The common element to all of my illustration work is visual narrativity.
I create strings and sequences of interrelated images and panels.
HAKAMADA
Like these illustrations for Amnesty International, accompanying a text about Iwao Hakamada, a former professional Japanese boxer who is believed to be the world's longest-serving deathrow inmate.
The pen-and-ink drawings are reminiscent of Gekiga, a more mature style of manga popular during Hakamada's trial and subsequent death sentence.
Hakamada was detained for 48 years and spent 45 years on death row. Decades of solitary confinement are believed to have had an impact on his mental health.
The illustrations depict his inhumane living conditions and the blossoming of his increasingly fantastic inner world, populated by gods, dragons and the Virgin Mary.
As the article mentions, a Daruma talisman is purchased with both eyes blank white. A user will then make a wish and paint in one eye, painting in the other when the wish has been fulfilled.
PRIVACY IS KEY
Another examply of my narrative approach to illustration is this flyer motive for Berlin's CryptoParty community. A grassroots movement providing free workshops for digital self-defense against everyday state and corporate surveillance from the likes of Google and Facebook.
The front and back of the flyer work as a two-panel comic strip visualizing how encryption drastically reduces the information that can be gathered from one's everyday online activities.
In the right panel, the black key shape masks most of the left panel's details. This key – representing open-source apps and digital encryption tools – visually creates privacy.
In this comics diptych, privacy, quite literally, is key.