r/comics • u/Merari01 It's a-me, Merari-o • 8d ago
Spotlight: Hollering Elk
Hello everyone,
This weeks Spotlight feature is u/HolleringElk, who creates the comic Hollering Elk. In keeping with the intricate and detailed art style of her comic, her answers are equally in-depth and well-thought out. A real treat for fans!
1: When you started posting to r/comics you posted "slice of life" comics and later moved towards posting body horror. How did you make the decision this was more your thing to create?
I have always had a keen interest in the macabre. Prior to the pandemic, I was a full time traditional painter and illustrator drawing silly comics on the side, both traditionally and digitally drawn. Comics had always been something I’d dabbled in since I was a child, but I was instructed over the years that it could never be something I could realistically pursue professionally. If I was wise, I’d stick with fine art. So, after college, I primarily used these doodles and comics to advertise commissions, events, or showings I was a part of. They were crude, sometimes narratively and visually outrageous, horrific, and unsettling as seen in my current work, but I had nowhere near the same level of competency or expertise in digital art as I did in traditional painting, so they weren’t all that awe-inspiring on the technical side. Though, I understood the best way to drive traffic to my “serious” work was to occasionally employ a bit of relatable or crass meme humor online on my personal social media accounts. The internet is a fickle place for a growing artist and I came to understand you have to play the algorithm game to generate interest in your craft, especially if you’re burned out on the in-person grind. My paintings were also unconventional and disturbing, so it took special effort to get them out of the house and into an oddball collector’s home.
In 2018, I was accepted into and spent a year or so vending at a popular art market on Frenchmen Street here in New Orleans. This stint in the market scene helped me to learn a great deal about how to effectively appeal to a large audience through interactions with thousands of tourists from all over the world coming through every night seeking souvenirs and artwork to purchase, and from my fellow local artists who had years of experience selling and promoting their work in the city. Eventually I was granted the opportunity to display a significant set of my large-scale paintings in the center of the market for a weekend, an enormous highlight of my career as a painter. I had plans to move on from the market and seek gallery space of my own in the French Quarter in the hopes of refining and selling my work in a more professional setting. This pursuit came crashing down with the arrival of Covid-19. New Orleans was one of the first major metros in the US to completely shut down in March of 2020, promptly killing the bustling art scene, including the market and any public venues I may have tried to access to grow my status in the community.
While I was still accepting and producing painting commissions during the lockdown, I chose to take a massive risk and pivot into solely prioritizing my comics. Based on my knowledge of social media marketing and having developed a strong sales persona during my time churning out paintings, I knew diving headfirst into webcomics as a nobody with the off-the-wall, frequently shocking themes customary to my older comics was not at all going to fly as an introduction on a platform like reddit, the one place I knew I could potentially quickly grow a modest audience assuming the quality was exceptional. I’d lurked on r/comics for years before considering posting my own work, and continued to do so for all of 2020, on a mission to rapidly improve my skills in digital art and sequential storytelling, and studying other artists, their styles, and how they maneuvered online. My first effort to arrive to r/comics was “Upkeep” in the summer of 2021, a slice of life gag about unwanted female facial hair that performed very well. I continued to produce and share comics of this style as well as heavily interacting with regular posters in the community that I admired to establish myself, and it wasn’t until “Quality Time” came out the following year that users on reddit began to suspect I had a distinctly dark side. How they were able to identify this, I still do not know. I decided then it was time to spread my wings and unveil my true passion with the arrival of “The Airbnb.” In the same way I would spend many months planning a collection of paintings, I had planned for my shift into horror comedy long before my friendly quarrel with the great u/armpit_penguin . The response to “The Airbnb” was wildly positive to my relief, and the rest is history.
2: Your art style signifies itself by being somewhat more realistic and elaborate than that of most webcomic artists. Is this a deliberate choice, do you feel what you have to say comes to right better using this style closer to realism?
As outlined in my answer to your first question, my style is rooted in an academic background and an interest in high detail, dense graphic novels, concept art, and traditional illustration. Prior to attending art school, (where I was persistently advised against including narratives in representational art), I produced highly detailed and complex graphite drawings on 18x24 sheets and crosshatch heavy ink drawings on bristol. My current style in digital comics is a stripped down version of the sort of art I’d spend weeks upon per piece, and it’s taken me a lot of time to “unlearn” a lot of the tedious habits I developed in order to accelerate my output of comics, and that hasn't been easy. I’ve gotten comments about some of the jarring stylistic decisions I’ve made in earlier comics, and that’s a result of my attempt to modify my former process and technique into something more aesthetically digestible. Aside from ventures like “ELK HUNT,” I choose to maintain mild realism in my designs as I gradually transition into producing more longform work in the future. In short, like most, I draw in the style I am most comfortable utilizing to portray my ideas.
