ccs: fable comic

A couple of weeks ago here at the Center for Cartoon Studies, we finished an assignment where we were to create a comic inspired by an Aesop's fable - whatever we chose we could interpret however directly or vaguely we wanted. I chose the fable “The Boys and the Frogs”:

Some Boys were playing one day at the edge of a pond in which lived a family of Frogs. The Boys amused themselves by throwing stones into the pond so as to make them skip on top of the water.

The stones were flying thick and fast and the Boys were enjoying themselves very much; but the poor Frogs in the pond were trembling with fear.

At last one of the Frogs, the oldest and bravest, put his head out of the water, and said, "Oh, please, dear children, stop your cruel play! Though it may be fun for you, it means death to us!"

Always stop to think whether your fun may not be the cause of another's unhappiness.

I was very frustrated because if you look at any of Aesop’s fables, most of them have a pretty nihilistic or antiquated moral at the end, and my main goal was to subvert this style of ending by making it a bit more my own, without completely straying from the story itself. Additionally, I really wanted to work on variations in panel layouts and spreads. You’ll also see there is a textured style to this comic - this is an effect created in Photoshop to replicate the look of a Risograph-printed work! This is also how I was able to achieve some of the off-setting and misregistration in lines and colors.

The story ended up being autofiction, an ode to a version of myself that didn’t get to exist. Autofiction, for those who don’t know, is part-memoir, part-fiction; some authors will take real characters and tell a false story, some may use a real story and real characters, but tell the story using a traditional fiction structure. Regardless of the literary details, in this story, I am Oliver, and the characters are named/designed after real people I know as well!

I’m really, really happy with how this piece turned out. I was in the print lab until 4am and cried multiple times, but at the end of the day was so happy to be able to hold something I made in my hands. And now I’m sharing it with you! If you’re a paid subscriber, make sure to look out for a behind-the-scenes post coming to you soon about the process and work behind this one!

Thanks for reading, y’all <3