An Interview with Soap Asbury

4/29/21

by Clio Thayer

 Tell me a little about your senior project.

I’m really excited about this project because it’s been a story of mine for about three years now. I started it my freshman year. It’s called The Girl with the Red Headphones. 

It’s a one-shot horror comic about 120 pages, and it's about four college students who were very tightly interconnected with each other from Concord, New Hampshire. They just graduated, and they go on a roadtrip to explore their lives. As they’re getting ready to go, they hit and kill a girl in the middle of the night. Upon finding her body they realize she's one of their former classmates. Because she was reserved and shy, nobody really knew much about her, so after they kill her by accident and go to a hotel she appears to them in dreams and reveals to each of them different sides of their personalities that they might not have otherwise realized.

It’s kind of a metaphysical love note to something that happened to me at the end of high school. I had about three or four of my friends who I’d grown up with come up to me and say that they never really liked me as a person. It was very weird. I was like “oh, okay thanks for wasting my time then”. At the time I didn’t know how to cope with it. Once I started figuring out this story it helped me realize sometimes you're friends with the wrong people and it's not me all the time. It’s going to be all in black and white, with pops of color on splash pages. I have about twenty pages written out so far. 

What is your process like?

My process relies very heavily on character creation, so when I'm making a story, before I think about the environment and other details, I really like to get into the minds of the people I’m working with. I’ve always been very much like that, always drawing characters as opposed to animals or scenery. I draw them in every single face shape that I can imagine — happy, sad, excited— I draw them running, posing, talking to each other, and then I start integrating them into the places around them. That way by the time I start they’re already ready to go. I like to break things down almost so analytically that it sometimes gets in my own way. 

I’ve realized that throughout my college experience, because I love to draw and create and sketch and generate, I have to learn when to edit and when to go gungho on that process so I can keep my deadlines. I’m really focused on character creation and the overall passion and spirits behind the subjects I’m drawing. It still kinda hurts me sometimes, but I’m getting to the point where I’m juggling it in a way that keeps me happy but also meets deadlines.

In your art, what types of themes do you gravitate towards?

I love emotion and philosophy and thought and feeling. When I draw a character it's less about me drawing a perfectly beautiful person and more about somebody who can show you at the drop of a hat what they’re feeling.

I’ve always been a blunt and honest person and sometimes that gets me into trouble but I think it's really altruistic and genuine. I find comfort when there’s nothing to be hidden behind any type of interpretation or storytelling that isn’t true. I love soft things, tender moments like characters hugging or embracing. I also love to draw the things that scare me like rejection, fear, anxiety. If I’m going through a very anxious moment, I’ll draw a woman screaming with red hash marks and fire shooting out of it. You don’t really do that, but it’s what you feel and I translate it to paper so that somebody out there going through a similar moment can look at that and go “whoa, somebody else gets it.” 

Growing up as an only child I didn’t have many people to talk to, so I talked to my stuffed animals, I talked to my mother, I talked to anybody who'd be willing to listen. As I got older I realized there are times and places for that. There are moments where people will appreciate you for your authentic self, and moments you have to edit to mingle and blend, we all have to do it. 

My senior project is the love note to the thing that happened to me. I want it to really be my final thought and measurement of that point in my life because I don't wanna think about it anymore. I don't wanna be there in that frame of mind anymore. Once I put that onto paper and get it out into the world, then I know that I’ll fully recover from it and it won't ever cause me pain again. That’s really what I want this senior project to represent, not just for me but for people going through a similar thing. It’s okay and we’ll all survive. 

What type of art did you start off doing and where has that taken you?

The first thing I really started drawing was anime and manga. I still have all 145 of my novels, I flip through them all the time. Japanese sequential art like Naruto and Bleach always connected with me because it felt more passionate. Marvel and DC, I love them but they’re not always as expressive and emotive. They’re a little more rigid: POW, stiff, CRUNCH. Eastern design tends to be more fluid and lucid. That really inspired me, the way they talk and move. I spent probably my first five years as an artist just drawing anime and manga. 

Once I started getting closer to the end of high school, I thought I couldn't keep doing that forever because I was mimicking someone else. I hadn't found my style yet. Then I started getting into books like Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Moroe. All the people she drew in there were not these perfect beautiful creatures like in Marvel or DC, or even Japanese animation. And then I started drawing characters that were kind of gritty because of it. It morphed my style. I pulled different aspects from different inspirations to make it into something that’s my own so that way I don't have to always feel like I’m walking in somebody else's shadow. 

I kind of always felt that way with my mom growing up, just Lou’s Kid. I think those years helped me a lot, but I’m happy that I made the decision to stop and go into cartoons. It made me love cartoons more. Once I started drawing more I started being able to see how you can break down the comic book characters into warm and moveable creatures. While watching cartoons, I could see the shapes I made while I drew moving in front of me. That lent me to be able to find movement in my characters. I pull from everything I watch and read.

What are some specific artists that inspired you?

