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View all search resultsColorful stories: With a passion for comics, three friends set up Scroll Down Comics with the aim to make it big in the local comic scene
Colorful stories: With a passion for comics, three friends set up Scroll Down Comics with the aim to make it big in the local comic scene.
Established in 2015 by three friends with a passion for both international and local comic books, Scroll Down Comics’ first release is Entytas – a fantasy story with elements of science fiction and tradition and very strong illustrations.
Scroll Down Comics publishing company released its first comic — Entytas, and also made its debut appearance at the recent Pop Con hobby convention.
The people behind Scroll Down — Ababil Ashari, Jaka Prawira and Karina Chandra — let us in on what they have in store.
How and when did Scroll Down Comics come together?
Karina Chandra (writes under the moniker asteRiesling): It just happened. I was helping Ash [Ababil Ashari] with Cloverlines and he happened to be working on another comic with Ellinsworth [Jaka Prawira]. Suddenly we’re a circle.
Ababil Ashari (writes under the moniker Wednesday Ash): So I had multiple comic and music projects after my band Shorthand Phonetics dissolved at the start of 2015.
I had this Bali-esque fantasy adventure called Entytas, which I was working on with Ellinsworth.
And I had this funky Gorillaz-type project [a British musical group known for its literally animated members] called Cloverlines with Bandung-based illustrator Karina. It was getting unruly to compartmentalize the projects in my head, so I called them both to consolidate these efforts and have some resource-sharing between the two ambitious projects, and that’s how Scroll Down Comics was born. This was in December 2015.
When you first got together, did you have specific goals in mind?
Ababil: The initial goal was to get our comics made! [Local illustrator] Sweta Kartika was right, making comics is hard work! Next time when you rifle through a comic book, try and think about how many hours of penciling, inking, coloring and lettering went into that page you flipped. Days of work consumed in seconds!
We published the works piecemeal through [the mobile application] LINE Webtoons Discover to build a groundswell of support from fans, and while the response to the comics themselves were great, the LINE Webtoons readers criticized us for our perceived lax production schedule.
We’d rather take our time to make a solid indie book with our own resources, than just write and draw in a populist fashion to get quick subscribes and comments.
Karina: I just want to get something done, something to remember me by. I’ve been working on many little projects and ended up being everywhere. People in the pop culture business would recognize my face, but they never remember why, most likely because I never managed to see those projects through to the end. I’m trying again this time.
What are your production plans? And what kind of comics do you plan on publishing?
Ababil: Well, after publishing and releasing Entytas: The Beginning, Cloverlines album meGumi: a tone poem bundled with the Cloverlines comic CLOVERLINES in HELLO WORLD and our collaboration with Kosasih-nominated artist Azam Raharjo on our psychological superhero one-shot comic book The Animator, our plan is to publish the next Entytas stories, as well as the next Cloverlines stories.
We also plan to develop more one-shots, as a TV network would make pilots. Some ideas for one-shots we are kicking around include the feminist high-school indie musical Avant-Garde Gurls, the political satire Presidential Idol and the e-sports themed romantic comedy Carry Me.
Jaka Prawira (writes under his given name): We want to make Entytas a full story first, where Entytas will evolve from a comic into a wide range of media: animation, action figurine, motion comic and someday a film; a comic universe.
Can you tell us about your first comic, ‘Entytas’?
Ababil: Entyas follows the story of Luna Delphin, a magically talented village scout, who discovers that magic is derived from a resource called Entytas and that it is not limitless. She finds this out from a chance encounter with an inter-dimensional traveler, who is a sort of magical-environmentalist. The story of Entytas in the future will follow up on this premise.
How do you see yourself fitting into the local comic scene?
Karina: In the midst of slice of life and four-panels comedy genres that have been immensely popular in Indonesia’s comic scene, I kept looking for a complete adventure, the kind that grows together with you.
So far, the guys behind the FIGHT! comic magazine and some other indie artists have been doing that, but most of them are heavy on the action part.
With Cloverlines, I want to bring my own kind of adventure story, one with music and bright colors instead of edgy struggles that actually make the characters black and blue. I’m pretty sure there are many other people who miss this kind of story too. I want to share with these people. I also want more comics that have proper, realistic women as leading protagonists; not girls as vapid fantasy vessels, but real women.
Jaka: We would also like to further develop the idea of a “mature” theme comic. Not everything has to be bloody or violent.
Ababil: We’re never going to be the most popular creators, but our hope is that we keep trying to surface themes that are not being explored in mainstream comics. Exploring ambivalence, consequences and generally pushing premises to their logical limit, without it being parody.
For more info visit facebook.com/scrolldowncomics
— Photo Courtesy of Scroll Down Comics
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