Introducing Raspberry Red
Welcome to my MFA thesis pitch materials and gallery photos! Raspberry Red is a YA Graphic Novel about an over-responsible Asian-American teenager who starts to take agency over her life when all order is lost. Click below to request a PDF of the pitch materials.
The Exhibition
I created three posters in floating frames with cutouts to reveal the raspberry red wall behind, creating intimate “windows” into the internal world. I used my three posters to increase the sense of impending doom, sort of a map of the character’s anticipated fears coming to life. The attention to environmental design shows the maturity of the character.
The Inspiration
I have always loved coming-of-age films and novels, as sort of roadmaps for surviving my teen years and for proof that life gets better. They talked about tough experiences that weren’t talked about in real life. Experiences that on the surface, looked like no one in my Kansas suburban town was going through. I have always kept diaries and made self portraits about the mismatch between my inner and outer world. I enjoyed using this idea to illustrate going into your head to self-abandon. I enjoyed using illustration and design to show a character’s hypersensitivity to threats in the space, and how exciting and beautiful it is when your world gets bigger. Yes, by the trope of rebelling, in a cringe teenage way, becoming friends with people you never thought you would, doing things that makes life feel like an empty canvas. I hope I can encourage young people in unsafe homes to become empowered by soaking up all the outside world has to offer.
COMIC EXPLORATIONS
My personal comic journal that I was inspired to keep while creating my graphic novel pitch! While I love designing things masterfully, the process of learning comics quickly made it clear that perfectionism would be the death of me and that fresher can be better! Here are some of my daily comics that reflected the spaces I was working in, physical and mental.
