Alan O.W. Barnes
stories
Illustration
Digital, traditional…I love it all! Let’s explore different illustration techniques and styles together.
Animation
Motion graphics allow me to explore all my interests at one time…its a “super stacker” activity. Writing, drawing, design, typography, photography/cinematography, motion, and sound come together in a single collective communication activity.
Lessons
Teaching, for me, is synonymous with learning and growing. I love to explore. I’ve been teaching at the college level for 25 years. I hope you’ll allow me the privilege of helping you explore making things.
Shop
This is the link if you need a new shirt featuring a monster, cryptid, or member of the ManGroves! (There’s other stuff here, like books, bags, and hats, so have fun exploring!)
Some Recent Images
ImagesRight now I'm focused on 2 projects: Black Chaos Comes Again, and ManGrooves
About Me
I make stories about monsters, mythology and American/Irish culture
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close
I tell stories about monsters.
When I was a kid I loved classic monster stories like those about Frankenstein and Dracula, or mythological stories about Egyptian, Greek, and Roman monsters like the Minotaur and the Kraken. I also loved the stories about modern mythological monsters like those in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia creatures, the Teen Titan’s Cyborg (Wolfman and Perez’s take on Frankenstein) or Raven (based on a daughter of the devil archetype). Frank Miller’s Elektra held a special place in my heart because she was a woman who chose to become a monster.
I make stories about these things because they provide a flexible format to talk about compl topics in a fun way. We need to find ways to communicate our ideas about the world in a way people can hear those ideas rather than getting bogged down in straw man arguments about political positions that one may or may not possess. These stories are my solution to that problem. I hope you have as much fun experiencing them as I had making them!
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Alan O.W. Barnes is a storyteller from Damascus, Virginia, who currently lives in Knoxville, TN, with his wife Kim and their daughter Keira.
Alan is over-educated, with masters degrees from Belmont University in Music Composition, as well as the Savannah College of Art and Design in Sequential Art (the fancy term for drawing comics).
Alan has made ads for giant companies and the fabulously famous. He taught at one of the largest art schools in the country (Ai), has worked for accrediting bodies, and designed curricula for a host of colleges including the Atlanta Institute of Music and Media, Georgia Perimeter College, and the Art Institutes. He is now an Associate Professor of Digital Art at Johnson University.
