#ryan armand

[kiwisbymirror-blog]

This is it, Based of the fourth installment of minus!

see it in hd on NewGrounds

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699918

Also i am planning to do this one next

Not right now though i am taking a short break to work on other projects

If anybody wants to get involved in a potential full length minus adaptation Contact me here, newgrounds or anonymously here

http://www.guestcity.com/cgi-bin/sign.fcgi?book=KiwiEnquirer

[quanticat]

Modern Fried Snake by Ryan Armand. cover (from print volumes) and excerpt above. I give a bit of background on Armand, and then some vague comments on the comic, before linking to posts with rare color pages included in the physical volumes of Modern Fried Snake that cannot (to the best of my knowledge) be found elsewhere online.

A bit of preliminary information: Ryan Armand is something of an enigma. He’s an Eisner nominated comic artist, who’s been listed as a favorite by many generally well-known & well-regarded webcomic artists such as Ryan North, Randall Munroe, and K.C. Green. Armand even featured as a guest comic on North’s strip Dinosaur Comics. Some of Armand’s well known works consisted of Minus, Ribald Youth, Great, and Modern Fried Snake.

Armand quietly disappeared from the internet sometime around the end of 2015 (see discussions here & here). Early 2016, Armand’s website domain (kiwisbybeat – here’s a snapshot of what it used to look like) expired and he hasn’t been publicly heard from since. Dedicated fans have since put together an online archive of what work of his they could scrape together, as well as a mirror site where most of Armand’s comics, some even complete or essentially complete, can be found. Modern Fried Snake is thankfully *essentially* complete online. [Having said that, the backup site seems to be having issues.. Here is a direct link to a backup of the comic on the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/ModernFriedSnake. I don’t know how complete this copy is, as it’s not the one I have downloaded on my personal computer. If it’s missing large sections let me know and I can upload my near-complete digital copy]

I don’t want to say too much about the comic; I’d rather let you discover it yourself and form your own impressions. But, since I’ve said so much already, It seemed appropriate that I at least record a few thoughts. Regarding some of the stylistic elements of Modern Fried Snake that make it (in my opinion) stand out, Armand has this to say in an interview from 2012 –

Many of your comics such as Modern Fried Snake feature very minimal dialogue, allowing for the images to tell the story, what is so attractive about this style of storytelling?

Hard to say. I don’t have a special interest in comics with minimal dialogue and I don’t think I’ve made many deliberately silent comics. It’s probably just a side effect of de-emphasizing plots. So rather than being the focus of most events in a story, the plot chugs along silently beneath the surface as time progresses. Along those lines I try to play most scenes evenly to let readers decide on how significant anything is, or maybe get them to stop worrying about trying to figure out how important to the story a given scene of piece of dialogue is at all. So scenes that might be edited to save space in other stories end up being focused on and the camera gets to linger around following silent scenes instead of rushing past them towards the next event.

His comments here underscore many elements that make this comic so compelling; it’s driven less by the action of plot – rising conflict etc., instead focusing on the interactions, conflicts, and emotions that arises naturally in characters’ everyday lives, and on developing the story’s atmosphere. Gradually while reading, you become knowledgeable about the characters background, and about the setting of the world, but it’s prolonged, and makes for an immersive and atypical reading experience. Throughout the work, the character’s personalities really come through so strongly it’s quite impactful, especially as you get to see the main character interacting with those around her, and see the strength of their bonds. It can be charming, and humorous at times, this story of ‘modern girls in the big pepper’. Additionally, Armand uses varying art styles and panelling to great effect – consider the following pages (a random sample with no *spoilers*)

My particular desire in posting this, aside from drawing attention to the works of one of my favorite authors who is quite under appreciated, was to make available the color pages Armand did for the two print volumes of Modern Fried Snake he produced before he disappeared. These are (to my knowledge) not available online, as he drew them especially for the physical release. I will be posting them separately for each volume linked here – Vol. 1 & and Vol. 2. 

Here’s a picture of the nice spine design ~ 

Additional References:

Armand’s tumblr kiwisbybeat (still up).

Armand’s page on the Lost Media Wiki.

Another archive.

Archived 4chan post about Armand & the mirror site.

I may try to edit this post to flesh this information out a bit more in the future.

[quanticat]

Modern Fried Snake Vol. 2 Color pages by Ryan Armand. For more information, see the main post here. My apologies for the low quality images.

[kiwisbymirror-blog]

Coming soon to NewGrounds

So i had written a detailed post about the new direction im taking this and my browser crashed FFS.

I lost my data BUT I HAD AN ANTIVIRUS!

so im going to be brief because i don't feel like writing that up again.

im whipping most of the posts here because they are mainly filler to get this blog on the search results and there isnt much there besides juicy text for search engines to munch on

if you must see it

http://archive.is/kiwisbymirror.tumblr.com

I will be doing some more animations but im going to take a quick break to pursue other projects, in the mean time if anybody want to work on a long Minus adaptation.

this may revolve around more detailed story boards and potential collaborators if i get any interested people contacting me after i publish the animation,

more detailed post coming soon

[kiwisbymirror-blog]

Here is the first scene from Minus: The rebellious foodstuffs! haven properly shaded her arm and i’m probably going to redo the moving foods completely. Its all about getting a good balance between a painted style and something that can look the same in many different pictures(frame by frame) The next scene will be her running to a door opening it letting the food outside and her following it so she can “play with her food” outside haven't started on that yet and there is still much more to polish on this!

[quanticat]

Modern Fried Snake Vol. 1 Color pages by Ryan Armand. For more information, see the main post here. My apologies for the low quality images.

[awake-atnight]

anyone have any idea where to purchase a physical copy of Minus. by Ryan Armand? The website that hosted the comic is down and the author has been MIA :(

[wiratomkinder]

Minus is a fantastically imaginative and somewhat macabre webcomic that I can't recommend enough.