Bird Turd
Negative Space Comic's Fall 2023 Finalist
An unmotivated zoo janitor with the bizarre ability to talk to birds finds himself the target of a New York pigeon mob after an encounter with an annoying woodpecker.
CAPTION
Somewhere in Manhattan...
Bird Turd is a passion project that started in the winter of 2022. I quickly realized at the beginning of writing Bird Turd that this story stemmed from a strong desire to communicate my experience as a “late bloomer” in life.
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Funny enough, Bird Turd started off as a sort of superhero spoof. It was my idea of taking the piss out of the everyday stuff I saw in my local comic store, and I’ve always liked the concept of an average person having a special ability with a major drawback—or an inconvenient and gross one in this instance. And then one day, Bird Turd started speaking to me in its own language, telling me what it needed to be, and it grew from there.
SFX
TOC-TOC!
Fun little fact: there is (to this day) no official format for comic scripts, which is both a blessing and a curse. I hadn’t yet developed a good system for my comic writing, and it wasn’t until I came across an article by writer Antony Johnston that I discovered a helpful program called “Scrivener”. This opened the door for me to eventually craft my own comic script template—which I use to this day. 24 pages all neatly packed and color coded, with note card thumbnails on the right and the script on the left—complete with my own personal hot keys for transitioning from panel description to dialogue and the like.
NARRATOR
And so, Frank set out to buy a box of pizza for a very troublesome woodpecker.
Concept Art
I paired up with Chandler Misseijer (a fantastic storyboard artist I met in community college) to help with concept art after I had written out the character sheets and templates for the main two characters: Frank and Lewis. I adore his Phineas and Ferb-inspired art style, and it’s perfect for the ridiculousness Bird Turd epitomizes.
