This Illustration Friday bit flowed rather well. Was game to post it Friday but had to obsess over one panel. Finally I shot a photo and lightboxed it, not that you can tell.

A small restaurant I’ve been known to eat at. I can’t draw perspective for shit.

For those of you spiraling in via the Illustration Friday link, I live in Cambodia and draw comics. Most recent efforts have been ‘Komik Cambodia‘ exchange and ‘Fantomes‘ student comic. More details here.

Jinja is kind of my totem animal in Cambodia. How do you know you’ve got a totem animal? You see and hear it constantly, it becomes a motif in your life. In Australia my totem animal was the platypus. In USA? Not sure yet.

‘Jinja‘ (pronounced with an aspirated sound at the end, it could be ‘jinjah‘) is the small ubiquitous sized lizard found everywhere in southeast asia. The larger ones are called ‘teckai‘ in Khmer and can be heard chirping at night time. They can grow quite large. Jinjas are (alas) the favorite food of cats, though they both may look at Kings.

“Even a cat may look at a king” is a proverb that is centuries old. I’ll be curious to see how it translates into Cambodian and how people react. After last week’s condensed comic I’m allowing a little more breathing room for Khmer text when I translate it.

No contractions in this comic either, the more southeast asian readers I get the less slang I use. I guess I’m getting self-conscious. It’s an interesting change, as weblogs and zines are tend to showcase slang and obscure subcultural references. That’s my background, but it may not be where I’m going.

Thinking a bit lately about silent comics – now there’s a way around the translation barrier.

Related links: http://del.icio.us/slugdog/illustrationfriday20012006

Tags: Cambodia,comics

Illustration Friday topic: “Cats” Reference for above @ www.qdcomic.com/blog