About Stefan
Youth in Flames is a planned graphic novel that speaks to today’s young people while also taking a very introspective approach. It intends to represent a shift in style away from digital methods and towards an almost purely hand-drawn brand of dark surrealism, also incorporating a post-punk influenced aesthetic, with the comic potentially being a vehicle for it. Originally intended as an angsty young adult novel, it revolved around a young man struggling through high school while socially awkward, depressed, aimless and with no prospects to look forward to. In this new version, however, it revolves around the lives of six principle characters, and there is a surrealist aspect added by way of the various dream sequences where you see a different side of the characters. You could think of it as like Sin City but set in high school.
Continuing from the summer in terms of style and technique, there will be much less digital editing, as I intend to focus on the pure craft of traditional art, with the aim of graduating from the style of drawing introduced in 2018 into something much more sophisticated and yet still unique. To this end, a number of traditional techniques will be explored. Where independent works are concerned, less artworks will be made, but much more time will be spent on the ones that are produced, and hopefully these will be of much better quality.
Like with previous projects there isn’t a specific client per se, but this time there is a clear audience in mind, namely people aged 16-30 who might be into the idea of reading an independently-produced comic book. In this sense the zine market is quite ideal.
