When I started this project I was in a bad place, and therefore everything I was creating reflected this. Going home for a few days really helped me get over whatever was eating me up inside, and so my work isn't being quite so"emo"tional anymore, thank god.
Below are some of the pages I made in a small book. They were spontaneous and without pre thought, it was essentially my feelings being released on paper via pen.
At first I had hoped to make a series of books (and perhaps an all encompassing final book) that would include small autobiographical comics like these, and other things such as illustrating funny/ridiculous/attention seeking facebook statuses and observational and honest (read: harsh) comics. At first I was also obsessed with the idea that somewhere along the line I would want to draw monsters, as I usually do, and utterly feared that I'd go crazy if I were denied that for 3 months.
And so, for your reading pleasure and amusement, here is my original FMP proposal:
My goal for this project is to make a book that deals with the mundane. Sounds boring right? Well, by the mundane, I pretty much just mean life, and the stuff that goes on in it. Let's face it, unless you're an astronaut or the guy who owns Jurassic Park, pretty much everything that goes on in your life is kinda mundane. But because it's your life, the mundane becomes the norm, it becomes interesting, dramatic and something maybe even fun. And who's to say not even the super cool people don't go through the mundane. I bet after cool space missions the astronaut has to think about what he wants for dinner that night. Or sometimes the world's highest paid actor shrinks their favourite million billion $ sweater in the wash. And I bet even monsters have some mundane moments; they get a bit lonely or bored. When you think about it, the mundane, every day, day to day things, are actually pretty exciting if you look at them the right way. I guess that's why shows like Eastenders are so popular.
Perhaps mundane isn't the right word to use. Let's face it, whenever you read mundane it sounds pretty boring, and that's pretty much what the word means. For some reason it just feels right in this context. I guess the word I'm looking for is something like everyday.
Hollywood has long since been drawing out the story where regular Jo Bloggs goes on a crazy, fantastical adventure; battles bad girls, saves the princess and all that jazz. But unless your name is Skywalker it's unlikely you'll be blowing up a Deathstar anythime soon. And sooner or later, Jo Bloggs is gonna have to wash his socks that he was wearing the whole entire jouney, as people don't tend to change costume much in films, or probably end up having an argument with the princess, who might turn out to be a total bitch anyway.
This train of thought began in my options project, in which I had ghosts, imps and other creatures face rather mundane, but hopefully humourous problems, such as being thirsty. It doesn't sound exciting, does it; a comic about being thirsty. But it happened to a ghost, and ghosts are cool so that's okay. Even if the story hadn't happened to a ghost, it probably would have been okay too, except I would have had to change it, because the humour stems from the fact he is a ghost. The point I'm trying to make, is I could have made a story about a ghost haunting people and poltergeisting things up, but instead he was just thirsty. We can relate to the character, not necessarily the actual being a ghost ghost aspect, though we know what it's like to feel ignored sometimes, but because despite the simplicity of the challenge faced, it becomes a very big deal. I guess you could say I've always been a big fan of the everyday. I'm an avid fan of blogs and autobiographical comics, you don't need to go to a fantasy land full of crazy fauna and flora to tell a good story, you just need interesting characters.
However, despite what I've just written. I do love monsters. And I really enjoyed contrasting fantastical beasts in rather everyday situations in my Options project, and so it is something I hope to carry on.
I've roughly thought out some ideas I'd like to try for this project. One is to continue the cutesy monster comics, but to try and make longer, more thought out ones, perhaps ones that aren't so cutesy too. As a contrast I'd like to do one-off illustrations that tell a story within itself. Something I'd particularly like to do for the one off illustrations is to take facebook statuses I find particularly funny/pathetic/attention seeking (which are usually all of the above) statuses and illustrate them to make them even more funny/pathetic/attention seeking. I would like to create some autobiographical comics, possibly to deal with emotions/situations I have been feeling/experiencing recently. Below I have listed a small number of influences, many of which are autobiographical or observational comics.
For years I have been a fan of Terry Pratchett, who has turned the stereotypical fantasy world on it's head; he manages to take the most typical characters and stories of fantasy, and breath totally new life into them. Even Death is capable of facing the most mortal of problems within a Pratchett book, which is what I believe makes them such a fantastic read. This is something I wish to explore with my monster comics, to go beyond the conceptions of what we know about mythical creatures and try to understand them for their perspective a little better.
Illustrational influences include:
Tom Gauld
Ray Fenwick, (rayfenwick.ca)
Yuko Ota (johnnywander.com)
Kate Beaton (harkavagrant.com)
Jess Fink (jessfink.com)
Matt Boyd and Ian McConville (threepanelsoul.com)
natazilla.tumblr.com
hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
Nedroid.com
Nemi
Margaux Motin (margauxmotin.typepad.fr)
Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes
Kent Osbourne (http://kentosborne.tumblr.com)
Jeff Smith: Bone.
I plan to produce this project in an ongoing webcomic form, posting comics and illustrations online as I create them. I will probably use Tumblr for this as I like the simplicity of it's layouts and browsing. I also believe this means it will be easier for me to set myself goals, as I'll have to uphold to updating the blog. I aim to make a minimum of 4 illustrations/comics a week.. This should yield a minimum of around 48 images (but most likely more as many comics will span several pages and some weeks I'll make more than the minimum amount needed), which should be more than enough for the final book, which will be edited to included the best pieces. I also plan to create merchandise for the book/blog, which will possibly include; badges, postcards, laser-cut brooches, posters
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