Webcomic Weekly: Noriz Mora’s ‘Gifted Young Artist’ – Ridiculous Fun At Art Summer School
by Richard Bruton
Welcome once more to Webcomic Weekly, Comicon’s look at online comics and how darned great they are. Case in point, Noriz Mora‘s Gifted Young Artist.
A note before we start – Webcomics Weekly might be weekly right now, but it’s soon going back to what can best be described as sporadic! But enjoy it while it lasts folks. And especially enjoy Noriz Mora‘s Gifted Young Artist, that Mora describes as…
.
A note before we start – Webcomics Weekly might be weekly right now, but it’s soon going back to what can best be described as sporadic! But enjoy it while it lasts folks. And especially enjoy Noriz Mora’s Gifted Young Artist, that Mora describes as…
‘Surely it should be a piece of cake for an unemployed, unmotivated animation graduate to teach a summer art class over the weekends, especially with a partner… right?’
Well, you can just fill in the rest, can’t you? Well, luckily, Mora has a way of taking this simple set-up and filling it with delightful and outright funny material, playing on all the stereotypes and delivering some great comedic comics timing along the way for a great little comedy of errors.
Noriz Mora (the togmeister/@togidemi on Twitter) is an illustrator and comic creator. They’ve previously made Togidemi Comics and I Am Babie/I Am Adult, Gifted Young Artist is their latest thing, all about a couple of clueless art teachers dealing with a summer school art class.
We start off with a tale as old as time for artists – young Rain Lim is the super talented one in school, making art for everyone and having everyone love it… only to come crashing headfirst and hard into adult life…
That final panel there was where I knew this was going to be a great comic, just the look of absolute pissed-off-ness on Rain’s face is perfect. No need for words, the image tells all.
Living at Mom’s, struggling to make art and really struggling to think of herself as anything other than unemployable, suddenly Mom comes up with a possibility for summer – teaching art to youngsters.
There’s a meet-up with Evie, someone with far more of her shit together than Rain and, between them, they come up with a plan… and a mutual understanding of each other… sort of.
And that plan lasts about as long as the first lesson. A piece of cake? Not in the slightest…
So, that’s where part 1 ends, eight parts online of great comic making.
Part 2 picks up straight after with a chaotic classroom full of prodigies who spent all of Covid at home getting super good at drawing (Rain’s just jealous at this point of the generation having Covid time, yes, she is that ridiculous), and the two very different teachers will just have to think on their feet to get through the summer. Now, with what we’ve already learned of Rain, thinking on her feet really does sound like the worst idea.
But reading all about just how Rain and Evie and the kids are going to get through this summer – that’s a great thing.
Gifted Young Artist, by Noriz Mora – the whole eight parts of Part 1 here, Part 2 starts here and should update every Thursday. It’s also on Global Comics.
