When Joely Corban began illustrating a children’s book about a young boy whose father returned from military deployment with a traumatic brain injury, the project was more than an artistic assignment. It was personal.

Now the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College digital art instructor is bringing that same compassion to an even more difficult subject: helping children understand the death of a parent by suicide.

Corban, who teaches at MGCCC’s Harrison County Campus, recently completed illustrations for My Daddy Isn’t Coming Home, a 34-page children’s book by author Anthony Knopps. Told through the eyes of a 5-year-old boy whose father dies by suicide while deployed with the Army, the book is the second collaboration between Corban and Knopps.

Their first book, My Daddy Has a Headache, was released in 2024 and follows Tommy, a 5-year-old whose father is living with the effects of a traumatic brain injury sustained during military service.

Corban’s involvement in that project began several years earlier when a mutual friend introduced her to Knopps, who was looking for an illustrator.

Knopps, himself a survivor of traumatic brain injury, initially asked whether Corban might have a student interested in illustrating the book. Instead, Corban volunteered.

The subject resonated deeply with her. During her first semester of college, Corban survived a traumatic brain injury caused by a near-fatal automobile accident.

“I was so touched by this,” Corban said. “I told him I would love to take the assignment, and I’d do it for free as long as we gave the proceeds to a nonprofit helping folks with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).”

Knopps agreed and proceeds from My Daddy Has a Headache benefit Blue Skies for the Good Guys and Gals, an organization serving veterans, active-duty service members, and their families.

“Of course I want to help veterans,” Corban said. “It was definitely a labor of love.”

After the first book was completed, Knopps approached Corban about illustrating another story in the series. This time, the subject would be suicide.

In My Daddy Isn’t Coming Home, the young narrator is the best friend and neighbor of the boy featured in the first book. Their fathers both serve in the Army, but in the second story, one father will not return from deployment because he has died by suicide.

For Corban, the importance of addressing the subject outweighed the difficulty of illustrating it.

“I know that suicide in some way has affected most people, and I don’t believe children should be left out of the conversation about it,” she said.

Finding the right visual language for that conversation, however, took time.

Corban initially experimented with more expressive artistic approaches but worried that the imagery could become frightening or overwhelming for a young child. Then she considered something familiar to many children: the simple digital characters and environments they encounter in video games.

She turned to Blender, 3D animation software also taught through MGCCC’s Simulation and Game Design program, to construct the book’s characters. The approach allowed her to create figures with a simplified, game-like appearance that young readers could recognize and understand.

“Kids today have electronic devices with them in the crib,” Corban said. “I felt like making this book something they may already be familiar with would help digest the topic better.”

Corban then combined the 3D models with techniques she teaches in the classroom.

After building the characters in Blender, she created backgrounds using GIMP and Adobe Photoshop, software used in MGCCC’s ART 1513 Introduction to Digital Art course. She designed her own crayon-style digital brush for the backgrounds and added cast shadows in GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) so the three-dimensional characters appeared to exist naturally within the book’s two-dimensional, crayon-like world.

The result brings together sophisticated digital tools and the visual simplicity of a child’s drawing.

Yet Corban said one of the greatest challenges was knowing when not to use art to heighten the emotion.

Despite the seriousness of the story, she deliberately resisted creating overly dramatic images.

“I didn’t want the illustrations to take away from the story, but instead enhance it,” she said. “I think that is really important when illustrating as opposed to creating out of one’s own expression. I believe the importance of illustrations is to bring the words to life, not to bring the artist’s concepts to life.”

Above all, Corban wanted young readers to see their own feelings reflected in the pages without being overwhelmed by them.

Her message to a child experiencing grief is simple.

“That it is okay to feel them. All of them,” she said. “And you aren’t alone. None of us are.”

Even a project dealing with grief and suicide had its lighter moments. Corban recalled sending Knopps illustrations featuring Army officers with no rank insignia on the characters whatsoever before the author gently suggested she take another look at the military details.

“He sent it back and said, ‘Maybe you should add the officer’s markings?’” Corban said with a laugh. “Knopps is such a nice guy he wouldn’t tell me I had made an error.”

The mistake was easily corrected, but the larger challenge of the project required considerably more thought: creating artwork that is honest enough to accompany a difficult story while remaining safe and approachable for the children who may need that story most.

For Corban, it is also an example of how the same digital tools students learn in an MGCCC classroom can be used far beyond a traditional art assignment. Blender, GIMP and Photoshop became tools for storytelling, empathy, and helping families navigate conversations that can be extraordinarily difficult to begin.

My Daddy Isn’t Coming Home has not yet been released. Corban said the book is expected to be traditionally published, although a publication date and publisher have not yet been announced.

“I truly hope that a publisher will give this book some mileage,” she said. “It is such an important subject.”