Min Heo

0:02 Hello everyone and good evening good morning or good afternoon depending on where you're joining us from my name is matt alagaya and I'm the editor-in-chief of it's nice that. And I'm delighted to welcome you all to this the february edition of nicer tuesdays online first off I just want to say really a massive thank you to all of you for signing up for today's event it's going to be a very special one as we're continuing with our new format for nicer tuesdays in 2021. If you haven't heard about this already we've made a couple of minor changes nicer tuesdays will still be held on the last tuesday of every month that much will stay the same what's different is that this year each event is going to have its own theme. And instead of four speakers we're going to be joined by two creatives but we'll be talking to them in more depth discussing their work and the issues raised by it and giving you folks at home more of a chance to ask your own questions as well tonight's event has a fascinating theme and one that feels much needed given our times the times we're currently living in the role of humor in the creative industries we're going to be speaking to two creatives who know more than a thing or two about humor and making people laugh in a moment we'll hear from the california-based illustrator min hyo who'll talk us through some of her funniest and most uplifting comics and illustrations then we'll be joined by charlie perkins head of comedy at the london-based production company blink industries I'll be having a chat with charlie and you at home will also have the chance to put your own questions to her as well yeah.

1:20 So it promises to be a very very fun evening it's time now to meet our first guest minho is an illustrator based in the bay area whose work combines a host of lovable characters with warm hues and a silly sense of humor her charming creations offering often featuring a cast of bunnies and moody kittens have provided many a much needed pick-me-up over the past year they've also it happens to I should point out kind of grace the pages of websites of the new yorker the new york times google vogue and many many more we're delighted to have min joining us today and she's gonna be giving us a bit of an explanation of her creative process and how she uses creative ingenuity to deliver laugh after laugh min are you you there hello hello hi thank you for that very nice introduction hi everyone thanks for watching if you don't know me for those of you who don't know me my name is minh and I'm an illustrator so I'm from the bay area california and that's basically the san francisco area and I've been working and living here since I was born basically. And I graduated from art school about eight years ago. And I've been working as a freelance illustrator ever since then. And I've primarily worked with illustration branding clients and a lot of editorial clients your standard like single frame illustrations and I love doing these assignments that help me tell a funny story or illustrate funny characters but I'm actually here to talk to you guys today about my comics that I started posting on instagram about two years ago and they're just about a bunch of random things things that I like things my sister says basically anything that makes me laugh and yeah they're just a big bucket of my personality I guess so here's one that was inspired by my sister and this is word for word something that she said after I showed her a picture of herself and I was a bit like what but I was just I thought her self-confidence was so cute and endearing that I immediately wrote it down in my sketchbook and made a cop made it into a comic here's another one that I did for it's nice that back in november and it's a little kitten getting ready to mess things up but she doesn't even care so a lot of my comics are quite cute and silly and I try to keep it light-hearted even when there's strong angry rage emotions going on so how did I get started into drawing comics well I've always loved newspaper comic strips since I was a kid and I used to cut out my favorite ones and put them into a little scrapbook and eventually I started drawing my own short ones about my friends just for fun but as I got older I was introduced to like japanese manga and superhero comics and I was blown away by like the perspective and semi-realistic anatomy and very disappointed to discover that as a nine-year-old I could not draw like that.

5:02 So I abandoned the comic artist lifestyle for a long time because as a nine-year-old I refused to do anything that I wasn't immediately good at and I just started drawing little doodles and illustrations but avoided the comic format fast forward like 10 000 years later and get the internet and tumblr and instagram and I started to see these short webcomics pop up. And I really like the simplicity of them the short panels the quick punch line and also no perspective and I felt really inspired to get back into making comics again so a lot of my comics are inspired by random sketchbooking that I do and they're just doodles about and observations about my life like the seal on a slide so they're very personal to me and they tend to be more a reflection of me and my sense of humor than any other client works that I tend to do so here's a quick sketch that I did a long time ago after I saw the book a book called metamorphosis and I didn't even read the book. I just saw the title and thought that would make a cool drawing so I sketched out a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.

6:23 And this is all our sketch starts out for me as like a curious thought or an interesting idea. And then. I just wait for a story to hit me and that came when I had a conversation with a good friend of mine about how we're getting older and then I felt inspired to take this sketch and that conversation and put it together into this comic and she's so excited to come out of her cocoon but she's disappointed to discover that she's only turned into her mother and the conversation with my friend was just about how we start to take on our parents traits whether we like it or not and a lot of my comics feature very cute animals because I'm obsessed with anything small cute and fluffy so here's a little bear looking for a best friend only to be rejected by a very sassy bear and I drew this one thinking about those bff charm necklaces that used to be all the rage when I was a kid but and I always wanted someone to share them share that charm necklace with you could split it apart.

7:39 And then when you put it back together it felt out best friends forever but when I looked around everyone always seemed to be paired up already which is kind of sad but I got this comic out of it so maybe it was all worth it so now that I've shown you guys a couple of my comics I thought I could walk you through my entire thought process from start to finish I went to preface this I have to say my best ideas come to me when someone's speaking to me for a very long period of time so like during classes or in meetings just when my mind is kind of zoned out but my body is still functioning that's kind of the sweet spot so I started this one out during a meeting and it was called a design sprint so I started writing the words sprint in bubble letters as a header for the notes but then it quickly started to get away with from me because I started to turn the s into a snake and I thought well what if all the other letters were snakes and then as I was drawing that I heard someone come down the hallway in high heels and thought wouldn't that be funny a snake wearing high heels and then from there my mind started to just take this idea and think how many different ways can I draw a snake in high heels how maybe it's standing upright how would it hold a handbag or maybe if it's just sitting in a shoe and then the patterns on the snakes started to remind me of pattern stockings that women wear so I thought well maybe if they were women's legs but then what if her entire body was made out of snakes and so I just like to take these little random ideas and kind of flesh them out into a full-blown short comic and for me it's all about kind of taking time to observe my life and doodle and kind of pull at those threads until they form a story so right.

