#spx 2014

[natalie-andrewson]

Hiiii  I thought earlier that I wouldn’t have a table at SPX but that has changed!!! WOW and HOW you say??? a miracle has happened and Ryan Cecil Smith and I have a table..somehow. Sayaka will be there too!!! This is my second time tabling with them this summer and they are awesome and this is great!!! We’re gonna have a lot of stuff and a lot of fun! YAH!  We’ll be at W50 woop woop! come say ‘Heyyyyyeyyeyyy’ :>

[sonialiao]

Ugggh sorry for radio silence guys. I’ve been busy with some really heavy deadlines recently (two more coming up too) and life has been such a mess.

Drew this little 5-page intro for an idea I’ve been working on for years, mostly trying to work out a new style to draw Zaen Well in (yes I’m still working on it, I’ve not abandoned it aahgh.) I tried making it self contained but it isn’t? If I have time I’m thinking of rounding out this story for SPX :)

Compass Rose: The four compass gods were cast to Earth thousands of years ago and forced to continuously reincarnate as humans. As they search for a way back home, each entity must go through their own struggles to consolidate their human lives and their “real” selves. Now, after hundreds of accumulated lives and the growing discontent between them, it’s becoming harder and harder to remember what is home...

Featuring Kenrik Vayne (North), Nathan Juniper (West), Astoria Jenkins (South), and Lois “Lulu” Mizuki (East)

[mrcowbird]

Ellie of the Stars, Birthdays, and Polishing Rocks

I first met Shoona Browning on the first day of SPX 2014. I took a card for her comic Ellie of the Stars, made some pleasant chit chat, and went off on my way. That night, I checked out her comic.

I wasn’t particularly impressed.

At that point, Ellie of the Stars was just getting started. The plot had barely advanced. There was nothing really to sink my teeth into. I thought the art was fine, but certainly not enough to win me over. I felt a little disappointed even because Shoona seemed great and I wanted to go tell her how much I liked her work! But I kinda... DIDN’T?

Luckily for me, in addition to getting her card, i also picked up a mini-comic she had on the table, Abijah.

Abijah is a story about a kid who leaves their home and takes a journey though a forest. It is wonderful and challenging and dark. I loved it. I really loved it. I certainly had more than enough to go back to Shoona’s table on SPX Day 2 and compliment her work with sincerity, which is pretty much one of the most rewarding things you can do at SPX.

We talked more. Shoona talked about how Abijah was a children’s horror comic. She displayed a refusal to underestimate kids that reminded me of Maurice Sendak. His approach to children’s books, which I absolutely love is something like, paraphrasing, “I don’t write children’s books. I write books and people tell me they are for children”. I was on Team Shoona at this point, though not really on Team Ellie.

I started following Shoona on twitter, and one of the things that struck me was her passion for Ellie of the Stars. She believes so much in her story and loves her characters so much. It was actually seemed a little odd at first, because Shoona would talk about all the great things she had planned, but there was really nothing in the comic at the time to suggest these great things were coming. But, having read Abijah, I believed her; I kept reading.

Following Shoona on twitter is really inspiring. She has an earnest passion for comics that makes me want to make better comics myself. She once posted this series of tweets that I loved so much that I signed up for Storify just to save it.

Since she posted that, and gradually over time, Ellie of the Stars has progressed dramatically. The art has improved by leaps and bounds, and I am starting to see and love the characters as Shoona sees and loves them. She’s also put out another short comic, Fleurish, which is charming. I am so excited to read what she does next.

There are, of course, things not to be optimistic about. Shoona has ambitions to make a living off her comic, and despite Shoona’s passion, talent, and hard work, this might never happen. Almost all cartoonists don’t figure it out. That Shoona’s time dedicated to making a paycheck is not also dedicated to making wonderful comics means we are absolutely missing out.

But on the whole, tremendous optimism. I am a better cartoonist because Shoona exists, and I think, if you keep an eye on her, you are going to see some amazing stuff.

Even though Shoona has not “made it”, I think there are some takeaways from her work that I think anyone would benefit from:

Having an online presence can be helpful in getting people to care about you and your work. Do not, though, take from this that you should go out there and copy the style, energy, or content of twitter.com/megaloshoon. Shoona’s twitter account is great because it is genuine and sincere. If you are going to be online to market your comic, your genuineness is going to shine through more than marketing strategy.

Promoting your online comic before it is much underway doesn’t really do much to help you. As passionate as Shoona was about Ellie of the Stars, I didn’t really get it or care about it until it had a good number of pages under its belt.

Conversely, if you believe in your work, people will start to believe in it too. If you don’t believe in your work, and you want other people to, improve your work until you do!

Ultimately, the most important thing you can do is make quality work. I like Shoona, but if I didn’t like her work, I would just never bring it up because I don’t want to say false things, and I don’t really want to say mean things. More than web presence or personal charisma, it was Abijah that made me care.

Ellie of the Stars turns 1 today, and if you want to get it and yourself a birthday present, consider checking it out. Shoona has a few comics up on gumroad which you should check out too.

If you see her at a comic convention, you should say hello.

[shmuffalo]

"Breaking Against the Cliffs," my contribution to the Terrestrial anthology edited by Amanda Scurti