Deep Dives: Kody Okamoto
Interviews with your favorite creators!
Hey Gamma Heads!
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve sent one of these out and I will be explaining in the next newsletter what happened but for our spectacular return I wanted to show off our new segment Deep Dives! In which we interview my favorite creators and spotlight the amazing work that they are doing! Today’s wonderful guest is Kody Okamoto, artist extraordinaire! Kody has been killing it with their work on books like Rubber Match and Demon Boy so I knew I had to sit down with them to get their story.
AJ: Can you introduce yourself for our audience?
Kody Okamoto: I’m Kody Okamoto, a gender queer comic artist. I’ve primarily done comic covers for the direct market for publishers like IDW and Skybound. I’ve also done comic art for indie projects like Rubber Match, a pro wrestling love story, and dEMOn Boy, a short emo meets horror comic with Mark O. Stack. And I’m currently working on my own graphic novel that I’ll be the full cartoonist for. Both writer and artist.
AJ: That’s totally awesome! I’m so psyched for that. I always love seeing your work come across my twitter feed. I especially love your two O.C.’s. What are their names again?
KO: They are Daniel, he’s the Japanese- American one, and Denver is the blonde.
AJ: I love seeing each time on Twitter how you have progressed their story along.
KO: Thank you! Pretty much with them, I took my own music tastes and influences when I was coming of age and split it in half. They each get half of that.
AJ: Actually right along with that, what is a comic’s run that is essential to you and you think our audience needs to know about?
KO: I’ve been struggling with this for a while. I’m not really sure because my comics taste is very sporadic and kinda all over the place. I think my answer would have to be, it’s not even American comics, it would have to be Nana by Ai Yazawa. She’s a mangaka from Japan. It’s an unfinished story but I still think it's one of the greatest comics/ love stories/ stories about music and bands that’s ever existed.
AJ: What about Nana makes it so special for you?
KO: I think it came out right when I was a teenager, I was at that especially impressionable age. It also speaks a lot about finding family, finding your place, not quite fitting in with the rest of society and the queer subtext all wrapped up in a very heartfelt story about being musicians.
AJ: That’s actually a great lead into our next question. What’s an essential punk album that you think our audience needs to know about?
KO: Okay, so I think my answer for this one, it’s a more recent album, is by PUP. It’s The Dream is Over. So PUP’s a Canadian punk band. The Dream is Over, I think it came out a couple of years ago but I think it’s amazing. I think it’s everything modern punk should be. I got to catch PUP playing a live show here in Seattle and they were playing a lot of songs from The Dream is Over. And that concert was also benefiting an organization that was supporting funding for trans kids. And so it’s just like, yes this is what punk is about these days! If I recall correctly, the reason that The Dream is Over is titled that way is because at the time the singer/ lead guitarist Stefan Babcock had something going on with his vocal chords and his doctor was kinda like “yeah you maybe won’t be able to sing anymore.” And so I think that’s where the album title came from. But he’s still out there. They're still pushing on and still releasing albums. That’s why The Dream is Over is my favorite.
AJ: I absolutely agree! A bit ago I put out a tweet asking for punk music recommendations and that was one of the first ones I got into. It’s still one of my favorite things to listen to in the car. The first song off the album sounds so good when you have the full range of audio around you, just making your car shake. I absolutely love that song.
KO: I agree. I love that it leads into, which is my personal favorite, DVP. It’s so good!
AJ: What inspired you to get into being an artist/ cartoonist?
KO: When I was a kid I really wanted to be an animator. I was like “I’m going to grow up to work on shows like Dragon Ball Z. I’m going to be the next Akira Toriyama!” I was really into cartooning but I realized that drawing the same drawing over and over with tiny changes was not for me. So I went more into comics. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson really inspired me at the time. I also really liked Batman Hush, which I think was my first breakthrough with American comics. I have always wanted to draw and do something with art. I eventually found my way back to art even though for a while I felt like “I wasn’t good enough. Everyone is getting so much better than me. My skills don’t stack up. I’m going to just quit. It’s easier to quit.” I did quit for a couple of years but eventually I was like “ Even if I’m not that great I really love doing it so I’m just going to try.”
AJ: I know exactly where you are coming from! What advice do you have for aspiring artists who are maybe hitting that point of “Do I want to keep going with this or do I want to quit?”
KO: It’s such an overwhelming spot to be in because even if you enjoy doing art it can be frustrating. My advice would be to just keep seeing the forest and not the trees. Remember why you love it. Do it because you love it and eventually the skills will come. Every single drawing you do is another drawing of experience that you didn’t have before. So even if it’s five or ten minutes, or even just a doodle, that’s a little bit more practice with your pen control, a little bit more practice with your ability to put a thought onto the page. So even if it doesn’t feel like you are moving forward, you totally are. Just hang in there.
AJ: To wrap this up, where can people find you on the web and do you have any upcoming projects?
KO: You can find me on twitter at kodyisover and at www.kodyokamoto.com. I don’t currently have anything new to plug but if people continue to check out Rubber Match that’d be amazing!
Thanks for such a great interview! I follow this artist on social media and it was cool to learn more about them. I’ll have to get myself a copy of Rubber Match asap!