Interview conducted by Kay Heino ’23. 

I have had the pleasure of speaking with Blue Delliquanti and they are absolutely wonderful! Our conversation may have been brief, but I felt a great vibe and I hope you all enjoy this interview as much as I did.

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KAY:

As an introduction can you brief everyone on who you are and what your practice involves?

BLUE:

My name is Blue Delliquanti (they/them) and I am a comic artist and writer. Over the past ten years I have serialized long-form comics online and drawn several graphic novels, including O Human Star (ohumanstar.com) and my most recent book Across A Field of Starlight.

KAY:

Do you have a preference in drawing in the physical form or digital?

BLUE:

Most of my comics have been drawn digitally, using an Intuos tablet and (for recent projects) Clip Studio Paint.

KAY:

I looked at some of your books you had on your page. They are beautifully illustrated. Is there a specific process you go through for your comic making ?

BLUE: 

After I write an outline for the entire story, I expand upon it using a combination of scripting and thumbnailing. Scripting is fairly similar to what one might expect from a film script, but to accompany it I will mock up each comic page in small sketches, called thumbnails, to get a sense of the flow and composition of each page. Those are drawn traditionally in a sketchbook. I’ll scan those and draw over them digitally, first as “pencils,” a more thorough sketch draft, before moving to “inks,” the final lineart, and any color layers. In Clip I also have templates for my panel borders and text so that they’re consistent for the entire comic.

KAY:

I know that not only do I enjoy making illustrated books but so many other MFA students do as well, do you have any advice on printing?

BLUE: 

If you anticipate that your project will be something you print, as opposed to existing only digitally, plan on that from the start! Make sure your file is high enough resolution and make sure you have wide enough margins around your art so that no important details get clipped off by accident. It will save you lots of heartbreak if you anticipate those needs when you lay out a projects as opposed to fixing it later.