ice cream astronaut is a surreal slice of life comic made for the internet in 2019. the comic follows the author as they find a design internship but get lost in space in the process. originally starting out on twitter and tapas in weekly updates, i ended up taking a hiatus due to life events and finishing it over the course of a month for a short-lived Patreon account. the full 44-page comic is now freely available here and bundled with downloads of my sunday EP, released in march of 2020.
context
ice cream astronaut was born out of my frustrations with university. at the time, i was very socially isolated and unaware i was dealing with undiagnosed ADHD, which resulted in a lot of mental strain and frustration as the pile of backlogged work, resits, and poor grades in my rearview mirror grew larger and larger. the third year of Dutch university studies requires all students to follow a mandatory internship for a full semester. in addition to the aforementioned pile of university work, i also had difficulties finding an appropriate internship. this resulted in me feeling like i was being pulled from multiple directions at once and failing to find my footing once things started to move.
process
the initial release of the comic in weekly increments on social media and Tapas took place simultaneously to the events in the comic. unsurprisingly, it was those events that forced me to put the comic on an extended hiatus, so i could focus and get a diagnosis. it wasn’t until after my internship semester that i started to pick the comic back up again, working in procreate redoing the artwork entirely and writing the second half of the story.
between its initial release and its final version the art style was revamped to be more expressive and detailed, while still retaining its minimal palette.
ice cream astronaut was released in october of 2019 on patreon, and is now freely available here
veraetcetera.art 