Transcript (live captions are available in the video player!):
[Ella]
Okay, my name is Ella Slossberg.
[Emily]
My name is Emily Paige.
[Logan]
My name is Logan Oliver.
[F Newsmagazine Title Card][Text appears on the screen, reading “In the summer, SAIC offers a popular three-week Summer Comics Intensive, developed for students to develop their drawing and writing, produce a long-form comic.
This year, the cartoonist Caroline Cash is helping to teach the intensive.
Her autobiographical comics series “PeePee PooPoo,” and her work on the syndicated comic strip “Nancy” beginning in 2026, have cemented her as one the great living American cartoonists.
Students enrolled in this course are also provided an individual studio. Let’s hear what these students have to say!”]
[Emily]
What interested you in the course and what have you gained from it?
[Ella]
I’m basically in every department ever, aka painting, print media, animation, comics. Yeah, I think that’s it. But you know what? I’m down to adventure into other ones too.
And my year, I’m about to be a senior.
I was interested because I’ve been like dipping my toe into comics the past couple years, and I was really interested in like doing like — you go, like you need to make a comic.
Words can’t even describe what I have gained from it. Friendship, time, just to work on my like stuff, like just to have a studio space to work on like I do painting. I do mixing media, so being able to have a studio space is really nice.
[Jordi]
I want to make more comics before I take another print class. And I have a lot of stories that were just like sitting around, like text stories that I wanted to try and illustrate. And I just want to graduate faster, so summer class, I’ll tack that on.
But like Caroline Cash gave like a good demo, and she actually like really nudged nudged us to use it for the first assignment. I wound up just in the rush, because this is like an intensive. Rushing through this final assignment, I kind of hit like a flow state with my nib.
And I finally, finally, finally, I think, feel comfortable.
[Emily]
I’m in the comics department, and I’m going into my senior year.
Jeremy Tinder teaches the advanced comics classes, but also Caroline Cash is a visiting artist and teacher, and I just have been a big fan of her for a really long time, and so I like jumped on the opportunity.
Also, we get studio spaces, which is not usual for like bachelor’s comics programs, and so I needed that.
[Adrien]
My department is the comics department. My year, I’m about to be a senior.
Honestly, it was the opportunity to be taught by Caroline Cash.
I think that she has a really interesting experience, and she’s gone to our school, so I was just really interested to learn what she could teach us. I was also really excited to have Gabe as a TA, because I really admire his work.
A lot of really helpful feedback, probably the most helpful feedback I’ve ever received in a comics class. All of the people teaching be really confident in the feedback they were giving me, and like be willing to kind of work with me through my neuroticisms about comics.
So a lot of just like, oh, people know how to do this. Just a lot of confidence, more confidence.
[Logan]
I work in the comics and illustration department, and this is my junior year.
What interested me in this course was the three-week intensive idea in and of itself, pushing myself to make something within that time limit. My ultimate goal is making something that I wanted to print, which I ended up doing, which was cool, and hearing that Caroline Cash was going to be involved. I’ve heard many good things about her before taking this course, and I really wanted to have the perspective of a working artist on my work.
I’ve gained knowledge on my work ethic, how long I take on everything, or how little amount of time I take on certain things. It pushed me past my limits, to the point where I feel like I’m stronger as both as both an artist in a concept sense and like a working sense.
Like I can come up with a concept and like finish it out in that time frame, and it turned out pretty good, I’d say.
[Emily]
And then talk about your work, your process, and your influences.
[Ella]
My work and my process, I do a lot of like painting, a lot of mixed media. I use gouache, colored pencil, crayon, oil pastel. I feel like I want to use every single material in one piece.
I really like, for like comics, I’ve been really into like Gabrielle Bell and Jessica Campbell, but also I was like, when I was younger, I was a huge like Marvel like Spider-Gwen fan, so all of that kind of puts into one, but also the Chicago Imagists.
[Jordi]
It’s mostly autobiographical, and if it’s not, I’m like messing around, I guess. I think I like to kind of try to illustrate like a poem. I think it’s something that I like to, yeah.
