Pudin & Flan is an indie webcomic that satisfies your sweet tooth
Keen to immerse yourself in a webcomic that involves zany adventures with a crazy couple of gamer girls with big dreams? IndieBloom welcome to you, Pudin & Flan.
Everything sweet
Based in the US, Pudin & Flan is from a trio of creative minds named Dreambit Media. Destinee is the creative director and one of its Co-Founders, who serves as the basis of Pudin - getting the name as they are really fond of banana 🍌 pudding. To keep with the dessert theme, the character of Flan represents the other Co-Founder, Jackie. Being a dessert she likes and is popular in the Philippines (she is half Filipino) 🇵🇭
With both having Bachelors degrees, Destinee and Jackie grew up drawing, then going to college for art and animation. Destinee ended up with a Masters Degree in SFX and 3D Animation, with Jackie having a passion for Character Technical Direction.
Depending on how intricate a story is, the usual run time is about a week to complete. Explaining the process for creating Pudin & Flan, Jackie states, 'Most of our comics are inspired by real life situations and things we can relate to. Our comics tend to be an exaggerated telling of our daily lives.'
Sticky pudding
When asked what’s been their favourite Pudin & Flan comic storyline Jackie explains,
Our favorite comics usually feature our cast of characters cosplaying some of our favorite characters from shows that we watched growing up, such as Cowboy Bebop, Scooby Doo, and Hocus Pocus. We like the feeling of nostalgia and the fact that we can pay homage to things we enjoyed as children that still influence us.
A wide range of inspiration, from anime, 60's American cartoons and films with witches. A regular gaming escapist mix.
Developing the brand and comic has brought about many challenges, like growing Pudin & Flans following, user interaction, along with advertising the comic. This has created issues as the social media platforms algorithms are constantly changing, making it very hard to obtain consistent continual growth. The ultimate aim to be able to reach more people.
All this however, makes it all the more pleasing seeing how much the comic means to the fans, Jackie mentions. 'It's been really great to receive fan art and just general support from our followers throughout this journey.'
Seeing the journey continue and looking ahead to the future are plans to create video games, not necessarily of Pudin & Flan though. We wonder what the game would involve?
Tasty future
As a three member team each individual has an important role in the overall process.
We start by pitching ideas for new comics then we'll select the comic of the week. James will create the base sketch for review. Destinee will make any needed changes and once she approves, James will outline the comic and turn it over to Jackie for coloring and text.
The process concludes with Destinee doing a final review, then it'll be posted on social.
With COVID still affecting everyone's lives, for the Dreambit Media team it has really hindered their ability to network face to face.
It's harder to reach other artists online through social platforms vs being in person when we're all on location for the same thing. We'd love to co-create with other artists to bring more awareness to the social issues that we address in our comics, it just seems that most creatives seem overwhelmed with the amount of messages they receive or are unwilling to respond.
Don't be afraid to reach out and collaborate with one another.
With further pre-COVID advice and words of wisdom from Jackie being, 'To go on location to art conventions, network and learn from more experienced creators on how to grow reach on social platforms for a web comic.'
What's next for Pudin & Flan and Dreambit Media? The sky's the limit as Pudin & Flan was originally created to be a cartoon series and at some point the team would really like to turn it into an animated series. Watch this space.