3: The lore surrounding your comics is getting to be as intricate and involved as your art style. Have you considered creating a wiki or database explaining to newer readers the backstory of your characters?
I have a history of gently declining requests for “lore dumps” in comments, other platforms outside of reddit, and even Patreon. It isn’t a method I intend for my readers to use to extract clues from the larger comics and understand the world for themselves. I have operated the same way for previous projects of varying mediums, revealing a little at a time and allowing for long pauses between additions of new material. For reddit in particular, I’ve compiled the existing comics into an organized list I continually add to, of which there really aren’t many, and have highlighted the most notable entries as being crucial to the development of the ongoing story. Other platforms, (mainly Patreon) receive expositional written content that have accompanied pivotal comics like “The Airbnb,” “The Chosen One,” and “Thrill Seeker,” and ancillary content that doesn't quite fit on reddit.
At the moment, I do not have interest in preparing a Wiki or a database, at least not until the first set of chapters of “The Velluto Duo” have been completed and shared. I’ll then be free to be less cryptic and vague about key events and character attributes. TVD has been in the works for over 2 years, features 7+ chapters that each focus on a specific character, and answers a majority of the questions I’ve seen pop up numerous times as my one-offs have grown in popularity. I’ve had to dedicate a great deal of time improving my art before committing to the full story, with the current collection functioning as a means to generate and maintain interest in what I hope to be a mind-bending long-form black comedy. I understand some are frustrated that I refuse to divulge anything of real substance within my standalone work, but I can’t risk spoiling the most shocking scenes to come; carnage I’ve been sitting on since before we knew Ellie was a bloodthirsty man-eater.
4: I think the most exposition of the world you have created for your characters was seen in your recent r/comics event "Elk Hunt". Was the Elk Hunt intended to explain your worldbuilding to the readers?
“ELK HUNT,'' a nauseating collection of pages one could call an offbeat satire of my own work, came about for a variety of reasons, one of which indeed was to act as a sort of recap of everything we've learned about Vivian and the Castellos in the mainline comics. At the same time, EH was not a canon series despite featuring the same cast of characters, aside from the Hollering Elk herself. As has occurred in previous years, the arc represented a new phase of the Elk persona, commencing with her mysterious disappearance and death, and the subsequent peculiar activity on all of the Hollering Elk accounts. I wrote the comic in December and January, and planned for the arc to play out on both Facebook and reddit, each receiving different types of multimedia content. I did not include Instagram. I considered the app too limiting and stubborn for what I wanted to achieve.
Elk has perished once before from a bizarre illness that stretched for seven months in real time, slowly decaying with every appearance without her ever directly acknowledging her alarming decline, and eventually succumbing to her ailment and regenerating in early spring of 2023. “ELK HUNT” debuted on the one year anniversary of her initial demise, and this time we witnessed the hallucinatory manifestations of her crumbling mind, that being the outlandish antics and interactions of the characters she created, inserting her mindless, monstrous rampage as the central conflict, and expanding on or confirming dynamics and theories folks have pitched about the main comics and the Hollering Elk persona in the past. For an added layer of fun and shenanigans, the comic itself is speculated to have been illustrated by Ellie herself in an attempt to conceal the monumental blunder of recklessly dispatching and mistakenly turning the beloved cryptid artist.
I had no way of knowing if all of the elements of EH's introductory phase and focal comic would reach and entertain readers as intended, but it all went off without a hitch with the help of the r/comics community, including Ellen of Pizza Cake Comics who played along the week of Elk's disappearance. It was an absolute joy to produce, and worked wonders in helping to introduce tons of newcomers to the main comics. I loved watching redditors try to piece it all together during the initial chaos of the arc, engaging with the story and creating works of their own in tandem with the main “ELK HUNT” comic. I happened upon some true gems in between EH pages, and have noticed several artists enjoyed an explosion in followers as a result of their contribution to the arc. After some griping about the meta wave from some of my followers, I made a statement sometime during the turmoil approving the use of “rogue elk” by lesser known artists to bolster their views. I had conflicted feelings about how much EH dominated the subreddit, but also was thrilled to see so many new artists enjoying the spotlight that previously struggled with obscurity. It was also important to me that I gave my audience something truly goofy and exciting before shifting into an era that is conversely dark and shocking in tone as we near the release of “The Velluto Duo.”
