The Understory

About the Project

For my Benenson project, I set out to explore the comic-making process and to push myself toward longer-form, story-based illustration. Much of my past work at Duke had been graphical or conceptual, but it often lacked a sustained narrative thread. I enjoyed the rendering process, but I wanted to challenge myself to bring more emotion, perspective, and layered storytelling into my practice. This project became an opportunity to explore character and environment design from multiple vantage points, while also learning how to structure sequential art in a way that could connect more deeply with audiences.

From the beginning, I was drawn to the potential of comics to hold both vulnerability and complexity. I have always loved drawing insects, robotics, and other unconventional motifs, but I rarely saw them represented in a way that highlighted their beauty or resilience. Pairing this interest with my own background—growing up low-income, navigating multiple marginalized identities, and then entering a privileged environment like Duke—gave me a framework. I wanted to create work that reflected on those experiences, acknowledging the contradictions of shame and strength, invisibility and resilience, that come with them.

Inspiration for the project came from reading and revisiting seminal works such as Maus and Persepolis, which use a stark black-and-white style to make difficult subjects accessible and immediate. Maus, in particular, influenced my use of non-human imagery as metaphor. Animals—and in my case, insects—can operate as both distancing and humanizing devices, allowing readers to see social issues reframed through the lens of something familiar yet strange.

To prepare, I read widely across graphic novels for inspiration, but I also looked to short-form social media comics to study how complex ideas could be condensed into just a few panels. This dual approach helped me experiment with pacing, symbolism, and the rhythm of set-up and reveal—skills I had not developed as much in my earlier practice.

Ultimately, this project was both a study and a beginning. It allowed me to experiment with combining technical illustration, metaphor, and lived experience into a more cohesive artistic voice. I also accepted that the work would remain incomplete and evolving; it is something I plan to continue developing as I move into post-grad life, where I will keep discovering new layers of my story and how to tell it.