Making Vattu (a Graphic Novel), by Evan Dahm
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ธ.ค. 2021
- This is a video essay about my process for making the fantasy graphic novel Vattu, which I've been drawing and publishing online at rice-boy.com and in print since 2010. It's also about a lot of other ideas around independent art, pop culture, The Internet, etc. Thank you to Katherine Rimpau for help with audio engineering.
www.rice-boy.com/
www.patreon.com/evandahm
evandahm - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
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I am reading Vattu on webtoon. It's so different that other webcomics. The setting without humans, the artstyle, the slow pace make it unique. What fascinated me the most is the excellent world building. There is no exposition, everything is woven into the story and part of the story. I have never seen anything like that and I want to thank you for making this incredible comic.
Evan, I can't remember when I started reading. Rice Boy was done and I think you were nearly finished with Order of Tales. The creative novelty, tone, and atmosphere of your stories appealed immediately, but I liked each one even more than the last as your character development and narratives grew just that much more grounded and nuanced.
I'm seven years your senior and have been a comic fan since Calvin & Hobbes. Vattu has been my favorite webcomic since its inception; it satisfies a thirst that nothing else does for me. As the internet and so much creative media have been walled off and leveraged for the lowest common denominator and mainstream success and sustainability, I'm extremely grateful for the intoxicating yet immersive "otherness" of your work and the subtle execution of universal themes which respect your audiences' own creative intelligence. Thank you for making these works live, preserving the website in all of its unadulterated low-fi glory, and taking us with you on parts of this journey.
I can't believe Vattu has been going on for 12 years! I have no idea how I found Rice Boy in the first place, probably through tumblr drawing tutorials or something, but I've been following your work on and off since probably 2009. I'm very behind on Vattu, but I'm so glad the youtube algorithm sent me here so I get the joy of re-reading from the beginning.
All of Evan's comics are wonderful but Vattu especially is a cut above - so many well-written characters with their own stories, desires and agendas all on top of the beautiful art. I've been checking in on it regularly since 2015. In the most recent blog post on the main site, back in February, Evan mentioned that he's closing in on the finale, so there's no better time to get caught up on the comic. It's been a long time coming and I'm sure the ending will be spectacular. Good lord am I psyched!
I started reading this comic literally the day it was finished, following a link someone had posted. For a comic that was created over a period of 12 years, I read through it in about as many hours. It's an incredibly engrossing story, and one that is not easy to put down, even once it has ended (which is, perhaps, why I am watching this video now). I'm looking forward to reading through it again, at a less hurried pace, once the final volume has been printed. To that end I've placed my pre-order for the entire set over at Topato.
Evan, I'm incredibly impressed with your work. You mention world building a number of times in this video, and how it has become something of a buzzword. But the world you built for Vattu feels authentic and real in a way that very few fantasy worlds accomplish. I applaud both your ambition for creating a story of this size and scale, and the craftsmanship and commitment required to bring it to life.
I'm very grateful for third comic, Evan. Ive been following Vattu since the beginning and it's been a wonderful adventure every step of the way.
I hope someday soon we get to see an updated or larger map of Overside :3
I found Vattu from it being mentioned and highly praised by someone I follow on twitter. Got half way through book one, put it down, went back and ended up binging it late into the night then read the rest the next day. It's an incredible work of art you should be so proud of.
Vattu is one of my best recent discovery! You were already doing 3rd voice when I stumbled upon your work, but it was love at first sight. Thanks for this behind the scene
The only downside for Vattu in my opinion is that it's not translated into other languages, my family don't speak english as well as I do so I can't give them the books, but I understand that it's almost impossible to translate books when you self-publish
I love Vattu and the rest of your work. Thanks for giving me stories to get invested in over the years. I’m on Vattu page 1164, and it feels like Vattu is coming to a climax, which means it will probably be over soon. I hope that isn’t the case, but I’m sure that if it is, this story will have an ending worthy of itself. Your art is beautiful and imaginative. Your stories are compelling. Thank you, Evan.
This would be a great lecture for college students. Incredible breakdown on the last few decades of independent comic creation and what it means to be an artist today.
I finished vattu recently and just looked it up here on yt while bored. Wasn't expecting to see that the Riceman himself was on here.
Ur universe, just from watching this, looks like it is probably an amazing world, and it starts with your main character being so unique. I love watching world building and listening to creators describe their worlds and all the aspects of them. To see the map on paper was cool (like many readers I love maps) but once I saw the digital city I was really blown away. I'm sure seeing both of these as a reader (if you can see the digital city) and then seeing the city in the story is a joy. I'll be watching to see more videos like this in the future.
I've been reading Vattu since early 2011. It is an incredible Epic, and holds its own against anything else out there.
You have a way of delivering stories with such a unique weight and feeling to them, it is wonderful to get some insight into your process behind it. Thank you for your explanations and thoughts behind all of this.
