This interview is of the wonderful Lilac, whose comics are: Ruby and Ar Oh Ef El!
(interview conducted by Aivilo!)
1.) Well well Well! Hello Miss Lilac! I feel honored to interview you. Tell us a little about yourself.
Oh wai hallo thar mizz Aivilo. :D Awh, shucks, yer makin' me blush ahyuk. XD Anyway, I am called Lilac and I am 19 years young. I am a lady and I like cats and fish, especially my pet fish. I wish I could have a pet seahorse but I would be too afraid of killing it. D: I really enjoy breakfast buffets and listening to jrock, dance, techno, and anything that sounds good to me at the moment. X3 Hm..what other bizarre and random things shall I torment the readers with? XDD
2.) You seem to be a very nice and well rounded person. That brightens a lot of people’s day. What keeps your spirits up?
My faith in God, mostly. Also I listen to ridiculously large amounts of oshare kei (which is like..bright and happy Japanese pop-rock). I also watch a lot of hilarious shows such as Flapjack and The Mighty Boosh. Plus I tend to laugh at the stupidest things. I guess I'm just easily amused. XD Although, truth be told, I'm actually really boring in person. x:
3.) 'Ar Oh Ef El’ is a random, fun and exciting comic! How did you come up with the name?
Gather round, young'n's. 'Ar Oh Ef El' is the spelling of the sound of 'ROFL', which means 'rolling on floor laughing' (explanation for the .1% of people who didn't already know that XDD ). Originally I was going to use 'El Oh El' but that name was taken, so I went with Ar. 'Ar Oh Ef EL' makes more sense for me to use though because I used to say 'rofl' all the time when I typing stuff. It wasn't because I read it as 'rolling of floor laughing' so much as I actually read it as 'roffle', which is a funny gurgling sound in my head and makes me giggle to myself. Therefore, whenever I would see something funny or say something stupid/funny, I would type 'rofl' next to it. Plus now I can shorten my comic's name to Ar and that's the sound pirates make and pirates are hip, right? So, technically, my comic is hip-happening! :D *who says that anymore?*
4.) What art styles/artists helped inspired you to create 'Ar Oh Ef El’ and 'Ruby'?
They were both inspired by different styles, believe it or not! :D 'Ar Oh Ef El' was inspired artistically by a combination of those 'Pon and Zi' comics and this cool chibi style that I see popping up on the internet all the time. It was fun. :3 'Ruby' was inspired by the manga 'King of Bandit; Jing : Twilight Tales' as well as some of Square Enix's art styles. Of course..I probably do those styles a terrible injustice. ._.;;
5.) I really like you’re comic Ruby. It is adventurous, fun and mysterious. What inspired you to create the comic Ruby?
Oh dear…another long story taim. D: Well, the idea for Ruby came about shortly after I launched 'Ar Oh Ef El' on DrunkDuck. I haven't finished a serious comic story since I was 13-14 and I wanted to see if I could finish one now that I'm older and filled with the wisdom of…well, nevermind. At first the story was a very generic 'girl attempts suicide and is transported to another world while her earthly body is in recovery at the hospital somewhere.' It was only going to be about two chapters or so and it was loosely based off of another comic I made when I was young who's story I have forgotten. Anydoodles, after the first couple of pages I started aquiring a rather large fanbase (okay…like…four or five…but still, that's pretty large to someone who's never put a comic out there before!) and I was making some good friends (because people on DD are awesome like that). I didn't want to let everyone down and the encouragement really inspired me to do something more with Ruby. Plus I take pride in my awesome writing skills and I wasn't going to soil myself with a plot as generic as that. So for weeks I frantically scribbled out a plot for Ruby (while I was still in the process of drawing and publishing it! D: ) and finally I came up with something that really made me happy. I think I completed the scripts back in November or December. I was especially happy because I was able to use three of my characters that I haven't really used in anything before/drawn in a long time. Anypoop, that's how it happened. Sorry for the long answer. ._.;
6.) My favorite Character in Ruby is Lemon. He is a very interesting character who likes to antagonize Ruby. How did the idea of Lemon generate in your head? :3
Lemon came about in my junior year of highschool and he's a fairly new character (compared to others (like Fear) who I've had for 5+ years). He came about during my oceanography class while I was doodling my brains out in a desperate attempt to stay awake (it was my last class of the day and I was a tired koala). I realized that I didn't have any psychopathic male characters who were 'good' guys. I had been wanting to create a psychopathic character who was so dangerous and unpredictable he had to be bound to his teeth. Sure enough, I doodled Lemon on my note sheet and his character was born! The first thing I noticed was that he had some fabulous legs. They were beautiful, I tell you! So then I got the idea of creating a bunch of supermodels who were each assigned a specific mental disorder/disease and were named after a fruit that was the same color as their hair (Blueberry is part of this group and she was supposed to have depression…however, that's not working out too well. XD She won't cooperate!). Anyway, that's how Lemon was born. He's been a special part of me ever since. ^^
7.) 'Ar Oh Ef El’ has a lot of cool, funny characters in it. How do you get ideas to create so many characters? D:
I can't stop! I have some 40+ characters in my brain (and my notebooks) and they just keep coming. I'm pretty imaginative and making characters and stories that go with them is just a hobby of mine. It comes to me naturally.
8.) The coloring style in both comics looks nice, colorful and lovely! What art mediums do you use?
