Asterios Polyp

One thing that stood out to me while reading Asterios Polyp was the design of the book. Every detail, from the character design to the font used to the shape of the word bubbles, is used with purpose to show the reader the personality of the characters. Characters with big personalities will speak in large word bubbles with upper case font, and characters with shy personalities will speak with tiny fonts, etc. I noticed that the choices of font and design also gave me an idea of what the characters would sound like. For example, I'd read Hana's words in a very soft voice, which I attributed to the font and the character design. No two characters "sounded" the same to me, which I liked a lot. Sometimes if you read a comic where every character is speaking in the same upper case font all the time, it can feel repetitive.

Every aspect of the book is designed with purpose. The style the characters are drawn in shows how they are feeling. For example, when Asterios and Hana are fighting, their character designs will become more and more abstract and distinct from each other to show their emotional distance. Page 216 has a great sequence where the style of the characters starts to leak into the space that they share. When Hana becomes dominant in the argument, her sketchy style dominates the environment. By the end, Hana shrinks back into herself and Asterios' geometric style dominates the space. I hope that I can incorporate this attention to detail in my own narrative works.