9:53 Now I'm trying my hand at doing longer format narratives so I'm taking these short four panel or five panel comics and linking them into a bigger story. And this one's about a rabbit who finds herself very cute but also very mad so she's going to run away with all her essentials of course tamagotchi murdering pokemon cards just the important stuff and she's off to find her independence and I don't really have a rough layout or anything I'm just taking a bunch of old sketchbook ideas that I've had and just having fun pushing them into a bigger story about this one rabbit and she's so excited to get out into the world and avoid responsibilities and have no stress along with her pet chicken yeah and that's it that went by pretty quick I guess I was speaking really fast but that's it from me thanks so much min thanks man that was amazing yeah.

11:24 I really enjoyed that I love the the snake in high heels yeah I've got a bunch of questions for you and just a kind of another note to everyone in the audience really if you have a question if a question comes to mind pop it into the chat and I'll I'll do my best to ask min for you I guess my first question was really about narrative I mean you talked about you know extending narratives beyond those four panel comics what are the what are kind of some of the challenges that you found when you try and extend a narrative and what have you found difficult I think for me it's about keeping them quite simple and short often I especially as I'm redrawing the comics and finalizing them I can tend to add more panels and more panels and then it gets quite long so it's all about editing myself back I guess I'm adapting myself for the instagram format which is and keeping in mind that people's attention span is quite short yeah I mean that was going to be one of my questions was you know the the instagram format I mean you've worked on a a comic for us that went out over instagram how much do you find that that platform you know that social media has been I guess you know for your for you and your career how important has it been oh I would say that before instagram I was basically a starving artist instagram really helped me get my name out there. And I know there's definite pros and cons to the platform but for me it's been really beneficial and I love posting on comics on there because of the carousel and it just helps set that pacing up you know yeah definitely I mean coming back to narrative I guess you know one of the things I'm always fascinated by I mean comics is a very good example you know you have humor really relies on narrative and I'm thinking particularly of those those kind of four panel comics but is is what you're doing is it kind of building tension.

13:23 And then you create a kind of humorous payoff at the end how do you think about what you're doing in those four panels how do I do that I think I tried to keep the ending a bit unexpected and build it up until the end for me I think it's just about what I find funny personally and playing off my own sense of humor and thinking about what I would enjoy seeing on instagram that's always quite a good place to start yes you know what do I actually find funny myself we had some great yeah questions come in from the the audience brando asks or rather says first off the color is sublime.

14:10 And then asks what's your process for developing your color palette I have a set number of colors that I always use and I think I came across that just by collecting colors that I gravitate towards naturally like I love bright colors and warm tones so yeah. I just start from there.

14:28 And then whenever I see a color palette that I come across and I really like I always try to make a note of it and try to incorporate that into my palette somehow and see if it works great and stella has asked how do you balance commercial work and personal work you mentioned there that you know a lot of the stuff you do is personal work.

14:49 And then the client work kind of follows on from that.

14:50 But yeah how do you set that balance I guess I have a rule set for myself to post on instagram once a week and I always very determined to match that.

15:04 So that's how I motivate myself to keep up the personal work.

15:09 And then I do the client work just during the day and then usually like the day before I have to post something I'll do a drawing for instagram but usually if I don't have too much client work I try to keep up like a personal sketchbook a personal diary and nothing like too big or fancy just like little sketches or doodles and that usually helps me stay inspired for the weekly drawings david has asked what motivates your comics are you looking to create a particular emotional reaction really interesting question a particular emotional reaction no I think I'm just trying to share things that I find funny although some of my comics are inspired by awkward conversations or situations that I have and I think that's a way for me to just cope with that situation myself because it's probably from personal experience so yeah but I think my ultimate goal is just to kind of make everyone happy spread a little cheer that is such a good a good reason to be doing things yeah and there was something that I was really amazed by in your in your presentation which is this kind of idea of repetition when you're doodling I mean I guess the snake in high heels you know the number of iterations that you had there how important do you feel that repetition is I mean you talked about pulling at the threads until something something kind of you know appears and I love that I'm just kind of keen to hear what role repetition plays in your work oh very big I think especially when I find myself stuck or uninspired or the idea just feels unoriginal I always find that drawing it repetitiously helps me think of new ideas just because I get bored of it.

16:58 And I think that helps my mind go to access a different part of my brain and then I can kind of combine different ideas and put create something more original it feels like something that lots of illustrators have which is this kind of they almost need to get into a state where they're not necessarily thinking so much about what they're doing it's kind of you you repeat it so often that you're in a trance state or something exactly yeah.

17:25 I think the goal is to not overthink it which is unfortunate because I'm a very big overthinker agnes I think I've only got one last question.

17:36 But it's it's from agnes what was for you an unexpected source of inspiration yeah.

17:40 So thinking about where you get your ideas where you get your inspiration was there anywhere that you've you know found something completely unexpected became a source of inspiration for you oh actually I was listening to a bunch of nicer tuesday videos in preparation for this. And it inspired me to make a comic and I think it was the jeff mcfettridge episode that was pretty funny because he was showing like his paintings of a man looking at his own shadow and I was inspired to draw my own rabbit looking at its shadow and yeah.

18:13 So I think the key is just to keep your ears open your eyes open yeah that was the latest source of unexpected inspiration for me right thanks so much I'm afraid we've probably run out of time there but thank you we really appreciate you joining us this evening I'm probably gonna have to leave it there thank you for having me