Comic artist Tallgirltoons gets candid about her art, inspiration, and how she started.
Who is Tallgirltoons and why do we need to talk about her? Xena Ramakrishnan pours out her heart while sharing interesting facets of her work.
Tallgirltoons (@tallgirltoons) is an Instagram comic page managed by Xena Ramakrishnan.
Online comic artists have nailed the art of giving us the "feels" in only a few panels of art, and Xena is no exception. Xena Ramakrishnan is a tall female, particularly so in India running a successful Instagram page.
When I asked about what motivated her to start one, she replied “I went to NIFT in Bangalore and while doing my course, in the second year during the summer vacations, there was this one thing that crossed my mind. I am super tall, I'm 6’2! Although I had never been bothered by it during vacation, it hit me later those other tall girls feel extremely conscious. Because of the era of relatable memes I started wondering if they have something for girls, and there wasn’t anything so yeah that’s how I started.” Wanting to show the world what tall girls go through be it “good or bad” Xena started her journey of Tallgirltoons.
She further talked about her storylines of the comic strips being a blend of personal stories and picking up others’ experiences shared with her. Talking about other tall girls sharing Xena promptly shared “Yes, they do and it’s pretty cool. I come across people from around the world as my height bracket is not common for Indians like Germans, Russians, and Swedish people. It feels nice because they come and tell me that they like my comics and then they also suggest me ideas for my next comic strips. It’s been a great base to just connect with people.”
I also asked Xena about her art style. Her strips are mostly black and white and I was curious if there was any specific reason for it or not. Replying to my curiosity, she explained that it was an active decision to make it black and white. “Early on I didn’t want people to know that I'm Indian only because I felt like it made the accessibility of my content narrow. It also backfired though, once an international company reached out to me and as they came to know I was Indian they stopped contacting me!” She further talked about the main character in the comic. It turns out it wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place! “When I started drawing I didn’t realize it was me my friends came up to me that I like look just like the character”.
As someone interested in comics I asked her about her favorite one growing up. However, it turned out she didn’t read comics regularly enough to have a favorite one. “I read comics now but I didn’t much grow up. Now also I'm more interested in graphic novels. The art and the storyboarding are what I’m interested in since that’s what I do but before this love for illustration came from my love for animation and not comics although I was too lazy to do animation! But I loved animation and I still do”
Now that Comics are becoming more and more digitalized, I wanted to know Xena’s opinion on the matter to which she replied “I feel like it’s a good thing we are going digital but I also love the hardcover books. Both have their charm and should last long. Even lots of digital artists print and sell their comics in hardcovers. One thing digital has helped in is the reach. With the reach it had so far I can only imagine the opportunities it gives people to share their stories and digital help in making it so much easier. Designing a character also helps in digital when you’re given a chance. Besides that, I am a hardcover tangible book-holding person!”
As she hasn’t been active on Instagram for a long time I asked her “What are you currently working on? What are the plans?” she told me that right now tallgirltoons is on halt as she isn’t getting the time to illustrate frequently. “At this point I want this(tallgirltoons) to become a full-time investment for me. I want to hire more illustrators to help with the account but I have the creative lead. In the big picture, I want to take into animation a full animation of the character, or I would have it made in a graphic novel with a whole storyline. That would be the opportunity to build the character I have made her relatable, I have made her likable and I want her to become someone people know saying- That's our tall girl!”
Before ending our conversation I asked her one more thing. “For young artists who are getting into drawing comics, what is something they should do that would help them understand the comic art better?“ Stating that most people who have an interest in comics have an inclination towards either comics, art, or illustration she concluded “One should dig deeper as to what they want and try to emulate that as everyone’s work is a product of their idealogy and personality. Your likes are an extension of you so channel them into your creative space. Oh, and never compare your art style with others, everyone’s style is different.”
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