by Matt Bieker
ma ttb @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m
Stephanie Haigney is a local illustrator and comic book artist working on her own original series. Photo/Courtesy stePhanie haigney
Comic relief Stephanie Haigney During the day, Stephanie Haigney assumes the role of a mild-mannered shop clerk, helping the patrons of Nevada Fine Arts find the materials to bring their artistic visions to life. In her private life, however, she consults with superheroes, battles mysterious beasts, and breathes life into worlds invisible to rest of us. The 22-year-old Haigney is a comic book artist who released her longest project to date in August, and will soon be releasing her own original web comic series. âI decided in high school that there was nothing else that seemed more perfect than doing [art] as a career,â Haigney said. âSo, I was like, âfuck it.â Iâm going to basically say screw what everyone else says and just do what I want. Because if I donât, Iâm going to be very unhappy and very unsatisfied with my life.â Haigneyâs newest full-length comic, Divine Intervention, was written by local author Spencer Stoner and is the first installment in his Ophelia Legacy graphic novel series. The story, according to Haigney, is essentially a fantasy-world murder mystery. After approaching Stoner about illustrating his work, Haigney began the collaborative process of designing charactersâa specialty of hers, she saidâ drafting individual pages and adapting Stonerâs script into the dialogue box format with which comic book fans are familiar. âHe did draft a lot of these charactersâ designs and had very specific elements that 16â â|â âRN&R â |â â10.10.19
they had to have in the big designs,â Haigney said. âI want to say itâs usually the case for comics and, like, scripts and stuff is that these characters are already planned out as far as what they should look like. Itâs just how they actually look like is up to the artistâs style.â While attending Reed High School, Haigney discovered both traditional Western comic books and Japanese manga, and grew to love the storytelling capacity of the medium. She dedicated her free time to improving her self-taught style, which incorporates elements of both. Haigney is currently working on the second installation of Stonerâs series, but also plans to release her own original comic on the free digital platform Web Toons on Halloween nightâat midnight, specifically. The comic, Fears, takes place in a fictional world where her charactersâ real-world phobias manifest as invisible spirits that hunt their victimsâ and consume them whole. âSo, like, if youâre afraid of being buried alive, theyâll have, like, big claws for digging stuff, or be more mole-like, or whatever,â Haigney said. âYou just canât get rid of them. Basically, they haunt you until theyâre able to kill you with that specific fear that they embody.â One of Haigneyâs other specialties is a part of the illustration process called storyboarding, wherein she lays out a rough sequence of how a visual story might progress through rough sketches and dialogueâ an integral part of the animation and feature film making process. After taking courses on animation both online and in-person, including a Truckee Meadows Community College course taught by former Simpsons animator Brian Wells, Haigney decided to move to Austin, Texas, at the end of the year to find work in an animation studio. âIâll be leaving at the end of this December, so really soon,â Haigney said. âItâd be really rare to find that kind of work here. But there, you could get on Craigslist and see postings for animation and games studios all the time.â Ί
stephanie haigneyâs work can be found on her instagram account @ruffledraven and at shaigney.artstation.com.