Pistachio from Valera
by Nikita Semerenko
Find me on:
A short comic based on two true stories: me trying to cancel my Yandex Plus subscription and a little scene between a woman with a laptop and a freaky chiropractor man on the metro. Web developers, please avoid creating dark patterns! Chiropractors, keep your nuts to yourselves!
Process
The second true story was my frustrating experience cancelling YandexPlus (which I had not remembered having). The comic quite faithfully depicts the use of dark patterns by Yandex to trick their customers into staying by annoying them. There are many guides and breakdown of this particular Plus-cancelling procedure and this is a great indication that something needs to change…
The resulting story represents noise through urgency and constant irritations we might encounter. Such occurrences remind us of how invasive our environment has become and what we endure daily in much smaller doses (and then all at once). The murk was taken in a more metaphorical sense. It is the shady and obtuse nature of services we use. It is the murky empty stare of the drunk chiropractor. It is the murky cellophane bag of nuts. Whatever, it is just a dodgy situation. It is so greasy you can almost touch it and you would want to wash your hands with soap.
The resulting story represents noise through urgency and constant irritations we might encounter. Such occurrences remind us of how invasive our environment has become and what we endure daily in much smaller doses (and then all at once). The murk was taken in a more metaphorical sense. It is the shady and obtuse nature of services we use. It is the murky empty stare of the drunk chiropractor. It is the murky cellophane bag of nuts. Whatever, it is just a dodgy situation. It is so greasy you can almost touch it and you would want to wash your hands with soap.
My layout goal was maximizing clarity, because the theme was conveyed through the printing method and the storytelling. I see no need in double-articulating the same thing – the story is key – support it! Character design is intentionally grotesque and exaggerated, but generally it favours likeness – I tried to recall the real persons’ faces the best I could. The coloring embraces riso as a technique, so the black and white layers were designed to be printed as effortlessly as possible. It was not a timesaving decision, but rather a purely stylistical one. Black layer is the scaffolding and the structure of the comic, and the blue is used sparingly for accenting similarly to the way we use accent colors in web design.
This work took me forever to make (maybe 4-5 full days of drawing, drawing, drawing), but I consider it to be quite formative for my current practice. It is a new level of clarity and cohesion I have never achieved before. It also became a huge inspiration for my coloring ever since. This story surely continues and some day you will discover what happened to chiropractor Valera and the “laptop woman”.
This short comic combines two very real stories from my life. The first one happened on the metro at 5 pm. A woman was working on her laptop and was repeatedly approached by a drunk chiropractor with a cellophane bag of pistachio and wasabi-flavoured nuts. Probably on the 3rd attempt of his I had to interrupt his indistinct monologue to ask him to sit down. His reaction was to stare blankly into my eyes and then exit the train cart entirely. Nobody saw him ever again…
Process
The second true story was my frustrating experience cancelling YandexPlus (which I had not remembered having). The comic quite faithfully depicts the use of dark patterns by Yandex to trick their customers into staying by annoying them. There are many guides and breakdown of this particular Plus-cancelling procedure and this is a great indication that something needs to change…
The resulting story represents noise through urgency and constant irritations we might encounter. Such occurrences remind us of how invasive our environment has become and what we endure daily in much smaller doses (and then all at once). The murk was taken in a more metaphorical sense. It is the shady and obtuse nature of services we use. It is the murky empty stare of the drunk chiropractor. It is the murky cellophane bag of nuts. Whatever, it is just a dodgy situation. It is so greasy you can almost touch it and you would want to wash your hands with soap.
The resulting story represents noise through urgency and constant irritations we might encounter. Such occurrences remind us of how invasive our environment has become and what we endure daily in much smaller doses (and then all at once). The murk was taken in a more metaphorical sense. It is the shady and obtuse nature of services we use. It is the murky empty stare of the drunk chiropractor. It is the murky cellophane bag of nuts. Whatever, it is just a dodgy situation. It is so greasy you can almost touch it and you would want to wash your hands with soap.
My layout goal was maximizing clarity, because the theme was conveyed through the printing method and the storytelling. I see no need in double-articulating the same thing – the story is key – support it! Character design is intentionally grotesque and exaggerated, but generally it favours likeness – I tried to recall the real persons’ faces the best I could. The coloring embraces riso as a technique, so the black and white layers were designed to be printed as effortlessly as possible. It was not a timesaving decision, but rather a purely stylistical one. Black layer is the scaffolding and the structure of the comic, and the blue is used sparingly for accenting similarly to the way we use accent colors in web design.
This work took me forever to make (maybe 4-5 full days of drawing, drawing, drawing), but I consider it to be quite formative for my current practice. It is a new level of clarity and cohesion I have never achieved before. It also became a huge inspiration for my coloring ever since. This story surely continues and some day you will discover what happened to chiropractor Valera and the “laptop woman”.
This work took me forever to make (maybe 4-5 full days of drawing, drawing, drawing), but I consider it to be quite formative for my current practice. It is a new level of clarity and cohesion I have never achieved before. It also became a huge inspiration for my coloring ever since. This story surely continues and some day you will discover what happened to chiropractor Valera and the “laptop woman”.
This short comic combines two very real stories from my life. The first one happened on the metro at 5 pm. A woman was working on her laptop and was repeatedly approached by a drunk chiropractor with a cellophane bag of pistachio and wasabi-flavoured nuts. Probably on the 3rd attempt of his I had to interrupt his indistinct monologue to ask him to sit down. His reaction was to stare blankly into my eyes and then exit the train cart entirely. Nobody saw him ever again…
A short comic based on two true stories: me trying to cancel my Yandex Plus subscription and a little scene between a woman with a laptop and a freaky chiropractor man on the metro. Web developers, please avoid creating dark patterns! Chiropractors, keep your nuts to yourselves!
Find me on:
by Nikita Semerenko
Pistachio from Valera
