ROSANA! Artist Spotlight: Chong
Updated: Oct 25, 2019
The Artist Spotlight series showcases the artists working on the ROSANA! You can follow Chong on Twitter and Instagram.
1. Tell us about yourself and your background in art.
Hi! Chong’s the nickname. Born and raised in Jakarta, I currently live nomadically between cities in Java Island. At ROSANA!, my main job is to color but I also do lettering and polish the pages’ final product. The internet knows me as Modantoiré and that I do fan arts of my favourite games on Nintendo.
2019 marks the first decade since I decided to pursue drawing seriously, and that was when I was still in middle school. Drawing was merely a side activity from my actual hobby of writing stories back then. Now it has shifted, and my art becomes the foundation of the stories I’m about to write.
Right now, I’m just trying to finish my first degree in visual communication design. Not a formal art background per se, but it kind of explain that I’m more of a general artist and not specializing in certain fields (comics, illustrations, etc.) because I like to focus more on the design process than the medium.
My particular interest is to draw was fantasy and folktales. In real life, I believe people have described me as enigmatic, but might be because sometimes I can go from very stiff to very animated (depending on the season? Horoscope entry? Who knows…)
Besides drawing, I hoard books and went on a monthly karaoke session with friends.
2. What made you join ROSANA? Was it how you expected it turn out? In what way?
I might have applied without a second thought when a friend DM’d me about this ‘Indonesian Superhero Comic’ gig. Why? Because I feel like (local) independent superhero projects are super rare and easily overshadowed by all the hype from commercial-level marketing by the major studios. Indonesia is hot on our local superhero genre and it is just getting started. The potential is wide open for new creators because the current focus was only highlighting archaic superheroes or stories like Mahabharata or Ramayana as the background. A superhero can be born from literally anything if you want, and I’d support new creative ventures in that area any way I can.
We were just starting out. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error and that’s okay. As an internal staff, I can be honest that I’m sharing mutual level of guessing and excitement as everyone else reading it because the worldbuilding is Jessica’s craft and the concept artists (future sight applies when I read the script for putting word balloons /slapped). As a reader myself, is it just me or are we craving to see the characters speak Bahasa Indonesia? :D
3. What’s your favourite thing about Rosana - the character?
Rosana has a very masculine feel on her and that is probably my autobuy, major crush material (also thicc eyebrows). I have nothing against feminine wiles, but deep down I know I’m kind of tired of superheroines in super body-tight booby shiny costumes, so she lets me breathe a little easier. Rosana so far looks casual and ready to kick butt anytime. Her hair probably looks the same whether she had brushed it or not, or whether she’s a million feet in the air standing on a flying aircraft (low maintenance ftw). Even better, she has some ethnic attributes to her, because traditional warrior-types are the hallmark of Indonesian superhero designs. I still didn’t know her quite personally, but I’d love to.
4. Tell us about other projects you’re working on, outside of the comic.
Been working solo on another superhero project as my thesis and animation. The output was just short pilot episode and some merchandise but, you know...there’s not even one easy thing about animation. Moreover, I want to try pitching it into animation screening forums after I graduate so even though there is a certain extra cost on things, it outweighs my regret about the decision. I don’t think I’ve been in a personal project where I have to feel responsible for the creation of it, so this was my chance as well as getting the benefit of guidance and supervision from mentors and experts. I think you can catch a glimpse of this project on my social media, but I’m not ready to reveal anything because there’s going to be a lot of revisions until it was final. It was kind of very personal, since it is a tribute to my late grandmother.
Other than that, it was comics. I’ve been meaning to reboot Sleepy Wings, my first webcomic about flight fantasy. I also got a green light to make a webtoon adaptation of a space-themed post-apocalyptic oneshot, among other things. I can’t stress enough to anyone that I’m a slow artist with a steady stream of incoming ideas. Life is short and art is long, so even though I don’t have a pretty picture of what to do or what to finish first, I just try to commit and do my best.
- Chong
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