At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a comic book company based in Brooklyn, NY offered an open call to artists everywhere called "Rescue Party." This was an exercise in optimism during a time where there wasn't very much hope. They asked artists to create a 9 panel comic promoting optimism and citing our feelings or thoughts on the pandemic. They would spread the word of your work by posting on their official Rescue Party Instagram account, and eventually Desert Island hopes to publish a book of a collection of these comics from various artists across the globe.
I participated in this exercise by creating a comic about two dogs walking through the streets during their own version of our world's pandemic. Using recognizable imagery and similarly themed issues, it is easy to draw unfortunate connections between this fictional world and ours.
A few months later, I was given the opportunity to enter another submission to their open call. This time I took a different approach, telling the story of a lone sasquatch that we know as Bigfoot. The comic comedically reflects on how he has been handling the pandemic.
Between both of these I was able to view the pandemic from an optimistic standpoint and attach a comedic response to it. Both submissions are viewable on the Rescue Party official Instagram account. Both were fully hand drawn digitally using Clip Studio Paint, and edited with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.