1. Please tell us your author "origin story."
I have always had an interest in art and drawing but like many people was discouraged at a certain point for practical reasons.
I was always interested in animation and story-telling, although I did not get into comics until I was in my mid-20's when a friend introduced me to the book, Blankets.
At the time, my mind was completely blown. I had quit drawing around 16 because I felt like and was told by well-meaning mentors at the time that I didn't have talent and there wouldn't be a future in it. I went to school for graphic design and did terribly at it before working for a couple years at a beer company. I had a friend and mentor, Kellie, at the time who listened to me when I said I did love drawing but wouldn't do it because of my lack of skill and she gave me some comics and encouraged me to go for it. At that time I went all in on becoming a comics inker. I had a webcomic when everybody had a webcomic some years ago and I wanted to work with ink and digital color and stumbled on a small school in Florida doing a workshop for comics. They had a library of comics and I got to really immerse myself in different styles and techniques. One of the teachers did a focus on looking at old paintings which at first I lost interest in but the one lecture on 19th century paintings changed everything for me. I studied French comics and loved how Lewis Trondheim used watercolor to color his comics. I decided to try it and I never looked back. I became instantly obsessed- pardon the pun- like a fish in water consuming all I could of 19th century paintings and watercolor artists. The biggest change for me was the discovery of Cyril Pedrosa's Portugal. I basically quit comics after reading it. I stopped the webcomic I was working on and started doing drills and academic drawing and painting exercises all day- every day eventually finding my way back to little journal comics trying to take all these lessons I had been consuming in old paintings and figure out how to use them in comics. All of my professional comics work through the past few years stemmed from the mountain of rejections I got from Kodi when I first pitched it, which was a lesson in itself. It felt like a journey and the book Kodi was the result of my exploration.
2. Kodi has such a unique visual design. What inspired this?
Two main principles guided my concept and execution of the art in Kodi. The first is that I tried to always consider the world through the lens of the protagonist. I want the reader to get a similar feeling to the main girl walking through this world. Do you remember when you're a kid and you hold your Dad's hand, or finger rather, and everything just seems so big? I tried to distort and design the world around that idea. The bear is larger than life. The grandma is more rotund and men or people's features, like forearms, are large or squished thin to make the world feel larger and provide contrast in character design.
Secondly the world is built on shape feelings which is a time-honored principle you find exemplified in Disney and other great character designs. Not to get too much into the boring sausage-making information but the circle is generally a more soft and friendly shape so the grandmother is build entirely out of concentric circles focused on third-placement and the structural golden spiral equation. It makes her feel odd yet friendly and loveable. Triangles are more generally used as danger or off-kilter where squares are generally more unchanging and slow (think old man from UP!) Because I wanted Katya to represent a girl that is off-kilter but kind and loveable at heart, her design is built on the juxtaposition of circle against triangle. She wears a jacket that is generally a large triangle and for the first 3/4 of the book she is generally posed in a way that structures her lower portion in triangle against her round head.
3. Please tell us about your creative process.
My creative process is built on a lot of life - drawing and painting outside of comics. I attend as many live life-drawing sessions as possible I generally collect plein air paintings and until the pandemic was an avid teacher locally of plein air painting (outdoors, on location) I spend a great deal of my time studying 19th century paintings and the tools they used for storytelling. People like Jean Leon Gerome and John Singer Sargent are some favorites. I love to do small copies of their work to develop intuition for shape and color mixing. My focus is light. Lighting a scene is one of the strongest story-telling elements that interests me.
Writing is the most difficult part for me. I'm not very good with words as you can probably tell from my previous answers so I rely on story-boarding and writing key scenes. I have to see the story and then add words as reading and writing has always been difficult for me.
4. What draws you to the comics medium?
I deeply love the completely open sand-box that is comics. I love that you could essentially do the same thing I spent years on developing Kodi with just stick-figures because to me, it is all the same. Shape and symbols as tools for connecting with other humans.
Whether I'm painting a location in front of me or trying to draw comics the principle is similar. I'm trying to take the immense complexity of the world and condense it into something clear and readable to tell a story. When painting a figure or a landscape I have value as my tool for simplification. With cartoons I have shape and symbol and that tool box can be used to any degree of complexity to share a story.
Every cartoonist has a toolbox, to borrow an analogy from Stephen King's On Writing. You have shape, composition, light, emotion, words and you use them to solve whatever story problem. With comics, I can take the story anywhere and at any time I can imagine.
5. What is your message for young comics-makers?
Enjoy the process and focus on whatever makes you passionate. Try to find a source of good clean fuel for your tank. For me, I have a safe-harbor in traditional painting. It's a place I can go with no editors and no expectations. I can grow and experiment on my own terms and I don't have to share it with anyone. I have also discovered a deep passion for European art of the late 19th century but it wouldn't have happened if I decided I was going to be an inker and only focused on that. Try out various art-forms and discover your own mentors to influence your stylistic choices. Finally- on a technical standpoint- learn to love life drawing. You may not have any interest in "realistic" drawing but drawing from life helps on a number of different levels. You can increase your drafting skills and also your connection to the world around you. It also increases your ability to sit and draw and if you want to make comics... you're going to have to learn to sit and draw... a lot. My suggestion... and how I started drawing on advice from a friend is to get a secret sketchbook no one is allowed to see. Draw only in ink from the world you observe in front of you and don't erase anything. Draw the cat, then the chair, then the ground and a door and the dishes in the sink and a car and just anything you see in front of you. The purpose is to learn problem solving and working with your lines instead of seeing anything as a "mistake." It also gets you past the fear of the blank page as well as the attachment to individual drawings. Lastly, as you move to more professional-level work, develop a circle of trust you can share ideas with and be open and willing to accept criticism from.
6. What message would you send to teachers who are planning to use your book in class?
Well- thank you, humbly and sincerely for thinking the book is worth sharing.
I think the thing I'd like to impart to teachers is that the book is essentially a metaphor for me and my own journey into rediscovery of art. I think that every kid and person is a hero with their own fascinating Campbellian journey that can express through whatever art-form spins off of their life. Mine just happens to be watercolor.
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