LET’S TALK KOMIKS: Selina Espiritu – Anyone Can Be a Che– Comic Book Artist!

Here we have Selina Espiritu who is one of the Filipino artists that is currently illustrating for BOOM! Studios. We at Flipgeeks got an interview with her to see who she is and how does Selina Espiritu work, and also for her to tell us more about illustrating Brave Chef Brianna.

FLIPGEEKS: Tell us about yourself. Who is Selina Espiritu?
SELINA ESPIRITU: Dang. Selina Espiritu is just a 23 year old Filipino baby who is unnecessarily intense about video games, drawing, Nicholas Cage, and dogs. I have four of them but the only one who matters is Kai, who is the World’s Best Dog, and if anyone wants to contest that point ya’ll can meet me in the pit.
I’m a born and bred Filipina, and the art of visual storytelling has always been a passion of mine. Since I could never write creative fiction to save my life, I directed my energies to telling stories through drawing, and being a comic illustrator or a storyboarder was–is–a dream of mine. I also have a peripherally related Bachelors in Multimedia Arts (think of what you imagine a “multimedia arts” course would be–it wasn’t that.) that I crawled out of De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde in late-2016 with, and a PhD in being a smart aleck. I got the PhD first.

How did you start illustrating?
Unprofessionally, I’ve been drawing since I was way younger (it was mostly crap), but I started taking it more seriously around the time I started college (by then I had graduated from “mostly crap” to “occasional crap”) when I decided that I wanted to see if I could get paid to do something that I enjoyed doing–namely illustrating comics. When I was still in high school, I would make short, dumb comics on anecdotes of my day–usually jokes or funny moments–and eventually (especially when I started gaming) I would draw comics with more complex stories.

When and how did you start working for BOOM?!
I was officially contracted to work on the Brave Chef Brianna project mid-ish 2016, a few months before I staggered out of college with a degree. Our awesome editor, Jasmine Amiri, had actually emailed me in, when was it? 2015? Thereabouts that time, but I couldn’t commit because I was working on my college thesis–an unholy project on smartphones, heart attacks, and emergency first aid (Yes. I went to art school). Fast forward to 2016, I was touched by an angel (Jasmine) and asked to do some test pages for Brave Chef Brianna. I did and boom (get it?), the rest is history!

 What did you feel when you were offered to illustrate Brave Chef Brianna?
I was freaking ecstatic because illustrating comics is The Dream for me, and can you imagine how overwhelming it was for me, an unemployed child, to get a gig with BOOM! Studios of all places? It was self-fives all around.

Any inspiration when drawing the comics especially the heroine Brianna?
We try to give Brianna and company the same kind of energy vibe you get from BOOM! classics like Adventure Time or Steven Universe, so those two series were my main inspirations!

Brave Chef Brianna is really interesting and somehow touches the heart, it gave a touch of empowerment when Brianna got over one part of her struggles near the end of the comics. What did you feel when you were illustrating it?
Oh yeah, Brianna goes through some rough stuff–and the thing is, majority of her problems come from herself, yeah? Having personal, unaired problems (especially anxiety) is just something that most everyone has, so it makes the series all the more relatable, I like to think. I share Brianna’s innate fear or failure, inadequacy, and disappointing family, so it was a relief to draw parts like Brianna getting over it or Suzan helping her through her panic.

There’s also the matter of the fact that what you draw affects you sometimes–so like, when I have to draw several pages of Brianna being stressed out, I absorb her stress via emotional osmosis–emotionosmosis, if you will–and I spend several days in a state of detached stressfulness.

What’s the hardest part you had to draw for the comics?
Architecture and backgrounds are my day-to-day morale-killers because I was one of those kids who never drew backgrounds in her comics because it was a) hard, and b) hard. There are things you take for granted about your environment until you have to draw them–like ‘how tall is a door’, ‘how high should a chair look when you stand next to it’, ‘oh dang, restaurants need bathroms’. I like to think that, three issues in, I’m getting better at it. I am, right?

Right?

Layouts are also sometimes a huuuuuge Dickens because that’s the part I do immediately after I get a script–so I’m kind of flying blind in the sense that I’m creating the pages from scratch– and I’m constantly worrying that the pages will look too visually similar, or I’ll have a hard time envisioning how the scene works, or I’ll preemptively stress about background perspectives (morale killer)! In the end though, and with the help of Jasmine and the writer, Sam Sykes, (and a judicious application of coffee) we’re able to compensate for whatever shortsightedness I have!

What about the easiest?
After busting my butt on three issues, drawing the main cast is definitely the easiest part of my process since I’m now very familiar with the nuances of the character’s designs–especially since we’ve been working at them since 2016!

Any other future projects we should be looking forward to?
Yes! Maybe! Is it for BOOM!? Is it outside of BOOM!? Who knows! Ooh, mysteries! (I’m winking right now)