“Vanessa” (2024)
“Vanessa” is a one-shot that tells the story of a girl who performs a vulnerable song at a music festival. It ends up touching Parvana – an Afghan-American refugee – who really needs to hear the song Vanessa has to sing. The main theme centers around the power of art/creativity to touch people, and the responsibility of artists/creative people to get out of the way and let that happen. The story is explored more fully in Vanessa and the Storm, but this was the first attempt to put this story down in comic form. Because of that, it will always have a special place in my heart.
You can also read the comic here on GlobalComix!
I also developed and completed this comic as the final project for a visual storytelling class I took at SCAD. It was the only class I took, and I dropped out of the MFA program afterwards (too expensive, on multiple fronts) but I’m so thankful I got the opportunity and challenge to develop and finish this one-shot. It opened many doors for me, mostly in my own belief in myself. I saw that I can make work at a high quality level, even when it came to comics. It was a big boost for me psychologically (despite all the stress and late nights the class caused initially lol). I still consider myself a pretty self-taught artist, since that was the only college level art class I’ve taken. But I really appreciate and am deeply thankful for the experience, despite all the difficult moments at the time.
Below are some of the concept development sketches for the comic. (I actually had to turn these in for an assignment.) I really like the designs, and you can likely tell they inspired the designs in the follow up comic, Vanessa and the Storm. 🙂
