Responsive: D&AD Shutterstock

The first thing I did was make a spider diagram of all the story archetypes and think of things in everyday life that fit into the categories. I thought this would be better than flat out choosing which three archetypes I was going to do as I could explore the scope of each of them and narrow it down. 

From this I decided to go with "Tragedy", "the Quest" and "Voyage and Return" as there were some ideas that I wanted to pursue and things I had some imagery already in my brain for. I really liked the idea of focusing on really mundane bits of everyday life rather than bigger events.

The quest: I decided on the quest for coffee, because it's relatable - lots of people get coffee in the morning (myself included) and sometimes it's a real quest getting that first coffee of the day into your system. I did a lot of roughing out of different compositions trying to find the optimum quest pose.

Tragedy: A few ideas I had for tragedy were -  Missing the train/bus in the morning, messing up your  makeup, and throwing up after a long night partying. Tragedies I think everyone can relate to. I thought about going for 'break ups' but I found that too cliché, I wanted to do something that's a smaller part of life and make it big!

Voyage and Return: The voyage and return is described as the hero going to a new land and returning with nothing but experience. I wasn't really sure how best to depict both the voyage and return in one image, but my idea was going to the city for a job interview.

An option I considered was one of these types of images that show a whole narrative, much like ye olde Adam and Eve type paintings that would show the whole story instead of just a section of it. 

Eden by Lucas Cranach

Though it would work for the one image I don't think this layout for one image as part of a set of three would hold up, so I'm trying to work out something more suitable so that the three images flow a bit better. I've done a few sketches of public transport type things as that can show the journey - and be a voyage or a return.