Sunday, September 28, 2008

God Wants Your Lunch

Lately, I've been noticing that I make three kinds of comics:
1. Learning comics. These are comics that teach. These are my T.A.I.L.S. comics and Curriculum Comics.
2. Art comics. At least that's what I call them. These are comics that are my own personal expression. They come from ideas that I have that make me say, "That would make a great comic!" I put The Mighty Andar and other comics making experiments in that category.
3. Bible comics. I am fascinated with how comics can be used to tell any kind of story there is to tell. The Bible provides a lot of inspiration to me, and I like re-telling the stories from this book using my own style of drawing.

This comic strip illustrates the Biblical story of the Loaves and the Fishes. I made it to share with the children in our church. I will give them a copy, but I also present it by putting one panel up on a Powerpoint screen and talking a little about each picture.

Everyone always asks, "How long did it take you to make it?" It's hard to say. First I read as much as I could about this story. This story is told in all for gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each author adds slightly different details. I combined all versions into one. Then, if I can, I try to find commentary by from Bible scholars that explains the significance of various elements of the story. (One site that was very usesful is here).

I like to look at how various translations of the Bible say the same thing but with different words, King James, NIV -- but my favorite to use is the Message Bible. This is a Bible paraphrase that attempts to publish the Bible in "street language" -- the way people really talk, without the thee's and thou's. The script for this is almost straight out of that Bible, with a little artistic license here and there.

Once I had the information, script, and plotted out how many boxes on each page, I started and finished it yesterday in one day of drawing! Ideally, I could spend more time on five pages, but I gave myself the deadline of having it finished today.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andy,

love the comic of Jesus, the fish, and the loaves.

Really enjoyed our time together with your family.

Till again, Wayne

Paul Bozzo said...

Your comic well depicts one of my favorite bible stories. Thanks for cartooning it!