These past few months I've been busy applying to jobs and revamping my portfolio site. You can find it here:www.pizamarcomics.com

Updates from the Summer and My Senior Thesis!

Over the summer I interned as a UI/UX designer at a small tech startup in Ithaca. I learned a lot about designing user interfaces, but I also managed to find time to draw comics and make some illustrations.

The comic I created is the latest entry on the "Comics" tab.

Below is one of my favorite illustrations from the summer, it was inspired by a picture of a building n Vladivostok, Russia.

I'm also thesising this year! I'm designing a web-comics platform that addresses the usability issues faced by a lot of web-comics and then creating my own comics to apply to this platform. I'm in the process of creating one of these comics. Below are some studies I did of characters and of the scenery for this comic strip.

I finally uploaded all of the work I created last semester! I added a bunch of  new pages to organize the work I did into categories (you can check them out at the top). This semester I'm taking a 3D modelling class so I'll be adding a new section to cover that as well. One of my goals this semester is to make regular posts about the work I do in class and to upload one sketch every one or two weeks.

For this post I'd like to talk about some of my favorite work I made last semester.

Joe Strummer

The Leatherboy/Rick Rodell/Milan Radenkovic

The above are two monotypes I did using litho ink and copic markers. The first is a portrait of Joe Strummer of the Clash. I started listening to the Clash when I was nine and they are still my favorite band. The second is a portrait of The Leatherboy a.k.a Rick Rodell a.k.a Milan Radenkovic. He was a garage rock musician during the sixties. He worked with a variety of other garage rock bands such as the Head Shop and High Voltage. He died after a car accident at the age of 29. Here are some of my favorite songs that he either sang or wrote:

Here are links to some of his other songs:
Winter Time
Jersey Thursday
I Feel Love Comin' On--The Head Shop

It took me a while, but as promised here is a post about some of the behind the scenes work that goes into my comics! Before I go any further into this post, I guess I should write about the stage I'm at with my web comic. The nature of the web format allows the comic to have multiple, branching plots. If it were published in print, the plot would have to unfold in a linear manner. However, with the web format, one page can link to multiple pages, allowing the plot to progress in multiple directions and allowing the me to create and the reader to explore various sub-stories and sub-plots. The problem I'm having right now is trying to create a story that would go along with that plot structure. I've gone back multiple times and re-worked the concept for my story. I'm still not 100% sure in which direction it will progress.

       I wrote a short story and then modeled the comic after it. In a lot of my previous comics, I've had some sense of how I would like the plot to turn out but I never had a set story in mind and I created the plot as I went a long. As a result, the story quickly got out of hand. Although I like having an established plot in this case, I found that it doesn't allow me to be as spontaneous. I'm trying to find a balance now between having a coherent plot and making room for spontaneous moments. 

        I also do a lot of sketches of various characters and scenery beforehand in order to get a sense of the world I'm creating. Although I've started working on the comic, I'm still not 100% sure about the world that it portrays. I guess I would like it to resemble our world for the most part, but I would also like to include a variety of surreal, odd moments. When drawing, I usually tend to have a pretty surreal style and I would really like to make room for that in my comic.

         This is just a study of some of the characters. Marlena is at the bottom left, her room-mate, Helga, is at the top left and her friend Velia is to the right. 

       

Below are a couple of sketches of characters who I thought could inhabit this world. At this point, I'm not really sure whether I'm going to integrate them into the plot. 

   

It's been a crazy semester so far and I've been trying to find room to work on my comic. Luckily, my school is having a short break now, so that should give me some room to work on it. I'll hopefully be able to post a new page in the next few days. In the meantime, check out my comic at www.pizamarcomics.com!

Web-Comic!

I spent this summer working on a web-comic. I'm trying to include some interactive elements so that the reader can choose to read stories within in the story or stories that branch off from the story. The pages are in black and white but the areas in color are clickable and link to other stories. So far only a few pages are up but more will be up soon! I'm also going to add a few more blog posts regarding the behind the scenes work put into the comic!

Here's the link to the site:
www.pizamarcomics.coml

A Comic that Looks Normal But Isn't

                   The Frank Book by Jim Woodring is one the most unique graphic novels in the market. It has absolutely no dialogue and sparse narrative text. What I find even more interesting, however, is that some scenes are impossible to describe verbally. If you do try to describe what is happening in the panels using words, whatever you say will come out as utter gibberish. As a result, The Frank Book highlights the one characteristic of  comics that separates them from all other forms of expression--a visual form of communication that uses universally understandable symbols and that does not need any previous schooling or knowledge to be understood. The only thing one needs to understand The Frank Book or any other comic, for that matter, is the ability to follow a narrative created by a series of images.

