Wrenched!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Guess what I found recently? When I was sorting through some of my various stacks of drawings and doodles and old notes, I found one of the first comics that I made at University! I remember the assignment, and I also remember somewhat enjoying drawing it. Along with a twelve page comic (which, looking back on, wasn't overly good, for something which was supposed to be more light hearted in an effort to make 'Life and observations in Stoke-on-Trent to be more than just a list of background pictures), we were asked to make a 'One Cut Comic'. The reason it was called a one cut comic was in how the paper was folded to crease a 'book' with eight pages, which needed, as you can guess, one cut in the middle to help the folding process.

So, for the comic in this case, we had to draw out three words from three bags. One bag contained random locations, another would have random objects, and the last had different occupations. Drawing out one of each, we were asked to make a comic which contained those words in some way. We were also limited to about 25 written words that we could use, so not much speech was permitted.

The words I got were 'Hotel', 'Wrench' and 'Farmer'.

It....took me a while to think up some ideas of how to make at least a semi-coherent story in eight pages with minimal speech. But in the end, once I decided to do for a different feel from the light-hearted story that my twelve page had been, I ended up going for something a bit darker, to test myself outside of my 'comfort zone'.

At the time, I had never used any digital art. I didn't have Photoshop or Manga Studio or any other programs, nor did I have a tablet. So the whole comic was done purely by hand, with felt pens (I know, I wince thinking back on my horrible colour ideas, in comparison to my current work). But I do remember being somewhat proud....and scaring Nadia, who had never seen me draw anything other than cheerful things.

So, having found the only version of this that I actually have, with it being purely hand made, I decided to let you guys see, if only to see where I've come from, but also just to share the first comic that I had enjoyed doing the most out of side projects in my first University year.

Please forgive my rather bad photography skills! And my somewhat terrible colouring skills. Please note that before university, I hadn't done art in high school and any art skills I had were all self taught. There was no true back page to this story. I should have put an 'end' somewhere, possibly. Maybe one day I'll do a digital version of it, with better colouring skills and with a better 'end card', if nothing else.

Not sure how coherent the story is to anyone else, outside my own head, but what I was aiming for was that a farmer and his wife broke down in the middle of nowhere with only a nearby hotel to help them. The wife nags at the farmer to fix the tractor, and books a room for the night. The farmer, seeing the wrench, gets a murderous urge and sneaks into the hotel, bludgeoning the wife to death with the wrench. Of course, this ends up being only a figment of the famer's imagination. He is instead woken by the wife, returning to find the farmer sleeping, and nags him further. Recalling the dream, the Farmer grins.

I had hoped to leave it open ended, so you can decide if he is just smirking at the dream, which 'cheered him', or if he was actually going to go through with what happened in the dream.

What do you guys think? I know for me, it's certainly interesting to look at some of my older work, anyway! Still, I do hope you guys enjoyed looking at a small relic of my past :)

Until next time!

Tara