Anhedonia Blue

Letter of Intent

I went to college at the University of California, Santa Cruz and received my Bachelors of Arts in Psychology in 2007 with a hunger for knowledge. Post-graduation, I spent two years working in the field with special needs children suffering from various disabilities. It’s been rewarding but one thing always lingered on my mind that one of my teachers said before I left: “When you graduate, pay attention to where you gravitate. That will be your calling, not necessarily what you majored in.” This is what led me to pursue a graduate degree in my true passion–art.

Since graduation I have started my own company called The Noir Project (TNP Press), which is a collective of web-comic artists working together to promote one another with the ultimate goal of making a living off of what we love to do. I’ve taken the group to different conventions including the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. This year we will be making our first appearance at the world’s biggest comic convention–San Diego Comic Con International. Since deciding to do art professionally, I’ve set many goals for myself, each building on the other. I started an online comic, created a community for artists like me to work together, promoted my work at conventions and am now in the progress of developing and self publishing my very own graphic novel under my pen name, Joenis Norac.

Despite ultimately pursuing illustration, all of my work has been heavily influenced by my background in psychology. I have an art website called “Unconscious Ink” ([ui]) in which I explore conceptual ideas that my mind wants to express and sometimes those suggested to me by visitors to my site. I’ve been using this as a platform to not only establish a presence for myself as an artist on the web, but to continually challenge and develop my skills. While posting my illustrations on [ui], I was developing my most recent project, “Anhedonia Blue.” The comic moves through the mind of a girl who suffers from a major depressive disorder, the specific symptoms of which are expressed as those of an anhedonic nature– the inability to feel pleasure or even a connection to the people around her. This is the vehicle I use to develop an understanding of various mystical and mythical themes in fantasy writing such as magic and folklore. The concept that I have been working on for over a year applies these ancient ideas with a more modern reflection of the current world view through an understanding of psychology, religion and a loss of strong emotional networks between people. Anhedonia Blue is my proposed concept for my MFA Thesis Project, though it will run beyond the span of my education I’d like to publish at least the first book by the completion of my degree.

Now that I’ve started to get my foot in the industry, I feel accomplished but am not ready to slow down my growth. I’m ready to keep pushing forward. The Academy of Art is the next step in my set of goals. I would like to improve my skills in drawing the human figure as well as in conceptual character art and landscapes. Artistically, in the last year, my work has grown significantly, but I feel that, with a bit of structured guidance, it can improve exponentially more. When I found out that I could work on my graphic novel while working with a university grade professor I knew that this was the program for me. When I complete my MFA I have plans to self publish Anhedonia Blue into a series of books that arch three major defining plot lines. I plan to not only take these books to the conventions I will be attending but to also use it to continue getting work outside of self-publishing and promoting with the ultimate goal to turn my passion into a profession. I believe that working alongside The Academy of Art on this project will allow me to  turn my dream into a reality.

Portfolio

Description List:
1. Architecture & Full Page Comic
2. Two Point Perspective
3. Clothed Human Figure [w/ perspective]
4. Comic Single Panel Example
5. Creative Panel Layout
6. Sketches of figures from life
7. Quick Hand & Head Warm-up
8. Human Figure I
9. Human Figure II
10. Random Illustration Collection 11. Comic Replication Study
12. Character Replication Study
13. Random Illustration II
14. Human Figure and Design I
15. Human Figure and Design II
16. Perspective & Photoshop Techniques

1. Architecture & Full Page Comic

The opening page to Anhedonia Blue, is part of my portfolio submission primarily to display what I am capable of doing architecturally. This drawing was done in pencil from a reference photograph of a bus stop in downtown Seattle. The penciling took me about 5 hours to complete. Once scanned and brought into Photoshop the coloring and texturing took me several more hours. Over all it took me about two days of work. This was my first attempt at doing a full page on the industry standard 11×17 Bristol board and working in full color/texture.

2. Two Point Perspective

Example of 2 Point Perspective with character walking across the plane. I’ve removed the text to allow easier view of the building and different artistic elements of detail that may have been covered in the finalized version. View finalized web published page

3. Clothed Human Figure [w/ perspective]

Third panel of Page 12 of Anhedonia Blue. This perspective is from the view of the unseen creature looking up at the dice and her. Though this is in comic book form the angel is taken from a real life photograph. At this point I’ve changed the way I draw my comic to exclusively drawing on my tablet rather than paper and pencil due to time constraints.

4. Comic Single Panel Example

This is the second panel of the most recent post of Anhedonia Blue. It is the best example of any of my current drawings in terms of what I would like my character designs to ultimately look like. I feel that I’ve finally started to get the proportions of my characters down better. In the past I’ve had a bad habit of elongating torsos and other parts of the body (first piece in the portfolio is a solid example of that). Understanding that cartoons often have elongated features, I let it go for the time being, but they still don’t feel right.

