Damsels Don’t Wear Glasses : J. Alice Bown tells us everything !
Do you believe in magic powers ?… You will !
An excited interview about Damsels Don’t Wear Glasses with Jessica Alice Brown
Hello Jessica !
– Where do you come from ?
England, west midlands Birmingham
– How old are you ?
26
– Influences ?
bad urban fantasy novels, mythology, Terry Pratchett’s discworld, Del Toro movies, 80s fantasy movies, shonen anime, Disney.
– Art school or not ?
nope!
– Favorite digital art software ?
Sai it’s just easy to use.– Your working method ?
Podcasts, youtube and day to day deadlines throughout the week to get a page done.
– What your webcomic is about, in a symbolic way, the hidden sense ?
It’s about a human girl protecting a human child in the world full of magic and creatures from mythology. Only it’s in a modern(ish) city and the creatures are more or less just normal people. But that doesn’t mean there ain’t bad people looking to snatch the kid up. It’s hard to really talk about the symbolism and ‘sense’ of the story without spoilers. But I’d say its about communication and understanding different perspectives, as well as the concept of power and being helpless both personally and on a mass existential level. Also cool magic powers.
– Tell us more about your main character, the hero !
Lave is 20 and lives with a suspiciously blue bat and a goat. Her job is if you mixed community service with the neighborhood watch and made it 80% more dangerous. She tends to avoid responsibility like it’s going to eat her, which is why being ‘assigned’ guardianship of a 12 year old boy called Jake was the last thing she wanted. Now Lave’s trying to figure out why Jake is in danger, while at the same time learning to be the adult she’s managed to avoid becoming until now. There’s a bit more going on but that would be spoilers haha.
– How do you see your future ?
I’m currently in freelance. I’m hoping to get stuff printed in the future to sell at cons, but right now I’m focusing on pimping my patreon.
– Your next goal ?
Complete 30 redrawn pages of chapter one ready for a printed first issue. Reach the end of chapter 5. Get my Patreon up to 200$ a month. Have every main character revealed by 2019. Move to Canada
– Advices for beginners ?
Start. Your. Comic. It’s going to be full of badly placed speech bubbles, messy panels and many MANY tangents. You’ll mess up the page flow and oh boy those poses are going to look stiff and awkward. (especially in fight scenes) Your writing will be full of bad tropes you probably took from anime and you’ll write yourself into a corner, or fail to keep up your updates. But even after all that you’ll still be closer to becoming the webcomic maker you want to be, rather than if you hadn’t tried at all. You improve with each page you make. It’s like grinding in a video game. Even if you scrap your webcomic after 30 pages, that’s still 30 pages of experience and practice. There is no level cap.
– Your technical secret trick ?
Sai – connected lineart – Selection Source. Also references. Use references please it’s not cheating.
– Your magic links and website ?
Thanks a lot Jessica, may the power be with you !
