Jess

About Jess

Artist & Illustrator.

The Science of Reading Comics – Talk

12 Feb 2017

Yesterday we boothed at the Starving Artist Fair, Big thanks to all that visited our booth =D. The event were looking for a few more people to speak so Kat decided to do a very informal talk about some of the research out there on the science of reading comics. To help illustrate the talk he borrowed the research grade eye tracker form work to read some comics. They are really facilitating images & videos. And there was me thinking that all he did all day was go to meetings and look at boring data tables =P (though he insists that still is mainly the case lolz).

It was really interesting to hear him take a more science approach to comics and gave even me insight into designing layouts. It is really worth checking out the video.

For all your scientists out there, apparently this is a “fixation map”.

Procrastination - Eyetracker Fixation Map

Character Development

3 Sep 2016

It has been about a year since we came up with the Mad Scientist Cat comic at the 24hr Comic Day event (Oct 2015). While we knew straight away that this idea could go beyond just the event, we both were fairly sleep deprived at the time, we knew we’d need some creative space after the event to properly develop the comic.

At the event there was very little time to think about character development. We spent time after discussing, debating and fleshing out both the visuals and background information. This definitely has been the advantage of working on the comic in a big batch rather than as we go along, which I often have done for past webcomics.

The creative process isn’t always pretty and often fraught with imperfection. I thought i’d share some of that art side of that process.

Dr Mad original character design

This was the very first character concept that I did the day before the event just to give myself a reference. Continue reading

The start of Madness

30 Aug 2016

It has been a somewhat random journey from moving to Singapore from the UK and ending up with a webcomic.

Me and Kat (Adam) moved to Singapore in April 2015 due to Kat getting a job as a researcher at NTU. It was a huge move but something that was just perfectly timed in our lives. It took me a while to set up as a freelance and just to generally feel more settled.

So with a very dear UK friend and her husband due at the con as guests (and how I heard about it in the first place), STGCC 2015 was a perfect way to get a taste of Singapore creativity. We decided to attend a talk of fantastic locally based comic people including Kelly Bender (comic writer) & CT Lim (Comic historian). Kelly suggested that I attend the 24hr Comic Day event that was due to happen a few weeks later.

You can find more photos and details from our Facebook STGCC – 12-13th Sept 2015 album.

After some umming, ahhing and reflection Continue reading