Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399900
Aminder Dhaliwal once had a pilot sit in development purgatory for four years before ultimately being scrapped. She describes the experience as quietly disheartening. "I've learned to find happiness in a really fast 'no,'" she says, wryly. Feeling disappointed and robbed of her time, she resolved to make art that was guaranteed to at least see the light of day. She started posting comics on Instagram, and she says, "I was as shocked as anyone when I started getting this large following. I [resolved to] self-publish a book now that I had a base that would probably buy it." But instead of self-publishing, she cold-called publisher Drawn & Quarterly and sent over a copy of Woman World, her first graphic novel imagining a future where men are extinct. They replied a week later with an offer to publish it. Next came this year's Cyclopedia Exotica, an allegory about microaggressions from the perspective of the mythological, one-eyed creature Cyclopes. "I wanted to play with the idea of the daily comic strip," says Dhaliwal of the book's format. "Daily strips are not only a really easy way to offer bite-sized chunks into a new world, but it's also a nice way of layering on a theme." Each comic works individually, but when they are read as something larger in a book, she says it shows how "those microaggressions add up daily. The weight of them is so different than when you experience a one-off. What I find fun about these traumatizing events is the humor you can find in them, or those little pockets of joy when other people [can relate]." Before Dhaliwal came to appreciate the comic strip form, her interest was in animation—an interest born out of a fascination for DVD bonus features and storytelling. The avid reader pictured stories in motion in her head. "There was something really enticing to me about seeing pictures move and how differently comedy works in animation," she says. "I feel like that's such a cliché, but it really is something to have all these moving lines come together that can express emotion and have an effect on people," she adds. "I like that F R A M E X F R A M E CREATIVE SOLUTION 14 KEYFRAME A DESIRE FOR MORE CREATIVE CONTROL LED WRITER AND STORY ARTIST AMINDER DHALIWAL TO THE WORLD OF GRAPHIC NOVELS WHERE HER ART AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY UNITE. above: Dhaliwal's self-portrait as a Cyclops.