This Was Our Pact

Author and illustrator Ryan Andrews studied art at Watts Atelier of the Arts in San Diego, California, before moving to Fukuoka, Japan, where he now lives. Andrews currently works as a background illustrator and comic artist, contributing to the work of many other artists. His own works are primarily short graphic narratives that deal with subjects like grief, trauma, and self-discovery. His digital comics “Sarah and the Seed” and “Our Bloodstained Roof” have both been nominated for the Eisner Award, and his 2012 wordless narrative, Nothing is Forgotten, was nominated for the Bédéis Causa Award. This Was Our Pact is his first full-length work. The story was inspired by a Japanese film and novel that Andrews loved as a child: The Knight on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa. Andrews first attempted to adapt the original story into graphic novel form, but he was dissatisfied with the result. In the end, he decided to simply keep the idea of a lantern festival and two children on an adventurous journey. In The Knight on the Galactic Railroad, the children travel on a train through the galaxy, but in This Was Our Pact, the main characters ride bikes through a magical-realist landscape on earth.

Andrews’s art is a synthesis of his early influences: American, French, and Japanese comics. Although Andrews usually works on his art digitally, he used a more elaborate process for This Was Our Pact, which he details in an online interview (Temean, Kathy. “Illustrator Saturday—Ryan Andrews.” Writing and Illustrating, 2017). He first sketched thumbnails for the entire work and then transferred larger versions of each panel onto Bristol board. Unlike many cartoonists, Andrews did not ink in his lines, preferring to leave the sketches in dark pencil. He then painted the colors and textures he wanted onto watercolor paper. Then, he photographed both the line-drawn panels and the watercolor paintings and used Photoshop to layer the color over his line drawings. Finally, he digitally drew in any additional elements he needed in each panel’s background and hand-lettered any text he wanted to include. This process resulted in the whimsical, often surreal visuals that help create the graphic novel’s atmosphere of wonder and adventure.