Alex Tran

BA Drawing

ARTIST STATEMENT: I am a digital illustrator that uses Clip Studio Paint to create my works. Some of my biggest inspirations come from manga, anime, and video games and I want to be able to tell some of the stories that these things do with my own art. My biggest inspiration comes from a manga called Blue Period. It tells a rather relatable story for art students who can just suddenly discover their passion for art and the struggles that come along with it. The main reason I create art is to spark conversations or have people relate to my works.

“Sense of Loss” is a series of comic pages made to explore the mysterious sense of losing something. This project takes inspiration from Japanese comics and manga and this can be seen in the way of formatting, panel flow and art style. With this project I want people to be able to empathize with the characters on the pages. People will resonate with the media that they consume. Everyone expresses their emotions in different ways, and this project will let me explore that. What happens when you lose something important? Perhaps the loss makes you forget you lost something because of the trauma. Or maybe it comes back to haunt you in your dreams.

This is a digital project, so it is highly accessible once posted online. The website this project is hosted on is styled after other similar webcomic hosting sites. The hosting site has a sleek and simple design which allows the viewer to focus on the comic pages themselves. A digital format allows more people to experience the story than just having the physical work sitting in a gallery.