Nothing is cooler than a lady who draws comics and Carolyn Belefski is no doubt super cool.
She is an  artist and she runs her own empire over at Curls Studio where she publishes her own books while keeping up with a webcomic which she updates twice a week. She hits a lot of comic conventions where you can buy her artwork from her personally. She even records a podcast with her writer, Joe Carabeo. Sounds like a busy gal, right? That’s why we are happy that she sat down and answered a few questions for us!
DEFECTIVEGEEKS: Tell us what Curls Studio is about!
CAROLYN BELEFSKI: Curls Studio is all about bringing fun to the comics world. I do a webcomic called Curls which updates every Monday and Thursday at www.curls-studio.com/curls. I also work with writer Joe Carabeo to publish the comic books Kid Roxy, Black Magic Tales and The Legettes. We will be exhibiting our creations in 2011 at the upcoming Philadelphia Alternative Comic Con (August 14), Baltimore Comic-Con (August 20-21), Small Press Expo (September 10-11), Intervention (September 16-18) and I just found out the other day that I got accepted to New York Comic Con in Artist Alley (October 13-16). We hope to be able to meet you at one of our East Coast tour stops.
DG: What was the inspiration for the webcomic’s story and the art style?
BELEFSKI: I started Curls in 2002 and it was published in The Commonwealth Times student newspaper at Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduation, I published some of the college strips online and started writing and drawing more strips. I am inspired by things I see in everyday life and experiences I witness. Curls is a gal who likes excitement and gets into adventurous situations. One of her friends is a life-sized slice of toast named Toast of the Town. She also lives with a turtle who wears turtlenecks named Turtle Neck, a Siamese fighting fish who is a boxing champion named Applause, and a penguin named Pitter Patter. Some of her past adventures have included being dragged into a lake during a fishing expedition, getting lost while using a Clive Owen and Keith Urban voiced GPS, and becoming a mad scientist. The art style has changed through the years. It began with the line art being the same width, but with a heavy force-field line around the characters. Now the style has evolved to varying the line width and having a brush quality to it. Readers can see in the achieves how my art style of Curls has progressed. The current style is more loose and freeing to me now.
