In 2010, I was working full-time at an ad agency in NYC as a web designer. My work-life balance was lacking, so I decided to start freelancing, to see if this would free up more time to make comics.
When I started working on Martian Debut, I decided to adopt a formal writing process. I first developed an outline and then expanded my bullet points into paragraphs. While working on the design for my Martians, I worked with editor Liz Weintrob to refine my prose which I planned to use as documentary-like narration for this 36-page comic.
I storyboarded the whole comic in a sketchbook, which I used as a guide as I photographed models, props, rooms, cityscapes. Using this reference material, each element was drawn, inked and scanned into the computer separately. Panel layouts were made in Adobe Illustrator and panel art was layered together in Photoshop.
Martian Debut was first self-published in 2010 and then reprinted in my comics anthology Sketches and Streams in 2012, 2014 and 2021.
