For Fusion Zine: Interview with radical jojo

For Fusion Zine: Interview with radical jojo

An Interview with radical jojo:

By Minstrel Ayreon
15 August 2006


When you first load radical jojo's page, the grey-black-white color scheme can be deceptive. But then there's her featured art piece, "Sir Norbert Faceth Mighty Foe of Terrible Strength and Pow'r"--and the eye-popping colors in this piece make it very clear what the background is for: to give this Technicolor gallery center-stage. Comics abound in a variety of styles: from Greek mythology to Marvel tributes--it's all here. The personalities behind the pictures are just as memorable...there's the eternally-overworked Hades in all his paper-pushing, coffee-chugging glory, Simon the chimpanzee scientist (don't you dare call him a monkey!), and Arrio, archenemy of the bath and pretty much every other social grace.

radical jojo defines herself in part as "a small hominid noted for sallow skin, sable hair, dark gold eyes, overextendable elbows, thumbs, and toes, and large eyebrows. The jojo inhabits North America and is given to wandering and long stretches of engaging in cartoon illustration...a phenomenon that has naturalists baffled."

Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down...let's see if we can get to the bottom of this.

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RJ: Thank you very much for this interview. It's really an honor to be asked to speak to the Sheezy Art community about my work.


1) How would you describe your overall artistic style?

The word I like to use as a big, block category is "illustrative". I don't really have one, set style; I change up what I'm doing from project to project, so I might try to make things outrageous in one moment, and then get more naturalistic for the next piece. I never really go full-out into the realm of realism, though. I'm a cartoonist at all times, and so whatever I'm doing will still have some degree of exaggeration to it, all for the sake of heightened expression. I try to always keep things fun and lighthearted. This is something very intentional and important to me, because often the world can be a very dark place. I believe we should acknowledge this fact, but face it with a smile all the same.


2) What is the main source of inspiration for your original comics?

My own life and experiences lend a lot to the main characters, and the settings revolve around things that are near and dear to my heart. In Onieros, characters were originally based off myself and people that I know well, and the setting comes from a love of: science fiction movies; 17th century sailing ships and ideas of pirates and high-seas adventures; legends of the American West; a personal love of travel, and the richness of the worlds' cultures and landscapes. Project C was inspired by how I, personally, don't have much of a tolerance for cold, and was begun while I was living in North Dakota (United States, bordering Canada) and missing my former home in Arizona (United States, bordering Mexico.) It's my love song to a city I love, and also my homage to the great superhero comics that have entertained, inspired, and taught me so much. Dis comes from a childhood love--obsession, really--of Greco-Roman mythology, and my particular interpretation draws from daily modern life of just trying to get by with all the stresses everyone goes through. It's an everyman story on a grandiose stage, and a great opportunity to be educational on top of that!


3) What is the most satisfying medium and style for you to work with and why? Which do you find the least satisfying?

Ink, definitely. I love seeing things finished up in ink. My specialty is working with cheap markers--Crayolas, Sharpies, and Tombows. I get a kind of spiteful joy out of doing really elaborate pieces with something so "unartistic". As for style...that's a little harder to pick. I guess I really like when I've done something more naturalistic (like an "American comic book" style) and feel that I've performed well on a technical level, and I like when I've done something extremely stylized ("cartoon" style) and feel I've done something particularly creative with how I've handled things.

I like most media, but I'm a little less partial to acrylic paint and colored pencil. I'm just not really crazy about how either one handles. Plus, I hate sharpening pencils. And I don't really like working for photorealism; it feels bland to me because I work so much with hyper-expression.


4) Do you remember the moment you first realized your passion for art? If so, what happened? If you feel you've been aware of it your entire life, can you think of one particular incident that really confirmed it?

