Ahh I love how you weaved reality with the video game! It was a really impactful way of talking about the stuff going on right now and how it makes us feel (I relate a lot particularly living in Aus as well!)
I also really relate to what you said about discovering your story as you’re writing it and how it sort of becomes a collaborative process with yourself and the page. Love how you articulated that!
Thank you! And it's a weird, guilty space to occupy at the moment. I always feel an impulse to apologize these days when I tell someone I'm American. I mean, a stronger impulse than I used to have.
That comic was intense. Your observation about the US in Late Stage Dementia was brilliant.
Reading about your process of creating as a person with aphantasia, was inspiring, thoughtful, and gave me food for thought.
This morning I was writing in my journal about an experience I had yesterday. There are no photos of the experience and that made me contemplate how I could make a comic of the experience.
I want to make something quickly, but my art tends to come so much more slowly. Like you, I love the feeling of what I can't see in my mind's eye appearing like magic.
I also get impatient with my challenges at making the images appear.
I actually opened your post today because I wanted to study how you create your sketches. I feel like I get so caught up in details and struggle to let go and simplify.
Thank you for sharing your art and your thoughts and realizations about how you create.
I'm glad that description of the process rang true!
I also get caught up on details and I have to really force myself NOT to spend time on things. I tend to over work things and build up expectations that always leave me feeling disappointed in my drawing.
I prefer to aim for the shittiest, fastest version and then, if it's better than that, I can be happily surprised rather than frustrated.
Keen to hear how you problem solve this for yourself!
Survival horror mode is definitely where it’s at right now, no matter where you are in the world. Your depiction is brilliant! (I have nothing to apologize for, as I would have voted for a dented can of cheese whiz that I found at the dollar store over that demented fake-tanned piece of shit money-grubbing attention whore. Oh sorry, is my hate showing?) Anywho….I love your style, and it’s a good reminder to stop watching the news and just think about my unemployed adult kids, my aging husband, and that strange pain I keep getting in my left foot. I think I’ll send myself to my room and draw now. 😬 Thank you for the inspiration!
You’ve captured that sense of horror and eerie unreality that haunts me now. How can this mess even be possible? I love how you switched from playing a scary game to being in the game, and the haunted-house way of displaying the headlines. Nominating you for the Eisner Pulitzer Booker Award for Best Two-Track Political Comic.
I've always had a similar inability to see the whole picture from the beginning of a creative endeavour. I'm an improviser, and sometimes it's OK to just create on the fly (in performance, say) and other times you find some cool stuff and then re-edit at the end to tighten it up, add foreshadowing etc.
I love the idea of exploratory solo work like this being a kind of collaboration. I'd not thought of that before, but it extends really well to musical improvisation!
But anyway, that creeping horror, the horror of watching but not being able to do anything, that's it, that's where we all are.
That collaborative feeling being the same with music makes total sense!
My partner is a song writer and musician and it's always really interesting talking through process with her. I always feel like abstraction and music have a lot in common, and it's odd (or maybe really not odd at all) how applicable and useful we find each other's feedback even though we work in different disciplines.
And a hard ME TOO on the allowing the story to tell itself without too much planning. It’s a high wire act though without any digital knowledge of how to amend or change stuff or reverse out lettering etc.
Thanks Debi! And yes... the writing! I've been a bit brain dead the last month or two with teaching and parenting in full swing, so I ended up writing the text after the images and then kind of stitching it all together, Frankenstein's monster style.
Aaaaand lettering is so hard! I rewrite this thing, like, three times!
Yeaaaaah it's a shitshow here, that's for sure. I like the way you blended the horror elements in this comic, and I think you're right that allowing your ideas to flow freely, to have that collaboration rather than a rigid plan, is probably what brought this together so well! ✨
Bit annoying how much horror content there is to use out there at the moment. For every horror I chose to use, there were another 50 that I didn't. Spoiled for choice!
Ahh I love how you weaved reality with the video game! It was a really impactful way of talking about the stuff going on right now and how it makes us feel (I relate a lot particularly living in Aus as well!)
I also really relate to what you said about discovering your story as you’re writing it and how it sort of becomes a collaborative process with yourself and the page. Love how you articulated that!
