In 2001ish I created Gabriel to relay my experiences as an exchange student in the us... a veeeeeery gothy teenage girl in rural Mississippi. And German - we re not know for our subtle politeness. When I created a homepage to display my drawings I felt that i needed different categories - I personalized them. Jaune was for happy drawings, Gabriel for horror, the Lady for my graphic design work and Barbera for... weird stuff. I did not pursue this area. Stuff like mental patients breaking out and "insane" drawings. But they always crossed over to Gabriels section anyway and it wasnt soon after that I incorporated them into a story. I just couldnt leave it be. Those little autobiographical comis had after 2 or 3 entries already their own universe and bob appeared right away (I dont have a brother.)
When i thought about, what these characters could actually do... visiting the junkyard was one of the first ideas I never came around to draw until this chapter. And its a red line through all of my stories. visiting junkyards. They re a magical place for me - like a treasure chamber of possibilities. Except for... the real junkyards that... stink or are already robbed of all their interesting stuffs.
In 7th or 8 grade we had project weeks and I joined the art team. We had an amazing teacher who went on to have us make Junk Sculptures. We got tons of metal junk and into a welding shop (we weren t allowed to weld of course, but the apprentices there helped us) and we created... DON QUI SCHROTT (schrott = german for junk). We weeled him into the school and he was part of our tiny garden for a long time. But when working on it i was dissapointed of myself how ... uncreative I was. I saw all those amazing junk things and just could not picture anything else than trying to build a person out of it. I noticed the same when playing minecraft many years later. My creations always were the most boring forms and just... generic. But I learned to break this: I started studying why I actually liked builds of other people, what made them special and i can incorporate that now to so many other things including my comics. Its a du uh thing, but essentially it boils down to: storytelling. Dont just build a house. Who lives there. A gardener. So no, dont just build it in green, think what tools the gardener needs, how he would decorate... An absolute Master even among amazing disney artists is Cory Loftis. He can draw a chair and you know exactly how this chair came into being and what kind of person sits on it. He can take the most generic ideas and give them so much personality...
Oh yeah. welcome to my generic, nondescript junkyard... were i failed yet again to incorporate a story into the background. GREAT : D