First post and free to view!! An example with 'Big Sister' (Patreon)

Hi!! I'll start properly posting new work and process for each tier starting on the first of February but here's a taste of what's to come and what kind of structure I have in mind for each tier...

For the $1 tier I'll probably start with discussing my personal/emotional process behind the project.

Big Sister

Big Sister was my first two color comic, made in 2016 for MoCCA arts festival in New York. It's only a few pages long but that felt right for how much time I had to create it and what I wanted to convey. It's about needing an older female role model and making her up when she's not immediately obvious or accessible. Sometimes that means giving her magic. 

I think it's really hard to sit down and make a small thing when you want to talk about an issue that's been itching to get out. Especially when it's really just an experiment and when you don't have the time or money to really make it. This was a great opportunity to test out this concept and get it out of my system for a minute, see it in a real context and feel like I had control over it's production. Since I've made this book I've realized there's SO much more I wanted to add. It's comforting to know I can draw from this story for future large-scale projects and dive deeper into it with a favorite character. 

This was the first of what I feel have been little tests. Each zine has been an EP for maybe a longer Album project I'm saving for when I have the time to properly work on it. Growing up I wrote a lot of poetry and song lyrics to work out what I needed to spew and it was *very* high school and *very* dramatic, but that time was my most productive and I cherish the amount of writing I did on a daily basis. Now I draw on the memory of those quiet moments, locked in my bedroom, to figure out what I want to say in my comic work. Sitting down in a quiet space with a clean desk, knowing I have full control over what I can produce, is refreshing and exciting. I usually come out of one of those (unfortunately rare) moments with a thousand projects to start but with one clear underlying feeling that I know I need to pursue. I'll toss open a blank photoshop file and list make with side doodles, expanding the canvas as needed, until I know where to begin and what I clearly want to say. I hope this info is useful to you and encourages you to also make little EP comics!

For higher tiers: 

I'll share the differences between my digital Photoshop files and my Risographed finishes in photos with side by side comparisons of value structure in the colors. I'll share how I laid out my Big Sister file and how I look back on that file now and wish I'd done some parts differently. I lost a lot of my process, merging down layers and basically destroying any tweaking ability without damaging gradients and line work. I obviously wish I hadn't but I felt like at the time it was the easiest way to keep my file simple and less overwhelming. I was still working on the organization of each layer and didn't account for the problems I might encounter while printing. I've learned *so much* since then, in photoshop and organizing myself in general, something I'm constantly struggling with. I'll share some common Riso mistakes, some warnings of what not to do in the comic making process (things I did specifically with Big Sister) and some production tips that helped me make a bunch of these suckers quickly. 

I'll add more images and more detailed explanation for this on Feb 1! I hope this gives you a better idea of what to expect, please let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see from me! 

Also, a PDF will be included for the PDF Tier!