Minimum Wage zine #0
I finally got around to drawing pages for a story that I’ve been wanting to put out for quite sometime now. That story is called Minimum Wage and it is about an Allosaurus named Javarr who is trying to manage working various 9-5 jobs and the occupational hazards they entail while also being an artist who wants to live a cool and comfortable life.
This comics creation was to be an outlet for my frustrations with the jobs I worked past and present. From management issues, favoritism, passive aggressive interactions, deception, bad customers, So on and so forth there has been a lot that I have grown to dislike about the nature of jobs and workplace management and politics in general. At the same time jobs have also presented some very distinct memories and experiences I’ll never forget for better or worst. As I conceived Ideas for the stories I also found those experiences equally as inspiring as the gripes I’ve accumulated.
From mall cookie stores, to retail art supply stores, custodial work and being an assistant at 3 elementary schools Since about 2016 til now I’ve heard and seen a lot. 1v1 fighting between co workers(weapons came out too!), blatant lies from management and wack policies, cookie cake theft, shitty customers with attitudes and problems, people exposing themselves indecently to my manager, etc. oh yea there was one time someone I worked for got Covid-19 and still came to work to try to quarantine in the office!!! (The manager after them did it too!!)
Honestly jobs can be cool sometimes, but a lot of times they just suck and it can be for a variety of reasons even outside of the job itself. Many people can relate to how draining it can be to have to balance mundane work with doing something that brings meaning to your life. Think of Javarr as an avatar for all of us who went through it or still are going through it while trying to give our lives meaning In our own way.
Since Javarr is a dinosaur he is able to approach and handle these situations in ways that most of us normal humans would end up dead or in jail for(not saying he’s always right!) I hope that anyone who reads can finds entertainment and a bit of catharsis in this story and I hope you share it with someone who may need an outlet to decompress from the daily grind!
Below are photos from the process of creating pages for my first 2 short stories In this series. “Shoot for the moon, Land on the couch” and “pest control”.
Pencils from “shoot for the moon, Land on the stars”
Ink progression!
I used no.4 round brush to ink the outlines for the majority of the pages which was very fun. I used a variety of tech pens and brush pens to get most of the detail work done.
The initial scans of the pages looked better than expected to be honest. I still had to clean up a fair amount of it though and add text.
Believe it or Not I got this off using Canva of all things. I grabbed a font i’d already been using that I felt fit the style of the art and put a bleed on the illustration on the second page of shoot for the moon. I used the countdown to the trip as a transition to the second page. I did this instead of drawing a whole other page.
Page layouts
Front cover, back cover
First page, last page
Page 2, page 3
I genuinely had fun drawing these pages from start to finish! Seeing the end result motivated me to do more and that’s exactly what you can expect. Keep paying attention for more updates on Javarr and Minimum Wage!!!
