The ANTIDESIGN

Tuesday we had a guest speaker in my Des001 class to talk to us about the design process of a working comic book artist. We heard a wonderful presentation from Brian Fies, the artist who created Mom's Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow. It was incredible to hear from someone working in such an artistic field, and after hearing about his books, I immediately wanted to run out and buy them.


Brian Fies walked us through his own personal creative process while making these comics. He started out slowly by taking us through his character designs for Mom's Cancer. Because this book's concept was drawn from life, his characters already existed in life and it was up to him to turn them into comics. In contrast, his character designs for WHttWoT were based not on life, but were created from his head. Because of this, Brian Fies put alot of thought into the appearance of the main characters in the story and their alter personae. We were able to see some of the inspiration for the sci-fi action heroes' costumes and his well thought out decisions around some of the major differences between the two characters.

The process of character creation is something I haven't delved into much, but this presentation was inspiring to me. The level of detail and thought put into each artistic decision is just epic. I look forward to reading Brian Fies work.