Rumiko Takashi for sure. InuYasha was my favorite manga and anime of all time, it still is. That’s really what made me want to start collecting and making comics. I started shortly after I found InuYasha. Randomly one morning at five am I couldn’t sleep and turned on the TV and saw Naraku, the villain, with his hair all spread out and the tentacles of his poisonous miasma going everywhere. I thought “what is this and how can I make my whole life around it?” And I did and I never regretted it since. I started drawing a comic a week even if it was just something I did in five minutes. I have folders of dialogue and pages from years and years ago and it really helped me. 

R Crum is a huge inspiration, and that didn’t really start until freshman year of college. Joel got me into him. Once we made fun of him in class, I went to go check him out and he has beautiful work. Even though he’s an asshole I don't blame the art for the artist. 

What does your studio space look like?

One word, cluttered. Disorganized and chaotic like a tornado came through there. I will say, one thing that has improved since I moved is even if I still have piles of stuff at least they’re neat little piles that I tuck to the side of the room as opposed to right in the front. I’m learning to try to organize more and my roommate’s been helping. Once I get back onto campus, I’ll definitely claim my studio space but right now I’m just at home. I need the little safe haven where I can just work, and I haven’t given that to myself yet. 

How far do you think you’ve come since you entered college?

I think I’ve come pretty far. I will say even though my time management is still horrible I recognize why that is and it’s helped me see how to get a hold of it and be better. I’m not perfect, I’m still late here and there, but I know now that I wasn’t doing school earlier for myself. I was already thinking of getting out and moving, and now that I’m actually here I’m like “holy crap, if only I had done this before?”

I started school at 21. I’m a little older, and I was kind of hanging on to being in my moms house and it was causing me problems. When I came home and tried to do work it wouldn’t work out because my mind was everywhere else, and not because I didn’t love what I was doing. I would come in and hear that from my professors and my associates, and I would go “goddammit why wouldn’t anyone see that I do want this?” And I would let that get to me, and I wasn’t proving to myself that I am the badass artist and person that other people see. Now that I know that I am that badass artist, I can go back and tackle it head on.

 Even though my college career hasn’t been perfect, I know I’ve improved immensely. I know when to ask for help, use references, and constantly draw. That is one thing that will keep me going forward. 

How have faculty, staff, and peers affected you and your art?

The best part about college were my talks with Joel. I still think about things he said to me now, even though it’s been almost four years since I first met him. That’ll be something I carry with me for the rest of my life and at some point I’m gonna thank him.

 I think I know now the difference between somebody trying to help you, an opinion, and somebody truly attacking who you are. I’ve only had one experience with that, but other than that everyone was just trying to help me. I was so prideful with what I walked in with that at first I was even a little mad at Joel. Joel came up to me and saw something I was drawing and he said “wow, you’re a great artist but your anatomy is terrible.” I was like “excuse me?” And then I looked and I started studying things, looking at the skeleton and muscle structure and understanding what he said. It’s not that I can’t draw. I just need to practice drawing people more in different ways than before. 

Rich Pellegrino has helped me a lot too. I think he’s kind of mean, but he means well and wants people to truly succeed. I think about a lot of what he said too. He asked me the ultimate question which was “do you really want to do this?” and I was like “of course, I can’t believe you would ask me that!” but then again I looked at my behavior and thought it was fair that he asked. I thought of all of that and realized I wanted to keep going. 

I've had more commissions since I stopped going to school than ever before. Because I’m outreaching, I’m talking to people, I’m looking at job listings on Facebook, and collectively within the last six months I’ve made almost a grand off my work and that feels really good to say. If I keep going, I have more work ahead of me. Even though I might not have been great at the structure of school, I know I can succeed and I can finish. It’s taught me a lot about myself and my work and I don’t regret it for a minute.

Where would you like to go after you graduate? 

Honestly, my dream job after I get my degree would be to be a storyboard artist for an animation studio. That way I’m always around animation and production and sequential art. Storyboards are basically really rough sketchy comics. That would also be another good practice for me and my comic making, doing storyboards all the time. 

After college, my plan is to get another book published after The Girl with The Red Headphones. I have about three or four stories, and characters upon characters waiting to go. I wanna get a solid, good daytime job that I can get now because of my degree. Even being a tattoo artist is something I’ve considered. Those you can do pretty comfortably, even with a couple years of apprenticeship. There’s lots of different avenues and I’m ready to pick one. 

What advice do you have for underclassmen and incoming freshmen?

One thing I would definitely tell everybody is, and it’s gonna sound cliche, but be yourself. Don't make sacrifices. Don’t dim your light just because it’s a little too bright for somebody else. Don’t be scared of people challenging you, because ultimately a good challenge I think is what everyone needs in order to be able to get through life. And that’s coming from somebody who's had many.

Ultimately, life is a big adventure, there are points where you can be strong and firm and structured and other points where you can be just as playful as a puppy rolling through grass and everything else in between. If I heard that coming into freshman year I would’ve felt a lot better.