5. Creative Panel Layout

I chose this piece as an example of how I am trying to learn how to come up with creative panel structures rather than the straight forward typical panels set directly next to one another. In this, I try to move the readers eye from the top of the page down, as the creature in this page is falling, not just into the page, but into the main characters life.

6. Sketches of figures from life

A collection of hands and figure sketches that I’ve done over time.

7. Quick Hand & Head Warm-up

This is to show the basic way I go about drawing hands and heads. Though I’ve still not mastered either of these I have been improving by started each drawing session with a small warm up. I First draw a simple general line sketch, which I dim and then delete after i do a boxy more structured version on an above layer. The final version you see is a black layer on a third layer above that. If this wasn’t an exercise I would maybe do the last step another time to have tighter more realistic lines (if needed).

8. Human Figure I

An early pencil sketch of my character Eydis.

9. Human Figure II

I actually drew this around 1997-1998 before I stopped drawing for a few years. I honestly can’t remember where the inspiration or reference for this came from, but I do know that the character in this is Aeris from Final Fantasy VII. I felt this was a strong representation of my abilities at the time.

9. Random Illustration Collection

A collection of random Illustrations that I post every Wednesday and Friday at my art portfolio website under the branded name Unconscious Ink [ui] and have sold as prints at conventions.

10. Comic Replication Study

Before starting my comic I started opening comic books and finding challenging pages that I would ideally like to be able to draw like. I drew this by hand first with blue guided rougher sketches and then overlaying ink to refine the details. I figured this been the way that comics have traditionally been done so it would be the best way to learn how to draw comics. This drawing came out way nicer than I am currently capable of, partly because I have a fear of shading with solid black lines, but it’s a fear I’ve slowly begun to rid myself of as I see the importance of it. [ The characters and actual art are taken from Spawn by Todd Mcfarlane. These are NOT originals, just replications to build my skills.]

11. Character Replication Study

None of these drawing are “originals” in the sense that the poses and characters are not mine. In my constant drive to artistically get better I often take moments of time to stop and draw other peoples work to learn the way that other people do things. I’ve been learning how to better use my tablet so i opened up one of my favorite comic artists websites and found a few interesting poses and drew them. I was happy with the quality of the line art.  Since doing these sets of drawings I’ve been constantly pushing to replicate this style and incorporate it more and more into my comic. [Characters are property of Trudy Cooper of Platinum Grit.]

12. Random Illustration II

Random Spoof drawing of the popular movie Twilight that I did for my readers at Unconscious Ink.

13. Human Figure and Design I

This is a drawing of my character Eydis, along with a collection of design elements I’ve used both in my comic and for my websites.

14. Human Figure and Design II

Another example of a drawing of my character Eydis, along with a collection of design elements I’ve used both in my comic and for my websites.

15. Perspective & Photoshop Techniques

Finally I placed this one in to show one of my more recent attempts of playing with perspective and trying to enhance that angle of view by lightly blurring the figure behind centering your main focus on the creature in the front even though there is a girl undressing in the back completely unaware of this matter.

Thank You for taking the time to look over my art work!

-Denis “Joenis Norac” Caron

Resume

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Channel Island Social Services,  Camarillo, Ca (805) 384-0983
Respite Care Worker
July 2007 – Aug 2008 | Feb  2009 – Present

• In home care with children who have mental disabilities, primarily autism.
• I provide respite to parents who have stressful lives and need to take understandable time from their children to keep up their spirits.
• Task include: feeding, administering medication, bathing

Creative Living Services,  Seattle, Wa (206) 352-0354
In Home Care Giver
Sept 2008 – Jan 2009

• In home care for 4 elderly people inflicted with various disorders; Blind, dementia, M.R.  & Mute
• Task include: feeding, administering medication, bathing, driving to appointments.

Staples,  Seattle, Wa (206) 352-8644
Print & Production Center Associate
August 2008 – Jan 2009

• Producing prints and copies of clients mass produced books, pamphlets, etc
• Banner and sign production
• Graphic modification and touch-ups
• Customer service and task management

TNP Press, 2007 – Current
Co-Founder | Manager

• Web Master – Over seeing design and overall performance of websites as well as general server maintenance and setups for all sites hosted by TNP Press.
• Organizing and attending various conventions (presently only on the west coast)
• Advertising
• Budget Management

Website: TNPPress.com

Rush Haven Design,  2009 – Current
Web Master & Designer

• Website design and implementation
• Knowledge/Skill Sets: CSS, HTML, PHP (basic), JavaScript
• Customer Relations
• Project Manager – delegating work between the RH Team

Website: RushHavenDesign.com

EDUCATION

University of California, Santa Cruz, 2005-2007
Bachelors of Art in Psychology

Moorpark College, 2003-2005
Associates of Art