Parker Cliffe
Illustration 2024
Starting his comics career with a short 8-page comic, a telling of Persephone’s journey from Hades to the over-world, he continued to use his love for mythology in his ongoing graphic novel series ‘Pandora’. ‘Pandora’ has been his long-term passion project, starting as a rough idea at 14 years old and evolving to become his Final Major Project for his degree. ‘Pandora’ has been his largest ongoing project, showcasing his predominantly digital practice and passion for storytelling through in-depth worlds and relatable characters.
‘Pandora’ has found great success as the first full installation of an 8-issue series featuring various mythologies from around the world with a modern adaptation of classic myths and legends. This self-published series aims to create a comfort media for young adults, repeating his experiences with comics as a coping mechanism and motivation. With this series, he aims to provide relatable and tangible characters that reflect issues many people face, including himself, such as the pressure of being academically successful at a young age leading to burn out and self-doubt. He also shows a range of body types, appearances and identities in a rich story full of fantasy, action and adventure.
Parker also produces full colour digital prints of his work both inspired and original, mostly finding himself illustrating games, shows and series he enjoys. Most of his original works centre around a plethora of original characters, some from his graphic novel and some from series planned for the future. All of parker's illustrations take a heavy influence from a variety of Manga and Comic styles, often using vibrant and contrasting colours with a large inspiration from 80s and 90s styles, creating a modern take on classic ideas.
In order to support this line of work, Parker takes commissions usually designing characters for novels and TTRPG games to serve as a visualisation of the characters as well as selling his work online, in stores, such as The Book Dragon in Stockton, and at comic and anime conventions. His illustrations portray so much more than the subject, giving a feel of the character and their world through body language, colour and lighting, and pose. This level of storytelling in a still image shows his background in comics and his passion for 3-dimensional and in-depth worlds. Thematically parkers work is often a combination of High-Fantasy and Retro, often describing his style as ‘80’s arcade carpet’ and drawing a lot of inspiration from his parent’s style in their teen years to early 20’s.