Rosemary and Alex

Click the cover and start swiping to read!

This is a real treat for me! I first conceived of this story as part of a fantasy novel that I now look back on as really stupid. After I stalled on the fantasy elements, I decided to extract the romance story I liked in it, and I continued to develop a number of stories with Rosemary and Alex. They kind of represent two different tracks of thought in my head at one point in my life about relationships, and I’m really fond of them. I did a shorter version of their story as a zine in a comics making class, and this is the longer version with more elements I had wanted to include. Finally, I have a zine I can show to a general audience.

I made the art for this comic at the end of the previous year and was unable to finish it because I didn’t have enough colored pencils, my tool of choice at the time. That’s why the general style is simpler than You’re a Snack or Do You Really Care? I decided to lean into that with flat colors, which I find charming here. After finishing You’re a Snack, I had ideas on how to better use layering and decided to use this art to practice those skills. The big things I wanted to accomplish was cleaner organization of the text elements and freer placement and use of word balloons. As you can tell, the balloons are now hand-drawn. On the one hand, I like the cleaner look of the shape tool bubbles, but on the other hand, none of my art looks as “clean” as I could want, since I’m dysgraphic, and the shape tool can’t make all the shapes I want or do what I want with the raster elements of the panel borders. I’m really happy with the placements I got, and the ability to merge balloons with panel borders and whatnot. Looking through, I knew to be excited for the montage sequence, and I was reminded how many other little things I had included to make it poppier and fun. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and I’m looking forward to the next project.