Dear friends, I’m so excited to launch my website!
Explore my illustrations and treat yourself with t-shirts, cups, bags and much more designed by Fralus!
You can even customize your own item with one of my motifs and illustrations.
Enjoy!
Fralus
Archive: Author: Fralus
Birth of a comic strip explained by Fralus
Thinking up a comic strip is a creative process that starts with inspiration, goes through message development and ends up with final delivery; a similar process is used in advertising.
It can take up to 2 hours to deliver a well made comic strip, depending on a series of aspects that we’ll see later on.
INSPIRATION
Inspiration can come from different sources: mass media, memories, people…
For me most of it comes from personal experience. I never draw mere clichés ’cause I find them boring and old-fashioned.
My inspiration is often followed up by a quick message development which is basically the way I choose to build up my sketches.
MESSAGE DEVELOPMENT
The message development involves a couple of levels:
- the look
- the tone
The choice about the look is between a single panel and multiple panels (the strips); colours and black & white; headers, footers, balloons…etc.
A single panel is better when you want it to be eye-catching and convey your message fast. Multiple panels are supposed to be a little bit more engaging and tell a short story.
If you draw regularly, you might have your own cartoon style(s), too.
Mine is pretty naive and childish and I don’t have a recurring character at the moment. Building a character is a complicated process where you need to think of a bigger picture and create continuity.
The tone is crucial for your comic strip. This normally goes from hilarious to sarcastic and no matters which topic you’re dealing with.
I like my comic strips to have a gentle humour, which means they’re not supposed to offend anyone.
FINAL DELIVERY
This is the practical part of the process where unexpected things can come up. Although you’ve got all your previous elements set up (idea, look, tone) you might bump into last minute corrections.
Depending on your purpose, you might want to “go digital” like me or to draw on paper – I sometimes do in a sketchbook before drawing on my tablet.
I like drawing on a very simple app called Fresh Paint. It’s quite user friendly and cool for beginners.
I draw on a Microsoft Surface Pro 7, Core i5, RAM 8 GB, SSD 128 GB, Platinum
When the comic strip is done I check it up one more time and then I schedule it in my social media agenda for publication (not the other way around). Alternatively I store it in a folder for future projects or collections.
Launching Fralus
In September 2017 I started to draw a series of comic strips about the Italians living in the UK.
I showed my very first comic strip to a couple of friends who told me I should have shared it on social media.
I hadn’t thought to launch a Facebook page at the time. I was drawing to test a few graphics apps on my Surface Pro and I quite liked the result.
I hadn’t drawn in months and never got into digital illustration.
So I went “why not?”. Why not to keep drawing a few more comic strips?
After a while I got a full series of strips done. It was a special time of my life when memories from my past in the UK were coming out like a waterfall and I just wanted to put them down with fun.
On 21 October 2017 I launched Fralus Facebook Page.
Humour helped me out. It smoothed the nostalgia about those places and people I were with before relocating to Italy.
From September to December 2017 I’ve drawn more than 50 comic strips featuring Italians in the UK.
Most of them involve culture shocks about food, weather, clothing, habits. Some are about the Brexit.
What encouraged me most was the bunch of messages from the Italians living in the UK who thanked me for spreading humour and laughs through my sketches.
In November 2017 I launched also my Instagram page and started to expand my portfolio to further illustration themes like British pop-rock bands, love etc.
On 18th February 2018 fralus.com came to life!
MY LOGO
I came up with some ideas for my own logo when I started to build my website. I wanted it to be clean, simple and playful, just like my comic strips style. The idea of a “strawberry” comes from the very first 3 letters of my nick name (and real name) “FRA” so I put down some drafts of logos featuring a “fragola” (“strawberry” in Italian).
It took several drafts to reach my favourite logo, but that was worth!