                  The protagonist of the Frank Book is Frank, a beaver-like hamster-like creature that has purple fur and that walks on two legs. Woodring's readers have determined that Frank is about 11 years old and that he is innocent but not noble. His best friend is Pupshaw. She has a canine-like loyalty towards Frank that causes her to follow him and to protect him from trouble. She is shaped like a triangular polygon, has eyes, lips, paws and a raccoon-like tail. Other characters are Pushpaw, the male counterpart to Pupshaw, Whim and Manhog. Pushpaw is also shaped like a polygon of some sort and has eyes, lips, paws and a stubby tail. Although most of the characters in the Frank Book are morally ambiguous, Whim is a truly evil character. He is a stick figure with horns, a moon for a face and often tries to get Frank into trouble. Woodring describes Manhog as a "lamentable father-figure". Although Manhog is often cruel and cowardly, the reader is at times tempted to feel sympathetic towards him because he endures cruelty from the other characters.

Frank

Pushpaw and Pupshaw looking at a bizarre creature holding flags.

Whim tortures Manhog.

            One of my favorite examples from the Frank Book is "Frank and the Truth About Plenitude". In this short novella, Frank interacts with these jellyfish-like creatures that float in the air (see picture below so you can see what I'm talking about). What I find really fascinating is that there is no way one can fully describe these creatures using words because they do not resemble any creature in nature or in our mythology. Yet, we are able to understand how Frank interacts with these creatures just by following the sequence of images.   Frank grabs them, opens a hole in one of them, places his feet into the hole and rides on the creature until it flies him to a building on top of a hill. We are able to learn a little bit about the nature of these creatures even though we have no idea what they are.

Frank watching "jellyfish-like" creatures

The Drops of God

Is it possible to make an entire comic just about wine?

I just finished reading the first volume of The Drops of God series, written by Tadashi Agi and drawn by Shu Okimoto. The story centers on Shizuku Kanzaki, the son of renowned wine critic Yutaka Kanzaki. Shizuku has had a strained relationship with his father and has not seen him for a number of years. He even started working in a beer company to spite his father. However, he is forced to visit his old home after he receives a call from his father's lawyer, telling him that his father has passed away. There, Shizuku finds out that he will not be able to inherit his father's fortune or his legendary wine collection if he does not beat Issei Tomine (a young wine critic--aka The Prince of Wine) in a wine tasting contest where each must identify twelve heavenly wines known as the Twelve Apostles and one wine that stands above them all, The Drops of God.


This poses quite a challenge to Shizuku because although he is the son of a famous wine critic, he has never tasted a drop of wine in his life. However, with the help of Miyabi Shinohara, he discovers that he has unusually strong senses of taste and smell.This is most likely due to the fact that his father forced him to chew on different kinds of wood, soil and fruits as a child and made him compare their tastes and aromas.

 Agi and Okimoto use some very interesting techniques to keep the reader interested. Although the manga is about wine, the story is constructed like a shonen martial arts comic.

First, the hero, Shizuku, is faced with a challenge that he has slim chances of winning. The challenge  provides him with the opportunity to reach closure with his troubled relationship with his father. It also sets him on the path to finding his true destiny--becoming a legendary wine critic.

Not only is the element of a challenge present, but Shizuku encounters a mentor in the form of an elderly man who resides in a homeless shelter and who keeps a box of legendary wines buried in the ground. This man also knew his father. Shizuku also encounters various characters that present him with challenges that will prepare him for his battle with Issei, his number one enemy.

Doesn't this narrative sound familiar? Replace wine with the "sword" and wine critic with "warrior" and you've got a classic battle narrative.

 Shizuku's mentor makes him compare two glasses of wine.

In some cases even the manner in which the panels are divided resemble a shonen martial arts manga. For example, when Shizuku first encounters Issei in his father's home and is asked to identify a wine in order to keep his father's home for the duration of the contest (he loses this battle--he doesn't drink the wine), the panels close-up on his face. This emphasizes the intensity of his glare at Issei. It reminded me of an underdog fighter staring at his formidable opponent before they begin to battle.

Although the employment of this style of narrative creates a lot of drama, it leaves me wondering how the series would have turned out if the authors had taken a more subdued approach to telling the story.The summary on the back described the manga as "a page-turner that's not about superheroes but people with jobs to keep". Although not incorrect, I feel like this description is a bit misleading. The narrative style employed by the author is very reminiscent of styles used to tell stories about superheroes, martial artists and fighters, etc. As a result, it takes away from the "real" feeling this story could have had.