From One Panel to the Next

A look back on a year of comics exploration

For a long time, I’ve been satisfied with just being someone who enjoys reading other people’s comics. This year, I set the intention to finally try my hand at making them. I’ve always been in love with the way that the written word and art can work in tandem, amplifying and echoing the effect on a reader/viewer. Comics felt like a natural next step for me (albeit a very intimidating one).

I started my year of comics exploration by joining in on Hourly Comics Day for the first time. It’s a set day every year where comic artists/illustrators make a comic about their day at hourly intervals for an entire day (or as much as they can manage). It was definitely an overwhelming first foray into making comics, but I pushed through it with the help of Canteen, a really supportive group of illustrators that I’m grateful to be a part of. They all happen to be brilliant comic artists too! Canteen was originally formed to play DnD together in the early pandemic days, but we never finished our first campaign (hi guys!). A couple of us pledged to join in together and we kept each other updated and commiserated in our group Discord. You can read Lynn and Kim’s hourly comics as well!

It was an incredibly time-consuming process, but such a fun one. I especially loved being able to read the comics of other illustrators joining in, and seeing how different people interpreted the challenge. Will I do it again? We shall see!

Coincidentally, while working on my first ever comic for fun, I was also working on my first ever commissioned comic for a client. You can see me sketching out thumbnails for the client comic if you look closely in my hourly comic. Viterbi Magazine, USC’s engineering school’s magazine, commissioned me to create a comic on how we can try to get a better understanding of how AI works so that it can be more transparent, bias-free and explainable in the future. I got to illustrate, set type and design the whole thing. It was a huge learning experience for me, and thankfully at the end of it I was really proud of what I had made. Below is my favorite page, and you can read the full comic and get a peek into the process in a previous newsletter post here.

The first comic I ever started was a wordless diary comic, collecting memories of childhood summers in Taiwan. I don’t count it as the first because I started it more than a year ago, but didn’t actually finish it until this year. Maybe it was less about my procrastination, and more that I was finally ready to finish it this year.

Or it was the procrastination.

This year I also worked on a lot more editorial work than I have in recent years, and I took it as an opportunity to try to sneak in some practice for comics with more paneled formats. Here are some failed (and rightly so) attempts to persuade art directors to pay me to make more comic-like illustrations, from proposed sketches to final:

For NBC News on how tightened immigration policies have stanched the flow of labor into the home building industry.

For Science Magazine how nudging green choices on food delivery apps in China has greatly reduced users’ single-use cutlery consumption and can lead to environmental benefits

For an illustration that will be published next year

And one success:

For The Wall Street Journal Fall Books 2023 Review

I also played around with more paneled formats and comic-inspired pages in my sketchbook, and documented a trip to Europe this summer through diary comic pages. Working this way has really helped to start bridge the gap between my sketchbook practice and my more detailed illustrations.

Finally, the last comic of the year and the one I’m most proud of is my crybaby comic. I had this idea sitting around in my head for a while and what pushed me to finish it was wanting a certain incredible online comic fair to notice me. While it didn’t work out this year, I’m so glad that I was able to finish this for myself. It was an achievement on its own, but the reception and seeing how so many other people related to these feelings meant a lot to me.

I hope to keep playing around with making comics next year, finding new ways to tell stories and to connect with others. It’s been challenging to push myself into a new space where I don’t feel fully confident in my abilities, but I like to think that it just means there’s a lot more room for me to grow and become a better version of myself. And at the end of the day, I’m having a lot of fun with it!

Turning your passion into your livelihood can be a dangerous thing, because there’s always a risk of losing your love to the endless machine that is capitalism. I think that actively finding ways to continue enjoying your passion is very important and necessary. So I’ll just keep on chasing that feeling.

This year has been the slowest work-wise that it’s ever been since I made the leap into full-time illustration, but that’s given me room to try new things and allow myself to make more fulfilling work. When I stop and give myself a second to slow down, I’m proud of what I’ve been able to achieve and allowed myself to experience.

Some personal and professional moments that I’m proud of from this year:

• I moved (I’m proud that I survived this)!

• I juried the University of the Arts Senior Illustration Thesis and the Society of Illustrators Annual Competition

• I launched an online illustration course with Domestika

• I taught for the first time at the University of the Arts

• I finally learned to drive and got my driver’s license!

• I did a lot more editorial work than I have in recent years and was reminded of my illustrator roots

• I worked on a lot more personal work and was reminded of why I love making art

And finally:

• I started this newsletter :)