Guest Comic #5 by Victoria Grace Elliot
Posted December 18, 2014 at 11:10 pm

This *sniff* TH-THIS. FIFTH GUEST COMIC IS *blows nose loudly* is by Victoria, who makes the super great webcomic Balderdash!! One of those exclamation points there is part of the title. It's got the excitement built right into it! Wow! I can't stop exclaiming! Here, let me exclaim another thing: Balderdash(!) is one of my favorite comics and a huge inspiration to me!

Balderdash is a story about two young witches leaving their respective homes for the first time, and it's super well-written and visually just really impressive from its start. The dialogue flows naturally and is fun to read and has a really great subtle cleverness throughout. Victoria uses narration, written in aesthetically pleasing cursive, to great effect, juxtaposing what characters are saying with the narrator's hindsight. It works really, really well and never feels extraneous. The characters end up just feeling super believable and interesting. This is supplemented by Victoria indicating characters' emotions with visual effects, a shoujo manga technique that she WIELDS WITH EXTREME SKILL. There's also great examples in Balderdash! of showing emotion with/through restraint using panel spacing and framing, cutting off faces and cutting away from characters entirely, etc. It's expert comics work; there's really no better way to describe it. Victoria is a huge talent and someone I look up to. All of her strengths are things I'd really like to improve on in my own work!

Also Balderdash!!!!! has recipes between chapters that fit into the narrative right alongside tutorials on basic magic, great worldbuilding, and Studio Ghibli-esque attention to detail with food and small, moment-to-moment activities. Lots of cool stuff going on! Snapshot time:

Victoria also did a long stint as the artist for a webcomic called House of Orr, another personal favorite. I highly recommend you check out both comics! They're definitely worth your time.

Relevant Links: