About Alice©

Alice© is about a woman struggling to survive and understand the modern world and her place in it.  The use of the cartoon format enables me to bridge my interests in storytelling through the use of symbols and ideas as they are transmitted through my character Alice and her surroundings.  I think of the strip as being both psychological and surreal as it’s really about the inner life of a maturing single woman.

The context of the strip varies depending on the point being made by each cartoon.  For example, sometimes Alice is in her living room/bedroom or some other room inside her home, or the doctor/psychic’s office.  Other locations form a backdrop to what is happening in Alice’s life at a given moment forming context and hopefully leading the viewer to understand the cartoon better.  Recently, the strip has taken on a more political bent, which is a reflection of her anxieties during these trying times.

The drawing style relies heavily on line and is minimalist.  Only a few elements may be found in each drawing, as they are needed.  An example is the city landscape, which shows just a hint of buildings in the background.  The sun, represented by a spiral appears often, both inside and outside, and offers a ray of hope to the situation, while at the same time forming a dream-like sense to Alice’s reality.  Other symbols include a house or houses representing Alice’s hopes and dreams for the future and are often shown in context with her boyfriend.

The most recent strips are drawn using ink on Mylar and may be colored using Photoshop. Earlier cartoons were drawn with graphite on Canson Paper and were Photoshopped to accommodate both print media and web sizing requirements.

Character Sheet

• “Alice – The Main Character”
  “The main character is getting older, but is still single and trying to make her mark on society. She is a person going about her life. Her reality depends on what is happening at any given moment and how she perceives it within the context of relationships, society’s expectations and her own desires.  Although it may seem like an endless struggle, there are signs of hope as Alice often questions her situation and the reality of her environment.  I see her as a reflection of  “every-woman” or “every-man”, because in the end, who we are is really an accumulation of our own thoughts and struggles no matter how “real” or “dysfunctional” they may seem to others.
  Her companions include a boyfriend, a parrot, a dog, niece and nephews as well as miscellaneous woman and animals, . In addition,  in order to make sense of “her” world she visits a psychic and a psychiatrist neither of whom can give her the answers she seeks, since all they really do is reflect back her own anxieties.
• “Boyfriend” –  Boyfriend is sometimes supportive and sometimes not and acts as a foil to Alice’s reality.
• Dog and Parrot – They are her loyal companions or not, and also act as a foil to her reality.
• Other characters include: Niece – loves her Aunty Alice, and innocently asks question that may challenge Alice’s world view.
• nephews (new) – have appeared in one strip so far.
• miscellaneous characters may include – sexy women, Psychiatrist, Psychic and others.