This was a world-less graphic novel I created for my BFA Illustration Graduation Thesis. It is named Hyōhaku-zai, which translated from Japanese means Bleach, because I wanted to tell a story using black ink with bleach, with the exception of a few panels done with gouache. The panels are read like Japanese Manga from right to left, because the setting of the story is the outskirts of Tokyo, with signs and labels in Japanese.

The idea was to freehand each panel over the course of three weeks and create a mounted collection on similarly painted panels covered with Plexiglas to simulate the idea that the character is being monitored from behind a screen. It's a story about the need for human connection and how life finds a way in the harshest of environments.

The story follows a man quarantined in order to shelter him from radiation due to a nuclear reactor exploding. The person, having been an astronaut in orbit at the time, is unaware of the condition of the world around him and repairs a broken computer to leave a log for his wife and son, whom he has no idea if they are alive or dead. We learn throughout the story that a solar flare has caused massive damage to the world's electric grid, thus knocking the protagonist's space craft into the atmosphere, causing it to crash. A medical drone that was undergoing repairs at the time of the flare detects the man's life signs and boots up to rescue him. Each panel represents a glimpse of a day as the man copes with his isolation, until he realizes the medical drone that is taking care of him is actual malfunctioning. Taking a chance with his life, he leaves the shielded confines of the hospital he was confined in, only to discover that the radiation has subsided and life has began anew.