Thank you, Evan.
This was incredibly interesting and useful to view alongside my first read-through of your works. Your views on the medium, the industry, and art (and the internet as well) as a whole are fascinating and relatable. I find myself feverishly sharing Rice Boy and Vattu with every one I know ever since finding it through your posting of Vattu on Webtoons. (I think that was a good move on your part)
Thank you for creating these stories, which have quickly become a very necessary and very therapeutic part of my days. I can't wait to devour anything and everything you continue to create.
Edited to add: Also I appreciate that you are wearing a WFMU shirt in the beginning of this video. Much like self-published, free-to-access comics and art, freeform radio is another medium of art and thought that must be protected.
this is incredible!! i really aspire to be like you one day! i just started my first comic half a year ago and i fell so in love with the process, its insane! also, now i want to read your work
I have been reading your work since Fall 2010, and it is such a pleasure to finally 'meet' you. Thank you for making yourself available in this way. I hope you're well, Evan.
Very helpful…and interesting 👍 thanks 😊
Thank you for sharing this video essay, Evan. I'm looking forward to the finale of Vattu and your next project.
Awesome to hear about your process and your thoughts on the industry :D Thanks so much for your dedication to your art and telling awesome stories.
I love your comics so much, I wish I could have the motivation you have to do my own but I just keep getting burnt out before even finishing 2 pages
You seem pretty rad dude thanks for sharing
I started reading your comics with Vattu, having found it via a Reader Question page of Halloween costumes from the comic Skin Deep where a character dressed as Vattu, and it led me down the delightful hole that is Overside. Thank you for putting your work on the web for us all to enjoy!
Evan, this is lovely! Thank you for sharing your process in such detail.
Great video, thank you! And the ending seemed really emotional and personal and I appreciate that you wanted to share this with your audience. I'm reading Vattu since a few months and I am captivated by this story in a way that is rarely found. The closest sensations to the ones I'm having during reading Vattu come from Le Guin's prose. You have a faithfull fan in me now. I wish you all the best both on personal and artistic levels and I wish to all of your fans that this is not your last word.
Good bye and good luck!
Thank you for this! I've been following Vattu since nearly the beginning and it's near and dear to my heart. Congratulations on making it so far, and though I'll be sad to see Vattu end, I can't wait to see what happens!
this is sooo good, love the way you talk about improvising and "rehearsing" in writing and other mediums
Vattu is maybe the work I've come back to and back to the most in the last year. Thank you so much for making this thing. It means more to me than I can say.
Thank you for this! I've been wanting to learn more about this amazing world that you built. I hope you make more of these. I want to know about this world that you've built.
Watching this now after reading the end of the comic feels like a very fitting capstone to the whole experience. I began reading this in around 2019, I think and, as you note, it's been a time of profound transformation for all of us, through which we've been able to recognize the structures that underpin our reality. It was immensely gratifying to see those themes emerge in the narrative itself. While I think the comic ends on a slightly more optimistic note than my fundamentally pessimistic brain would prefer, personally, I acknowledge that stories deserve to shine as a ray of hope, rather than a grim reflection of our history and current era. Anyway, I'll miss the superb structure you created with all its wonderful tools, even as I look forward to the next project. Thank you for making something so wonderfully evocative.
Thanks so much for putting together this thoughtful breakdown of your process! Very insightful.
I feel like the interconnectedness of modern narratives serves to provide people with parasocial relationships with both characters and settings to compensate for a lack in people's relationships with the actual people and places in their life. Media with powerful themes or ideas inherently transgresses the fictional and seeks to live in relation to its audience's lived reality.
Or vice versa.
@@dextergarner1286 What do you mean by that?
Evan, I don't think you have to worry about the "American white male" label. That label denotes a person whose goal is to exploit any part of society's glorious spectrum for their own ends. You are an erudite, extremely well read, analytical person that is very in touch with their humanity...this shows through in the beautiful story of Vattu.
Cool shit dawg
12 years. Damn
A silly request, can you enable subtitles? I find them extremely useful to help me understand.
Hello! I have the whole script pretty tightly written, so I'd like to figure out how to do this, yes. thanks!
@@evndahm it's automatic, you just need to enable it and Google will add them (there will be some mistakes, of course, but it's pretty good).
I'm curious what the tune is, at 13:00?
If you put music in the background, when you speak, you should keep it instrumental. It's distracting and sometimes anoying. Apart from that, I love the video. Thanks for your work and I look forward to Vattu Vol.4.
Like the art, like the process, but that background music is literal fingernails on the chalk board. Couldn’t get past a few minutes unfortunately. But I will look for the graphic novel as it looks interesting.
Vattu's not a comic novel. It's three comic novels.
the way you hold a pencil gives me anxiety
Great content but that background music is REALLY REALLY BAD I had to stop watching 😓
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