And so my process is always kind of like a, like just like a thought dump, like just a word vomit. I’m like a very like heavy planner, and like a comics-scripts guy. I like overthink. Paneling, I kinda just like freeball that.
People that inspire me are Jordan Bolton. I’ve only read like, yeah, I’ve only read that one blue sky, moving out of a moving car one, it’s really good. Cause he does a lot of like spatial storytelling, and it is very like emotional, diaristic tone.
[Ella]
What kind of work do you make? Awesome work!
[Emily]
It’s kind of artsy and poetic while still carrying a narrative. This piece that I did these past few weeks is like a personal narrative with like a lot of deep metaphors.
My process reflects that it’s very messy. I just kind of like, I journal a lot, and so I take a lot of that stuff and just draw pictures to it basically.
[Adrien]
My influences, definitely Gabe Howells’ “My body count is higher than your IQ” because it’s a lot of emo boys, and my work now is a lot of emo boys.
I’m kind of still figuring out what my work focuses on, it tends to be very autobio. I’m trying to get better at writing, and I think that that means that my process will have to become more reading intensive.
So I’m learning, but that’s where I’m at right now.
[Logan]
Okay, so my process is, I usually take a long time on thumbnailing and pacing, but once that’s done, I do the initial thumbnailing followed by my, you know, sketches, and then I do finish on Bristol board. I work very traditionally, very old school,
And my influences, as you can see on this wall here, I am very invested in superheroes, very specifically Batman and Spider-Man. Those have been primarily my biggest influences as like characters.
A lot of my influences come from what I read growing up, so it includes people that like did 90s runs, like Todd McFarlane, or like Ne– what’s his name, Norm Breyfogle, Tim Sale. I love Tim Sale’s work. He worked on “The Long Halloween”, and Greg Capullo is also a very big influence on my work.
[Emily]
And then do you have like a favorite panel or page that you want to show?
[Ella]
I really like this bodega in the bottom corner. I think that it just came out so stunning, but also this one. I really like how that came out.
My Instagram is @ellaslossburgart, and do I have anything else to plug? I have an upcoming show, if you’re going to be in Westchester, Pennsylvania, at the Art Trust Meridian Bank.
[Jordi]
Sure, I’ll do this one, yeah, I will do this one. Yeah, kind of, it’s a little cliche with like, his hands look like this, so that my hands look like that sort of thing, but you gotta read the rest of the story.
[Emily]
Classic.
[Jordi]
Maybe this is a little different. Maybe I’m doing my own thing.
Oh, yeah, my Instagram is @preocupon, that’s P-R-E-O-C-U-P-O-N.
[Emily]
I think this is my favorite page and panel. It’s hard to say. Yeah, I think the composition throughout the whole page is good with my blacks.
My Instagram is @the.emily.paige.
[Ella]
Okay. Beautiful!
[Adrien]
Yay
My Instagram is @yearnfulsludge, but I also tattoo, and that’s @blazedflesh, so those are my Instagram things.
[Logan]
I really, really liked working on the cover, so I have the cover here.
This is, this took me so long, and I had so much fun making it, so I wanted to include as much as I could as a visual motif. With this, I wanted to be kind of like a love letter to this era of comics, so I had a lot of fun making this, and this turned out really, really nice,
And then my two-page spread, I had a lot of fun making this, too. I love, love, love drawing — obviously, everyone does, but I love drawing slimy, ghostly figures. This is just a real good example of what I really like to do with my work.
So, shameless plug. I have just recently started an art Instagram for my work. It’s called @logs_cookbook. You can also email me [[email protected]] if you want to collaborate. That’s there, too. Yeah, shameless plug.
[Text]F News hopes you enjoyed this summer comics feature!
FILMING:
Logan M. Oliver
Emily Paige
TEXT:
Anath Infanzón Marín
Sophie Goalson
INTERVIEWER:
Emily Paige
EDITING:
Anath Infanzón Marín
INTERVIEWEES:
Emily Paige
Logan M. Oliver
Adrien A. Regnier
Jordi Murillo-Patron
Ella K. Slossburg