Overall, “ELK HUNT” was an absolute blast, and it will be a significant challenge to top come the next “phase” of Hollering Elk.
5: You have been co-creating with other posters to r/comics such as /u/colmscomics And /u/pizzacakecomic. How did this collaboration start and what will your next shared project be?
I've developed a lot of friendships online over the years through various art based websites and social media, but the comradery I share with Ellen and Colm is something truly wonderful. We aren’t just content creators who periodically collaborate, we are a genuine trio of friends who give each other crap on the daily, like good friends do.
If I recall correctly, Ellen began posting around the time I returned from an extended hiatus following Hurricane Ida. At the time, I was floundering through a “throwing spaghetti at the wall” era as I attempted to jumpstart the fervor I had before the storm. Meanwhile, Pizza Cake Comics was experiencing meteoric success seemingly out of nowhere. Before participating in the two million subscribers event with a comic revealing the Hollering Elk persona for the first time, I remember thinking how hilarious it would be for the wretched, rotting, horror artist to strike up an alliance with the sub’s resident wholesome, slice-of-life mom artist.
Shortly following “The Airbnb,” the first true horror comic I’d bring to r/comics, I followed through on this cheeky idea, and depicted Ellen in “I Want to Belong,” a comic in which Elk sheepishly proposes the two become companions in spite of their dramatic dissimilarities as creators. This would spark further back and forth on each other’s comics, and a handful of small collaborations between Ellen and I and others, until Colm would reach out to Ellen about an idea he had for an ambitious collaborative comic that would require direct coordination between all 3 of us to achieve. I agreed to take part, and thus “The Elders” came to be in January of 2023, which remains my all time favorite collaborative comic.
Since then, we kept in touch, chatting everyday until we evolved from distant peers who occasionally collaborated into good friends with a mutual love of the craft of comic creation. To this day, we share our sketches, scripts, finals, and rejected ideas amongst each other, banter and bully one another with wild abandon, and recently successfully launched our Youtube channel, “Pen Pals,” something Colm pitched to us in early 2023. I dragged my feet on getting my parts together for the channel, but I’m glad I committed to it. Recording with them is something I look forward to every week in between making comics, and it seems to me each of our fan bases are enjoying the series as well, which warms my heart.
I’m not sure what the future holds as far as shared projects outside of the channel. I’m simply thankful to have two great, like-minded buddies belonging to the same sphere of internet tomfoolery that I can chat with when I hit a rut with my work or life. Just delightful folks, and I am blessed to have them in my life. The channel has also led to the expansion of our cohort of comic artists, so I’m certain we can expect all kinds of neat collaborative efforts in the future.
6: How long does it take you to create a comic starting from the idea stage?
In response to this question, I will describe step by step the process. It is very interesting, I assure you.
I rise bright and early every morning and take care of basic chores in a specific order: brush my teeth, make my bed, start a pot of coffee, cook for cat, wash what is always a singular dish and fork left in the sink from the previous night’s meal, then sit on my balcony with my coffee for several hours and write new scripts as ideas pop into my mind, or revisit and revise old scripts until I settle on something compelling, relevant, hilarious (to me), or consisting of the perfect balance of terrifying and stupid. I don’t always begin the comic the day of choosing a script, typically taking time to run it by my mother, my gen z friends, my patrons, and a handful of other artists belonging to various age groups, all of this to get a feel for whether or not it is worth committing to a full-fledged comic. If it gets enough laughs or a specific intended reaction, I spend a day working out formatting, panels, number of pages needed, wording of the dialogue, and all remaining technical details before embarking on the sketch. If the response is lackluster from my network, I will shelve the script and revisit it another time. This stage of fiddling around with an idea can carry on for a few days to a few weeks. “Thrill Seeker,” for example, I toyed with for several months before I was satisfied with the narrative and finally sat down to sketch the pages.
Comics that are 7-11 pages will take about 3 to 4 days to sketch, shorter comics about a day. Line art for comics like “The Drain” and “Thrill Seeker” will have a timeframe of a full week, and colors another week, sometimes more depending on the complexity of the backgrounds. Throughout this time I am consistently sharing the progress with people I trust to point out issues. All together, my largest comics will take about 3 weeks to a month to produce, while simpler entries ranging between 1-3 pages at 4 to 5 days.
