Tomato's ART studies: Interview with phinlana

Julia Chubarova, known as phinlana_ll is a 21 years old artist, famous in the community of “Metal Family” cartoon lovers. Mostly she creates fan-comics with characters of the original cartoon and posts it on Instagram¹ and in her own group² in the vk.com social network. Comics are made in Russian and translated into English and Spanish.

In the interview, she shares her research methods and sources of inspiration.

– Hello! I would like to make an interview with you and post it on my blog. May I ask several questions about your art and how it was made?

– Yeah, sure, I am totally fine with that.

– How much of Metal Family content do you view? How often do you rewatch the original series?

– I’ve used to re-watch the cartoon every day in the beginning. It was about one and half years ago. I’ve been doing it so I could copy the drawing style properly, describe the house layout and find some proves to my cartoon-based theories. There is no need for that anymore.

– “The house layout”?

– Oh, that’s an interesting story. Actually, I had an idea of their house plan in my had for a long time. So I’ve made “stories” on Instagram pointing out some inaccuracies of the layout, after another Heavy’s³ post. I’ve got shit slung. Few days after someone took my explanations and posted them online, where everybody said he made a great job. It pissed me off! So I’ve made a 30 plus pages PDF document with the description of the layout in the house the main characters live in. With 3D models, official sketches⁴, screenshots from the cartoon⁵, and etc. All in one day – I’ve started in the morning and in the evening it was all done. Couse no one should steal from me.

– Did it worth it?

– Of course! First of all, I’ve helped the creators – they’ve used my layout to make the official floor plans. Also, because of it, I haven’t translated my file⁶ into English – there is no need for it anymore.

Secondly, after I’ve posted it, insulters shut their mouths up, since my description is pretty clear. Plus, I’ve helped some people. The theme was pretty topical, especially building house-copies in the Sims.

– You have used official sketches, and comments from the creations in your layout research. It is hard to find that kind of information?

– I am aware of almost all official content. It isn’t actually that hard. Before it was really easy since there was almost no official information. Now it’s easy because I already know where to search. As a last resort, I could ask the creators of something important. Metal Family is a really simple fandom, it has only a few official sources⁷.

I guess people who can’t find information just don’t want to search for it.

– Does your relationships with creators influence your art?

– Not at all. We separate those things. My interaction with guys doesn’t have an influence on my content. They say nothing about the upcoming season.

– Since we are talking about the creators of the series – have you searched for other works they participated in?⁸

– I grew up on it! Of course, mostly I’ve got influenced by Metal Family. Other projects are more as a pleasant supplement and good memories.

– Yeah, MF definitely made a great impact on you! You are one of the most famous artists in the fandom! Are you interested in other fan-made content as much, as you like to create it on your own?

– Not that much actually. Mostly I am scrolling posts made by my friends-artists. They create comics, drawings and memes. Sometimes I visit ficbook⁹ to check if someone wrote something about Dee and the girl from the quest. Most of the time I find nothing.

Speaking about fan-made content, people tag me and send a lot of their art, so there is even no need to search for anything. I also know people like to make edits with my gifs, so I especially love making them.

– Oh yeah, the girl from the quest. She literally appears for a few several seconds in the whole season, and you make a lot of stories with her. How did you come up with her nature?

– Almost always I am drawing something I find canonical. I have watched thousands of cartoons and TV series, so I just “see” it. I have lots of theories about the plot of the cartoon, and I try to find the proves for my feelings in official comments and the cartoon itself. Most of my theories are pretty accurate by the way. We will know it for sure in the second season.

Speaking about the girl from the quest particularly, I guess her nature should be based on the contrast with her love interest. This is how couples work in Metal Family.

The guys in the cartoon are looking for the opposite of their mother, but in the end, they find something really similar. Girls are making the same thing.
Here is a simple example:
Glam searched for the opposition of his grey, weak, small and gutless mother. At first look, he found her complete opposite – strong, rough and masculine Victoria. But in fact Glam, same as his father, married a woman who might be controlled in some way – he makes important decisions instead of her and he is the “housefather”.

Dee is closed, uncreative and discreet. As an opposite, his love interest should be liberated, creative, and a bit crazy otherworldly girl. He looks for the complete opposite of his mother Victoria – a feminine girl with 156 cm height and around 40 kg wright. But she has the same vibe as Victoria, which might be seen already from the trailer¹⁰. The base of “housefather” is saved, it all fits.

pic1

– Ok, it feels like a really deep understanding of the cartoon ideas. You really know a lot about Metal Family and learned most of the information a couple of years ago. What kind of research do you make now when creating your comics?

– There is no need for informational researches – my art is the result of me learning something, not the reason. But I need to make visual research almost for every comic I make. For example, the appearance of characters in “Ratatouille” for my Halloween art (pic1), and how websites with answers for homework look like¹¹, and a concrete recognizable frame from the “Human centipede” movie¹². Mostly I forget how something looks and search for a reference.

Eventually, I might get inspired by objects or situations I face in my life. For example, the “Problem”¹³ comic was all based around the notebook (pic2). I just liked it too much.

Sometimes I make a story with one scenario, but while writing dialogues the idea completely changes. Also in some comics, I invent situations on purpose. In “Probabilities”¹⁴ characters play a non-existent game. I’ve had only the beginning and the end of the story. The idea was they could not escape the friend zone because of their stupidity. But what kind of game leads to it? “Probabilities” were created in that same second.

pic2

– What about research for art methods? Have you learned any comics or animation theory?

– Not on purpose. I’ve never finished any courses or something. I have some books by Herluf Bidstrup at home. I’ve used to flip them through when I was a child, so it obviously influenced my art very much. Also, sometimes I find something interesting and might take implementation ideas.

– Do you make any research while translating?

– Yes, of course, I do. I translate comics to English on my own, and sometimes it is really hard to adapt my jokes to other languages. I need to search for concrete words and for idioms. I don’t have any favourite sources – I just use everything that might help. I also get my comics translated into Spanish. I have the Spanish translator for this.

– OK, that was all questions I had. Thank you for your time.

– Thank you for asking.

Links:

1 – https://www.instagram.com/phinlana_ll/

2 – https://vk.com/phinlana_ll

3 – https://www.instagram.com/heavy_orc/ - Heavy is one of the Metal Family cartoon characters. He has his own Instagram with posts of his in-cartoon life

4 – https://vk.com/album-185578511_269033476

5 – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuiERoR0BqE-6A7OZf38dKQ

6 – https://vk.com/doc84160543_569624309?hash=9ac31b61742f24c3c3&dl=ae7f630f0bebbeff84

7 – She meant Heavy’s (3) and Alina’s^7.1 Instagram, official group in vk.com^7.2, the official channel with cartoons (5) and channel with additional content^7.3, and several interviews with the creators^7.4.

7.1 - https://www.instagram.com/alina_kovaleva_metal_family/
7.2 - https://vk.com/my_metal_family
7.3 - https://www.youtube.com/c/MetalFamilyXydownik
7.4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhEKPOyhAHY&t=79s&ab_channel=%D0%9A%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80.%D0%A0%D1%83 ;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu7-10Ohwa8&ab_channel=%D0%9A%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80.%D0%A0%D1%83 ;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQmcYN_55WE&ab_channel=%D0%94%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BA .