I've always been interested in all kinds of art, and I've been drawing since I first developed the motor coordination to drag a crayon across a wall. Even when I was very young, I would approach drawing very seriously, and I would draw intentional series of pictures, rather than just random works. I remember that I first decided that I wanted to be a professional artist when I was six, when I announced that I was going to be an animator. That was actually when I first started studying cartoons; I'd read Berke Breathed's Bloom County, Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes, and Jeff Smith's Bone, and would try to analyze what they were doing. I also had a book called The Art of Walt Disney that first taught me cartoon figure construction by the earliest, simplest method--the ball-and-hose technique. I got my first book on drawing comics when I was about eight, The Comic Strip Book by Peter Foster, and drew my first real cartoons at the same time.

I fell out of cartoons a bit around puberty. Everything goes wrong at puberty. But I picked back up in high school, when I first started drawing cartoon caricatures of my friends, and art really became my passion rather than a pastime.


5) Do you intend to pursue a professional career as an artist, and if so, what kind and why? Will you focus on comics or other styles? If you choose to keep your art as strictly a hobby, what do you intend to do with it and why?

I'm currently attending the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts, majoring in Visual Communications & Illustration. I'm hoping to also swing a minor in Creative Writing. I'd ideally like to work on comics full-time, either on my original work or pencilling others' stories. In any case, I'm determined to be illustrating something for a career, and I've already started breaking into some work in that field, and also in graphic design. My original work will eventually be published, when I'm ready, and I'll self-publish if nothing else.


6) Which of your works are you the proudest of, or are closest to your heart, and why?

Well, my comics, definitely. There's much more attachment to them than to a random drawing, because there are real stories, with real characters that I know and love deeply. I've mentioned this now and again, but I don't even feel like I control my characters anymore. They make their own decisions, and I just follow them around, watching them and drawing what they do. I tend to refer to them as my 'imaginary friends' because that seems like the most fitting way to describe the relationship. Ha ha!

I'm also fond of my various fanart drawings of superheroes, some of my random ink pieces, and I did a large oil painting called "Heil Politik" that I'm very proud of.


7) What are some of the next milestones you'd like to see yourself achieve in your development as an artist and what would these mean to you?

There's a Korean comic artist named Kim Jae-Hwan that I deeply admire and respect, and when I feel that I can draw an ants'-eye perspective of a human face that he might look at and not wince, then I'll feel like I've really accomplished something. That's an artistic priority right now.

Besides that, even though I've already had some pieces published--like a cloth badge that I designed for a motorcycle club in Australia, and some graphic design work I've done for the University of North Dakota's College of Engineering--I can't help but keep hungering for more work. I'm still such a novice in the field, really.


8) What advice would you give to aspiring artists in general? To comic artists in particular?

Draw. All the time. Every chance you get. You should walk around with a sketchbook everywhere you go. The only way to improve is to practice, and the more you work, the more you'll want to work. It's a wonderful upward spiral. Hold yourself to a very high standard. Shoot for a professional grade quality every time, but don't be a perfectionist. Don't feel like a failure if you don't get something right the first time. You always have an eraser, and if worse comes to worse, you can start over. Don't feel too precious, because you're always climbing, and keep a positive attitude. Don't hide your work away and then feel bad that no one knows you're there. You have to really believe in yourself, too, or no one else will. This is show business, after all!

And comic artists--the same thing, but more so! Don't jump in to drawing your story immediately. Give yourself some time to get your thoughts together, so that you'll be very prepared to make a consistent story. And it really, really, really helps to have a script first, either in all-text, or with thumbnails, or both. That way, you can be sure of your pacing and avoid plotholes and other pitfalls of open-ended writing. And aim for a small story at first, because it'll grow longer before you know it. Don't be afraid to do research, because the more familiar you are with your subject, the more authority the reader will be able to sense behind what you're doing, and the more confidence they'll have in the work overall. Above all, just keep drawing. Don't think about what a monumental task it is. Take it one page at a time, and just! keep! drawing!

Again, thank you very much for this interview. It's been a sincere pleasure.

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Be sure to check out radical jojo's other sites and galleries:

Dead Squirrel Comics ~official website
Red Star Comics ~sister site
radical jojo @ Sheezy Art
radical-jojo @ Storm-Artists
radical-jojo @ DeviantArt