April 24, 2022 Image She/her Junior, Comic Art Roy B Justus Comic Art Scholarship $2,000 Limestone, Tennessee Describe the work you submitted for merits. My comic work focuses on vibrancy in both emotional impact and visual detail. When making my work for the merits. I wanted to utilize vivid color and fun and engaging storytelling. My goal was to make something that spoke to a wide audience, regardless of age, that connects to their inner child. All of the comic work included was made utilizing digital tools such as the painting programs like Krita and Photoshop, along with the presentation program Microsoft PowerPoint. Making work utilizing my digital tools allows me to create with precision and efficiency to manipulate each aspect of my work to the exact specifications of my vision. Each work included was part of this vision and the merit scholarship program gave me the platform to express it. Why did you decide to come to MCAD? Picking MCAD as my school was an easy choice. I felt that MCAD was and still is the best school for the career of professional comic making. MCAD offers not only a specialized comic art degree but also has some of the best comic art faculty that any college can offer. I felt that MCAD was the best choice as a future investment for my career, and a learning experience that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. What's next for your practice? Anything you're really excited to make? Coming up in my practice, I intend to dive deeper into making comics in the professional field by utilizing classes like Professional Practice. As I begin to take the higher-level classes here at MCAD I can hardly wait to get started evolving the quality of my comics. On a more personal note, I intend to study in-depth in black-spotting and utilize line weight to give depth to my work. As for something I'm excited to make, I can hardly wait to begin work on my Graphic Novel, Creep: Tails from the Crypt. What inspires you? I think the thing that inspires me the most is the promise I made to my mother as a child. I promised my mother that I would always try to find the hero inside myself, and work hard to make my dreams come true. I also look for inspiration by actively trying to appreciate the beauty that can be found in life if you just take the time to look for it. Do you have a favorite piece you've made? Describe it! My favorite piece that I've made is the comic Dreams of The Sun. This work was inspired by the hazy daydreams that I had as a teen and young adult. I would often spend hours dreaming about floating up into cloudless deep blue skies and laying in golden sunflower fields. I chose to take these dreams and adapt them into my own story and how they relate to me as an adult. In the creation of the comic, I wanted to capture the beauty of those distant daydreams, and convey their vivid and almost illusory qualities. I looked for inspiration by looking at how light refracts and interacts with sunlight cast through a glass prism. I hoped that learning to capture this imagery would help give the comic more of a high-level psychedelic quality. Anything you're obsessed with at the moment? Currently, I am obsessed with watching videos of artists creating ink drawings of buildings and home interiors. Being able to create these high-level background drawings is a huge draw to me and I always pour myself into watching every aspect of the artist's techniques. I can hardly peel my eyes away as they fluidly create these cozy worlds with just simple ink and pen. Just talking about it makes me want to draw! As an artist, what message do you hope to convey with your work? Most of all, I want to convey just how much life can be an adventure. Positivity is key to my work, as well as working from memory and experience. The stories I tell are oftentimes within the genre of magical realism, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be believable. I believe that my work will connect so much better with my audience when I tell them the truth. In my opinion, the real magic of storytelling is the subtle vulnerable moments that make life more complex and beautiful, and that’s exactly what I want to convey.
What inspires you? I think the thing that inspires me the most is the promise I made to my mother as a child. I promised my mother that I would always try to find the hero inside myself, and work hard to make my dreams come true. I also look for inspiration by actively trying to appreciate the beauty that can be found in life if you just take the time to look for it.