It's always been a dream of mine, to create something bottom-to-top mine.
And for my graduation project (also known as "Capstone"), I was finally able to do just that, igniting an inextinguishable flame and drive in me to continue making in the future.
I had gone into the Design Degree Project class (led by the amazing Professor John Kane) with a predetermined idea, formulated in the latter days of my co-op (internship) the semester before. I was pretty set in wanting to create an art piece on canvas, sewn into clothing aided by 3D printing, in some way.
On the first day, this was shot down. I had to have some sort of problem, something I was addressing rather than create for the sake of creating.
So for the next week and a half, I would spend every waking hour formulating ideas, and was left with a vague notion of a comic:
Inspiring prose, I know. At first, I wanted to make a comic based around the MFA-- my father and I's shared love for it and how he viewed it (as a student in the 1970s) and how I viewed it (as a student in the 2010s/2020s) and began to sketch something like this:
For this idea, I had been visting and re-visiting the MFA, gathering ideas and inspiration and noted that I always went back down to the basement level-- to my culture: the Mayas.
I am 83.6% Maya (or so my parents and 23andMe tell me) and have always thought about the different stories that have come out of the surviving texts and stone in Guatemala and Central America. I am adopted Maya and have more of a grasp on Japanese than I do Spanish-- in one word, I've felt alienated from my culture, and wanted to do something about it, rather than think, think, think about it all the time.
Out of this came Possessed.
I wanted to blend both of my backgrounds, as a person identifying with the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, and as an indigenous Maya. For the next several days, I just wrote. Wrote and sketched out panels, talked out dialogue and did instead of thought.
I created a coming-of-age queer story based on my Maya culture. It's done! I'm done!
Well, not entirely. In the end, I was given six weeks to:
- Conceptualize and create the story, the meat and bones of the project
- Create and design characters
- Sketch and plan out the pages and layout
- Ink (by hand), clean, and scan in the pages individually
- Edit the pages in Photoshop for transparency, add color
- Create and refine a typeface using my handwriting
- Set the pages up for printing and send the project off to Mixam for printing.
It can take six months up to a year to create a professional comic book.
Below is a page from start to finish and the front matter, along with the back cover. (Note: Please click on an image to magnify it!)
It was hard work-- I had to put my nose to the grinder and work, work, work. Changing cafes, restaurants, and the Boston T into my places of work. In return, I came out with this labor of love, self-published early December of 2022, when I graduated.
Thank you all for your support!
