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What's more than 2 and less than 4

2022-11-03

5 minute read

Hallozeen recap

I made 3.5 new zines for Hallozeen, on the logic that I'm not working atm so I might as well. Honestly, it was too many zines and I regret it. The zines did all come out pretty well, so that makes up for it a bit.

Apples for the Pit, The Pit for Apples

This was an attempt to make a comic around a feeling, without being explicit about the feeling. I wanted to write about how I felt when I binge eat.

With the formal elements, I wanted to use my printer to add colour on the cheap and I wanted it to make the zine in a way that explicitly used it's materiality. I cut a hole in the zine, and this was the afore mentioned 'pit'. When the zine is folded it reveals the back through the hole, which I've coloured dark and put a poem into.

I think the hole and the colour worked really well and added depth to the work. The art was done in black felt tip pen, and without colour it looked a bit sparse and unfinished. I like drawing with felt tip pen, but I'm struggling to get the spontaneity of style that I want. I think this only comes with more practice. I don't like how long it takes to draw, even the simplest things, but that's okay.

The writing was okay, I'm happy enough with it but I wish I'd typed it out first, and done some revisions. I think I could've got a little more nuance, and pushed the humour a bit further. My favourite bit is a pig on the 2nd cover, driving a truck full of apples saying: "golly I hope I have enough apples". I think "golly" is a funny word, and betrays an anxious spirit. I like the repetition of "I hope I have", and the 2 syllable rythm makes a good shape in the speech bubble. Finally, the symmetry of stress on the first and last line push the 'punchline' words - golly and apples

Species of the Origin

I wanted to make a halloween comic, but I don't really relate to the north american halloween experience. I thought about the slightly older origins, and the fear of devils wandering the world. I wish the comic was a little more visually evocative, but the minimalism worked in my favour for finishing it on time. I had a load more text to put in, to frame it as a retelling by the priest, but space and time held it back. I have a tendency to overwrite a lot of the jokes and stories, and I'm sure in time this could be pruned into something reasonable, but usually with the tight turnovers here I just cull it all and keep the bones of the story. The nice thing about this approach is it strips away some of the context, letting the reader fill it in with their own imagination, and creating some really absurd narrative leaps. My favourite bit is the 3rd page, where the priest asks the ape "how many sins?" and the ape say's "just the one" and the priest says "hmm okay". It's funny that (thanks to stripping away the context) he's faced with a speaking ape and his biggest concern is whether or not the confession will take too long. I was very inspired by The Testament of Gideon Mack, a great book set in near modern Scotland and I think the first book that ever made me cry, way back in the summer of 2014/2015.

Bee Death

Bee death is 2 zines, but they work together, hence the 3.5 total haul. It probably took me the most effort out of all of them to make, and I had the most set backs. I knew I wanted to make a zine about bees, and I wanted it to be 3D. I tried to do another VR one, like Bike Tricks, but I was struggling to get anything inspiring. Bike tricks had the same process, and it was right up to the last minute that I got anything worthwhile out of it. I didn't want that to happen again, after probably 8 hours of modelling and ideation I scrapped the idea. I'd already bought yellow paper, and had my heart set on a bee themed zine, I was feeling frustrated and lost. I remembered, then, Finally Bee Free - A stupid (really good) 3D comic I made a couple of years ago. I though it fit the theme well enough, and could do with a remodel now that I'm a little better at 3D modelling. I used the same joke for Bee Heaven, and it didn't take me too long to come up with Bee Hell. It's funny to put yourself into the headspace of a different thing, and make clumsy guesses at how human cultural concepts might be transferred or upended. It feels like goofy science fiction, and I'd like to do more comics like that. Heaven and Hell can be upsetting concepts, I know I carry my fair share of hell-fire trauma thanks to stupid (bad and harmful) books like "Heaven is So Real", but they're also cultural concepts that exist beyond the christian literary circle and I think joking about them helps me process it a bit. Also the joke of "Bee Hell" is a classic and worth redoing with bees.

Data

I kept rough track of what zines I sold:

Apples for the Pit:     4
Species of the Origin:  2
Bee Heaven:             7
Bee Hell:               7
Bike Tricks:            4
Spider Zine:            2
Seeking Resonance:      1
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Total:                  27

Not awesome numbers, but I find these events are quality over quantity, and the people that do get them really enjoy them.

What else

listening to

An interview with Mary Rose Cook on The Future of Coding, checkout too her article about writing a lisp interpreter

questions