INTERVIEW
Audra & the Pups Audra Ann Furuichi discusses the creation of her popular webcomic Nemu*nemu and the challenges of being an independent artist and comic creator By Antonio Vega
Today it’s easier than ever to share your work with people all around the world. Art, music, and many other creative endeavors can be uploaded to the Internet in mere moments. But posting creative work online does not guarantee that people will notice it or that you’ll ever be able to make a living off your passion. Only a relatively small number of people ever manage to develop a strong enough following that they’re able to go beyond treating their passion as a hobby. Illustrator and comic creator Audra Ann Furuichi is one of these few individuals. Best known for Nemu*nemu, a webcomic she launched with her then-boyfriend (and now-husband) Scott Yoshinaga in 2006, Furuichi has harnessed the power of the Internet to kick-start her career and live her life by doing what she loves: drawing and telling stories. A Strong Start Motivated in part by an interest in
anime and manga, Furuichi began drawing at an early age. However, it was during her time as a student at the University of Hawai‘i that she published her first comic strip. After reaching out to the school’s student newspaper—called Ka Leo—she was given all the specifications and got to work, pulling from a long list of ideas she had been stockpiling. She had spent her first year in college at Scripps College in Claremont, California. But having found it difficult to adjust to life on the mainland, she returned home to continue her studies. Her first published strip, called Culture Shock, was inspired by her time in California. “I submitted comics based on my culture-shock feelings of being a Hawaii person going to the mainland and having misunderstandings and the weird things that we do that no one else does there,” says Furuichi. “I had written notes about them for months when I was away, and I thought, I can turn this into a comic—so I did that for a couple years.” In 1999, Culture Shock earned Furuichi a Charles M. Schulz Award for college cartooning from the Scripps Howard Foundation (as one of its annual National Journalism Awards) and a trip to Ohio to attend the awards gala. Coming Back Home After finishing her degree in Asian studies, Furuichi spent a year teaching English in Japan and then spent about two 36
years in California, where she got back into art by working as a colorist for companies like Antarctic Press and Marvel Comics. Though she was getting jobs, the stresses of looming student debt and an unstable income led her to leave California in 2004. “I decided to come back home because— starving artist. It’s hard to make money. It depends on how fast you work. So I came back home and I wanted to clear off some of my debt, so I just worked at the State Legislature.” When not at work, Furuichi continued to draw and to network with other artists in Hawaii. Through her mother, Furuichi came to learn of a drawing group called Manga Bento, so she began helping out, sharing her knowledge with members. There she met her future husband and artistic collaborator Scott Yoshinaga. “Scott and I ended up dating and then we decided we want to work on something together.” The Pups It was while looking for a project on which to collaborate that the two found the perfect source of inspiration: two stuffed animals named Plopper and Nemu. Plopper was a stuffed dog that Yoshinaga had been keeping in his car until one day, while Furuichi was feeling a bit under the weather, he gave Plopper to her in hopes that it would cheer her up. The gesture worked. “I would bring it with me in a tote bag to work, put him by the telephone, and it’d keep me company,” Furuichi remembers. Not long after Yoshinaga’s get-wellsoon present entered into Furuichi’s life, a second stuffed pup made his appearance. “It was supposed to be a replacement in case something happened to Plopper,” admits Furuichi with a laugh. This new pup was given the name Nemu due to his sleepy-looking face (nemui means “sleepy” in Japanese). In the end, Nemu won them over, and he made the transition from (Top to bottom) The cover of the fourth compilation book of Nemu*nemu Scott Yoshinaga & Audra Ann Furuichi
