Major Taylor Anderson | Illustration

Thesis3: Taylor Anderson, Th-Wack!, 2018, Corel Painter, 18 x 24

The ink was barely dry on Moore Illustration major Taylor Anderson’s graduation certificate, and KAPOW! ZAP! POOF! – she had a job with a comic book publishing company.

The company Anderson interned with in the summer of 2017 – Dynamite Entertainment of Mount Laurel, N.J. – hired her.

“I’m just really excited about it,” said the Tabernacle, N.J., native. “I never thought this would happen to me.”

Anderson, who transferred to Moore as a sophomore from what is now known as Rowan College at Burlington County, said one of the first influences on her concerning comic book art was the novel Varjak Paw, illustrated by comic book artist Dave McKean.

“I loved the art, and I just kept getting into more people like that, looking for that art,” she said. In high school, a friend gave her a copy of Watchmen, and her love of comic books took off.

“I decided that was something I really wanted to do, because I always liked to write stories and create characters,” she said. “That’s what made me want to be in comics. I wanted to be like them.”

CRIME AND GANGSTERS
Anderson’s art reflects her love of crime and gangster stories, which she describes as her “favorite things in the whole world.”
Her senior thesis artwork includes a noirish scene of an armed man in a fedora walking on a street; a headless woman covered in blood seated at a table with a man titled Stan Black the Serial Killer; and a car going up in bright red, orange and yellow flames as a dark, vintage gangster-style vehicle speeds away.

“I like actiony things, I like old movies,” she said. “I like really strong inkwork. Unclean. Gritty, I guess.”
For Dynamite Entertainment, she said she’s probably going to do more of the work she did during her internship, drawing on the computer using Adobe, as well as life-drawing figures.

“I was free to do whatever I wanted and I decided to go around and shadow people and ask questions and put myself out there,” she said. “I wanted to let them know I was very interested in this, and in turn, they taught me a lot. I wouldn’t have learned those things if I didn’t ask.”

During her internship, she got to work closely with James Kuhoric, one of the head writers at Dynamite who also owns American Mythology Comic Books, based in Maryland. In addition to her work for Dynamite, Anderson will be drawing art for comic book covers for Kuhoric.

THE RIGHT CHOICE
Her long-term goal is to become an art director for a comic book company.

“My first goal is to write and publish my own graphic novel,” she said. “I’ve been working on one comic that has really stuck with me for three or four years now, about gangsters.”

Anderson, who won the Dorothy Tomkins Warner ’29 Illustration Scholarship, said Moore “changed my whole life.”

“It prepared me for a new era of my life,” she said. “I feel prepared to go out into the world.”