Thank you! And it's a weird, guilty space to occupy at the moment. I always feel an impulse to apologize these days when I tell someone I'm American. I mean, a stronger impulse than I used to have.
That comic was intense. Your observation about the US in Late Stage Dementia was brilliant.
Reading about your process of creating as a person with aphantasia, was inspiring, thoughtful, and gave me food for thought.
This morning I was writing in my journal about an experience I had yesterday. There are no photos of the experience and that made me contemplate how I could make a comic of the experience.
I want to make something quickly, but my art tends to come so much more slowly. Like you, I love the feeling of what I can't see in my mind's eye appearing like magic.
I also get impatient with my challenges at making the images appear.
I actually opened your post today because I wanted to study how you create your sketches. I feel like I get so caught up in details and struggle to let go and simplify.
Thank you for sharing your art and your thoughts and realizations about how you create.
Thanks Sarah!
I'm glad that description of the process rang true!
I also get caught up on details and I have to really force myself NOT to spend time on things. I tend to over work things and build up expectations that always leave me feeling disappointed in my drawing.
I prefer to aim for the shittiest, fastest version and then, if it's better than that, I can be happily surprised rather than frustrated.
Keen to hear how you problem solve this for yourself!
So great!!
Tell me da name of the game right to my face, thank you and love.
Survival horror mode is definitely where it’s at right now, no matter where you are in the world. Your depiction is brilliant! (I have nothing to apologize for, as I would have voted for a dented can of cheese whiz that I found at the dollar store over that demented fake-tanned piece of shit money-grubbing attention whore. Oh sorry, is my hate showing?) Anywho….I love your style, and it’s a good reminder to stop watching the news and just think about my unemployed adult kids, my aging husband, and that strange pain I keep getting in my left foot. I think I’ll send myself to my room and draw now. 😬 Thank you for the inspiration!
Man! This is great stuff! So glad I discovered your work!
Thanks being out there! I also dug the cute dog!
Horrific. Brilliant!!
You captured the dread perfectly
You’ve captured that sense of horror and eerie unreality that haunts me now. How can this mess even be possible? I love how you switched from playing a scary game to being in the game, and the haunted-house way of displaying the headlines. Nominating you for the Eisner Pulitzer Booker Award for Best Two-Track Political Comic.
Hahaha! I've never won one of those but, if I can, do you mind if we throw in an A+ Masters from Harvard Yale?
Thanks Linda! x
Beautifully done, Fionn.
I've always had a similar inability to see the whole picture from the beginning of a creative endeavour. I'm an improviser, and sometimes it's OK to just create on the fly (in performance, say) and other times you find some cool stuff and then re-edit at the end to tighten it up, add foreshadowing etc.
I love the idea of exploratory solo work like this being a kind of collaboration. I'd not thought of that before, but it extends really well to musical improvisation!
But anyway, that creeping horror, the horror of watching but not being able to do anything, that's it, that's where we all are.
That collaborative feeling being the same with music makes total sense!
My partner is a song writer and musician and it's always really interesting talking through process with her. I always feel like abstraction and music have a lot in common, and it's odd (or maybe really not odd at all) how applicable and useful we find each other's feedback even though we work in different disciplines.
That was stunning. Thankyou.
And a hard ME TOO on the allowing the story to tell itself without too much planning. It’s a high wire act though without any digital knowledge of how to amend or change stuff or reverse out lettering etc.
Thanks Debi! And yes... the writing! I've been a bit brain dead the last month or two with teaching and parenting in full swing, so I ended up writing the text after the images and then kind of stitching it all together, Frankenstein's monster style.
Aaaaand lettering is so hard! I rewrite this thing, like, three times!
Yeaaaaah it's a shitshow here, that's for sure. I like the way you blended the horror elements in this comic, and I think you're right that allowing your ideas to flow freely, to have that collaboration rather than a rigid plan, is probably what brought this together so well! ✨
Ah thanks man!
Bit annoying how much horror content there is to use out there at the moment. For every horror I chose to use, there were another 50 that I didn't. Spoiled for choice!