At first I used colored pencils because I really didn't know how I would go about making a black and white comic. *super fail* XD I'm actually really inexperienced with coloring mediums. Lately I've been using more markers and less colored pencils because markers tend to scan better and it's easier on my wrist, which has been coming down with a turribul case of carpal tunnel as of late. DX I don't use digital mediums because I get too distracted and I'm really inexperienced with photoshop and corel paint. I don't know where to begin. It's just easier and faster for me to work with traditional mediums. :3
9.) Congratulations on being a finalist for the Drunkduck awards for your comic 'Ar Oh Ef El'!! Do you have any favorite moments on your comic?
Thankyew! :3 Oh man…I have a ton of favorite moments. XD I think my favorite moments come from the pages that are based off of conversations between my brother and myself. They always make me laugh. XD
10.) Do you have any favorite characters that you just absolutely adore on 'Ruby’ and 'Ar Oh Ef El'?
'Ruby' I can't say. I guess I'll always have a special place in my heart for Fear, cuz drawing him and characters like him really helped me get through some tough times back when I was younger. Honestly, I love all the characters in 'Ruby', and it would be hard for me to choose a favorite.
'Ar Oh Ef El' is the same way..although I'm somewhat fond of Gert. It's weird, especially since I haven't really used him, but he's such a weird little thing. XDD He is a pain to draw, though, since his hair never cooperates. I'm also very fond of Lucille and Luke. Drawing them is always a blast. :D
11.) On average how long does it take to do one page for both comics?
'Ar Oh Ef El' doesn't take but a few hours in one night. I usually draw it while watching The O'Reilly Factor and finish during George Lopez or The Nanny (I love me some Nick at Nite). 'Ruby' takes a longer time because I put more effort into it. Usually a few hours each Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night depending on how much effort I put into a page and whether I'm close to the deadline or not (I try to update early Thursday morning).
12.) How long have you been into making art and comics? :3
I've been drawing all my life and started taking it seriously when I was 13. That's when I started drawing comics. Of course, I don't think I have a natural knack for art and my art looked plum terrible until about 15 or so. Heck, I still think it looks terrible. But yeah, I've been drawing comics since I was 13 and started posting them on the internet when I was 17 (I had a DD account before this one but got rid of it for reasons I don't remember. I also took the comics off because they weren't going anywhere). I think I'm at that point in my life where my art is going to start to improve because my brain is maturing enough for me to notice what I'm doing wrong. As I've said, art doesn't come to me naturally, so I have to work really hard for it. It's a little frustrating and sometimes I just want to give up but I don't. It's amazing how depressed I can get over my art.
13.) I have noticed that A lot of characters on Ruby is named after a fruit, jewel or after some type of other item or theme . What made you want to name them after these themes?
I've pretty much have given up on short answers for this here interview, so here we go~~!
Lemon– Named after the bright yellow color of his hair.
Blueberry– Named after the blue color of her hair.
I do like lemons and blueberries, so that was part of it.
Ruby– Her name came before her character design. It was inspired by Final Fantasy IX, which is my favorite Final Fantasy game. The main female character is named 'Garnet' and I thought of how pretty having a jewel name is for a character, especially if their hair matches. So I looked up rubies and tried to get that color with my colored pencils but these colored pencils didn't blend that well combined with the fact that I was pretty inexperienced with them which resulted in her having pink hair. At the time I was obsessed with precious stones so that played a major role in choosing her name as well.
Scarlett– Named after the color of her eyes. Also from the book, 'The Scarlet Letter', where the main female is an outcast for having a baby outside of marriage (or something like that?) and Scarlett's character sees herself as being kind of an outcast because she too was conceived out of wedlock and was the reason why her parents got married in the first place. It's different from the book, I know, but her name was loosely based off of it.
Icarus– Was originally supposed to be my character, Ichbod. However, it wouldn't have been fair to Ruby to have her only friends be a dangerous psychopath AND an infamous theif who only looks out for himself. Plus I couldn't move the story forward with Ichbod so I replaced him with Icarus. There's a reason for that name that I can't reveal in the story for 'Ruby.' ~.^
Fate– I moved into my best friend's (who I haven't seen in almost a decade) neighborhood about a year or so after she moved out. He has it coming.
14.) Tell the world why they should read 'Ar Oh Ef El’ and 'Ruby'! ( well for one Ar Oh Ef El is nominated for an award and Ruby has super cool characters XD)
READ THEM OR MY FROG WILL TALK BAD ABOUT YOU TO YOUR PLANTS WHILE YOU'RE ASLEEP AT NIGHT. READ THEM OR MY CATS WILL REARRANGE YOUR BOOKS AND DVDS SO THAT THEY'RE OUT OF ORDER WHILE YOU'RE AWAY. READ THEM BECAUSE I TOLD YOU TO!!!!
Haha, seriously though, if you like random humor that's silly for most of the time with freakishly adorable characters who live in a graveyard, then you should check out 'Ar Oh Ef El'.
However, if you like a story with a plot and interesting characters who have colorful hairstyles, then 'Ruby' is for you.
Read and comment, plz? :3
15.) And now we conclude this wonderful interview. Is there anything else you would like to say before we ride off into the sunset? *XD steals that line from Lilac*
Thanks a ton to the lovurly Olivia/Aivilo for interviewing me and thankyou very much to all the wonderful people who have supported me and thankyou to anyone who decides to check out my comic(s) and actually enjoys them. ^^
Now come, Aivilo! Let us grab some hawt bishies and ride off into the sunset together!! :D
*insert the most beautiful riding off into the sunset scene you can ever imagine here :'D*
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Group 9 - Avilio interviews Lilac of Ruby and Ar Oh Ef El!
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