a story in such a short amount of time.
We were attempting to make a 3 minute long video of a story that resembles beowolf. we did this by using sora to make a bunch of clips of tom brady unretiring and winning the superbowl and put all these clips together to make one movie.