▶ Aurora (2007)

After putting my comics on the internet for the first time in early ‘07, I quickly found out that I was not the first person to have this idea. I became addicted to webcomics—read them, subscribed to them, joined their forums, and tried to be a part of the culture. I still have the same passion for comics today.

Back then, despite having very little experience, I knew I wanted to contribute my own comic in some way. I had already become dissatisfied with a gag-a-day comic I was doing, so I decided to take a turn and try my hand at a story-based comic. I knew I wanted to write something set in the wintery north, inspired by my trips to Canada.

Ultimately, my inability to write a coherent story led to too many convoluted ideas that I just couldn’t let go. Whatever vague ideas I had in my head weren’t translating onto the page. I decided to forget about planning a story and just start making pages with what I had. Upon retrospect, this isn’t an entirely bad idea—one can spend several lifetimes plotting out backstory and never get to draw anything. However, there’s a fine balance between knowing exactly what your story will be, and spontaneously coming up with ideas as you go along. Unfortunately, I found that simply making up a story as I went along was not my forte, and my ideas for a fantasy narrative eventually devolved into a slice-of-life comic in a mountain setting. I gave up after seven pages. These days, I prefer to write a completely text-based script so I can at least fine-tune the pacing.

So was one of my first lessons in writing for comics, and the first of my many battles with perfectionism. I learned a lot by fumbling my way through Aurora’s seven pages, but I think most of all I learned that an artist has to believe in his/her creations.