IG: @vulturelytra emersonfrost.art

Condari: Crafting a Comic

I’ve always loved bringing my characters to life through storytelling. In creating the comic pitch for Condari, I combined that with my fascination for birds, and my concern for their conservation. This engaging story takes the viewer on a fantastical journey following the protagonist, Darner, from towns and villages to the vast wilderness, and encourages the reader to care about and empathize with the mythical creatures for which the comic is named. While the Condari, based on the critically endangered California Condor, bring up themes of the importance of conservation—the underlying message of the story is also of defying the dominant capitalist western worldview that sees humans as superior, and nature as something to be used for personal gain, profit, and power.

In this project I invite the viewer to see the process of how I bring my characters to life through sequential art, from initial brainstorming to rendering—ending up with a fully fleshed out comic pitch. I hope when reading this graphic novella you find yourself immersed in the world of the story and intrigued by the characters, and that you leave feeling thoughtful about what sort of change needs to be done in our own world.

Bio

My name is Emerson Frost, I’m an Illustrator who loves designing characters and bringing them to life through sequential art! I enjoy fantasy, mythology, and folklore, and often incorporate motifs from these into my work. I am very interested in animals, especially birds and bugs, and will often feature them in my art. This is most apparent in another aspect to my illustration work—which is making acrylic paintings ranging from semi-realistic to scientifically accurate. In both of these styles, I enjoy adding many small details- having a level of intricacy that invites the viewer to take a closer look.