It’s funny that you say that you weren’t feeling confident because this reads like a fully formed book it doesn’t feel like someone’s first graphic novel.

I got a lot of really great feedback from Gina and from Whitney about how to communicate that elegantly to the reader. So we decided early on that I was going to do a full graphic novel, but I was going to do it in a very limited palette.Īnd then, when I figured out that there were going to be several different story universes within the overarching story, I needed to figure out a way to make it clear that there are different timelines, and different visual imaginations, being presented. I knew early on that color is not my strong suit - I didn’t go to art school and I never learned how a lot of my colleagues make comics, so I’m kind of learning how to do this on the fly. I should be honest - I kind of felt like I didn’t really know what I was doing, and so I relied on the feedback of my editors very strongly, and they give me really wonderful feedback. I’m familiar with your illustrations more than your comics work, but one of the things that I really enjoyed and was surprised by was how confident the parts I read of this were. I thought that was a nice, kind of new, angle for it. I felt that, as a new storyteller, I didn’t really have the bona fides to go in and talk about how story can change somebody’s life just yet, but I also felt that maybe it would be really interesting to look at the way that stories change and transition depending on where the story finds itself, and where readers find themselves and their relationships to them. It was definitely one of those things where I thought long and hard about whether I wanted a story about a story. The book is something that values story a lot - the power of narrative and sharing stories, as you say, but also the way that stories can illuminate our own lives.

I felt that it was kind of appropriate, because I feel like a lot of first works are oftentimes very confessional. One of the strongest and most precious memories I have is learning how to navigate the English language with my parents through checking out library books and reading them together.Īnd so, storytelling and learning how to read has kind of always been incredibly important in the way that I envision my relationship with my parents, and I thought that I would give them a really sweet sendoff with this first graphic novel. It’s definitely a work of fiction, but a lot of it is sort of inspired by my upbringing - my parents were immigrants when I was very little, and I wasn’t born in the United States either, and so we kind of learned English side by side. It feels like a story that you’ve lived, for want of a better way of putting it.Ī lot of it is kind of based on experiences that I’ve had. I’m curious about the origins of this book, because it feels like a story that’s very personal. How Parker Finn's 'Smile' Went From Streaming to Theatrical in a Single Night

Trung le nguyen the magic fish