NextComic is a small convention, hosted in Linz since 2009, where local austrian artists can
present their works
and get into contact with their readers. A diverse array of events take place during the week
long festival. Radio FRO
was invited for live broadcasting of interviews with comic artists during the Suuuper Saturday.
I was tasked with creating an announcement flyer for the upcoming cooperation. I searched for
the most well known comic book covers, to base my work off of.
A cover that particularly caught my eye was Watchmen #1, with the writing being sideways, and
blood
flowing from offscreen into the frame, with a smiley pin sitting ontop.
For the font and color of the writing I had to incorporate the corporate design specifications
of Radio FRO,
which meant their default font, as well as their default color, which is yellow. Next, I used a
color wheel
to find colors that would fit together with the main one, and the colors bleed into the
background of the main picture,
as a further homage to Watchmen #1.
You may have already stumbled accross my video regarding International Womens Day 2024 in the
"Videography" section.
Just like with NextComic 2024, Radio FRO had a series of broadcasts lined up, which they needed
an announcement
for.
Just like before, I had to find or make a picture of an open mouth and traced over it in Adobe
Illustrator. For
the colors i not only had to incorporate yellow, but also used shades of velvet, because velvet
is commonly
associated with said day and also used extensively in marketing material for this particular
occasion.
For the speaking bubble i let myself be inspired by comics of my childhood, like "Lustiges
Taschenbuch", where loud
talking was often accentuated by spiky borders of the speaking bubbles.
Lastly I wanted to show off something, that I did solely as a project in my spare time, to show
that I am also a fairly creative person outside of work (at least I hope so).
One of my most time consuming hobbies is writing. Currently i am working on a western story
about the development of european civilization in the wild west of natively owned America.
The tribes, settlements and characters, all are
inventions of my imagination. In turn, this allowed me the freedom to incorporate and
criticize many different aspects of the time period.
I gave myself the task to create a book cover for said story from scratch. I planned to
make a collage of many different stock images and edit
them together as believably as i could. I became frustrated very quickly, because working
with stock images gave me so much limitations about format and perspective, that it was
actually very unfun to work with them.
In frustration I started to smear all the combined pictures around, from left to right.
Surprisingly, this much more abstract and expressionist result represented the story
and its fantastical elements much better than the realistic approach. Lastly, I painted
in the wavey accents with filters, hardening the edges, to make them stand out more, against
an overlay, that tries to mimic the rough texture of an older painting canvas.
Most of the story takes place in a fictional desert, but the picture was very empty without
anything to focus on, which is why i added two contrary elements on the ground. One being
the lone wanderer of the desert, and the other being a white tree, which is holy to the
residents of this land.