Sketching and drawing the final product is fairly straightforward, and I find it to be the easiest part of the process. It is the writing and development stage I sit with the longest, and even then it doesn’t always land by the end! Upon completing a comic, I will send the file to my friends to search for errors in the art or grammar if there is dialogue. It is then “dropped” on a weekday on all platforms.
Then I order chinese and sleep for 3 days straight.
7: You are one of our most popular regular posters and have been getting a lot of praise, though sometimes there is critique as well. What would you like to say to people who "don't get it" or think it is "gore"?
I accept that I've reached a point that I should expect an avalanche of negative feedback for the particularly “provocative” submissions, however it was certainly bewildering during those first several instances of reaching the frontpage or r/all. It's an odd experience being in the spotlight online at that scale for the first time, which I'm sure many of the other regular artists here could tell you. Early on, I learned to be unbothered by some of the more incensed responses directed at me as a person for having the audacity to illustrate scenes deliberately designed to upset my readers, and nowadays I am genuinely amused by the more creative vitriol. It's the downright vicious comments tearing me apart without any idea of what I'm truly about that make me chuckle. I sometimes wish I could request an exception from the moderators to allow the threads below my comics to go untamed for my own entertainment, but I understand that isn't productive. Unless?
On the subject of the less aggressive, general critique, it was the impassioned discourse and long-winded insights unique to reddit that drew me to this community in the first place. I've read spectacular diatribes from folks who were clearly enthusiasts of the medium pleading for me to concentrate on resolving weak areas in my writing, artistic skill, and choice in subject matter, and I take those comments to heart. In some ways I have improved dramatically thanks to these anonymous individuals, and in other ways I still have a long way to go if I wish to succeed professionally, and those flustered anons are going to keep on me until I do. For that I am grateful.
As for the “I don't get its,” it’s difficult to judge what will and won’t land with some readers. I’ve decided it depends on the sort of artistic media a person is accustomed to consuming versus the subtle, unique visual techniques and narrative devices I choose to apply in my art, as well as the influences informing my work. In other words, different strokes for different folks? The strange scenarios and jokes I think up obviously make sense in my mind and to the circle of people I share my drafts with, all with extensive backgrounds in art and literature, but it’s impossible to expect every person who stumbles upon my comics for the first time to grasp every odd little detail, obscure joke, twist, or emotional theme. A lot of folks didn't ‘get’ “Thrill Seeker” or “The Chosen One.” On the other end of the spectrum, there are hundreds who regard these comics as some of the best I've ever produced. There really is no in between. I respect it's often difficult to discern what on God's green earth is going on in these got dang confounding cartoons if you aren't familiar with the trusty catalog, but I always encourage people to explore my pages if they find themselves even slightly curious.
With all that said, to those who leave the dismissive comments you've quoted, I completely get it. My comics are remarkably weird, disjointed, worrying, manic, abstract, gross, dumb, stupid, horrifying, and downright offensive to the eyes at times. I am a certain type of person who draws a certain type of content meant for a certain type of audience, and it is absolutely not an issue if you don’t vibe with it. That is perfectly fine and I don't sweat it if you choose to voice this to me in the comments or dms. You are entitled to your opinion, and it would be supremely ignorant of me to demand universal praise for my nonsense. Just remember I am also just a regular person who isn't going to nail it every time if you are someone who has taken a liking to my debauchery. I'm doing my best!
8: Will there be a printed version of your Elk World series of comics?
I am currently planning two physical books to be printed, the first will be the entire “ELK HUNT” comic, featuring new art, content I didn’t have the opportunity to work into the original “meta” arc, and other neat, strange little goodies. The second will hopefully be the full collection of comics that preceded “The Velluto Duo,” and can be referred to as a kind of “Hollering Elk Handbook.” The latter will take some time to put together, considering a majority of my energy will be directed towards producing “The Velluto Duo.” “ELK HUNT” should not be too far off, and I will of course make a bunch of noise like the woodland creature that I am upon its arrival.
9: Is there anything you'd like to add or want to say to the readers of r/Comics?
I love you guys. I really do think y’all are positively delightful, and it is a joy to create for y’all. Thank you for everything, and I hope you enjoy what I have to offer in the near future.
P.S. Stop asking me whether or not there is insect life in Ellie’s rear end. I have no way of knowing the answer. Thank you.
You can support Elk on Patreon
Her art is also posted to Instagram
Hollering Elk collection on reddit, now including the Elk Hunt event.
23
u/Gheauxst 8d ago
It blows my mind that I've walked past you countless times and even performed UP THE STREET from you and never even noticed. The world is so small.