Kristy is a user experience designer and graphic novelist who specializes in learning experiences and magical stories for children, teenagers, and adults who never grew up. From a rural county in central Ohio, play and imagination were essential in reinventing the space around her. Play is now central to her work, and she strives to inspire wonder and spark the imagination.
She can most often be found in one of the DC metro area’s museums, lost in a good children’s fantasy book or comic, sketching on the Metro, backseat playing video games, or doodling away on her tablet.
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere."
Carl Sagan
Multiple worlds meets time travel in Infinite Spiral, my ongoing Y.A. fantasy webcomic. While catching fireflies Rory Perkins discovers there are whole other worlds, and then she gets lost in one. When the other worlds turn out to be less than wondrous, Rory must choose between two quests: Find her way back to her own or make things right in the rest. Infinite Spiral is an ongoing webcomic and the first two chapters are available as a printed, perfect bound volume.
Writing, pencils, digital inking, digital coloring, digital lettering.
Forever Home is my submission to Square City Comics’s third anthology, The Cure. It is the story of a woman who is trying to save her aging ferret, Jack, by getting him the new cure for immortality. Both sad and sweet, the comic explores issues of ethics and age we all face with our beloved furry friends. The Cure anthology was successfully Kickstarted in Fall 2015 and contains work by many D.C., NoVa, and Baltimore area comic creators.
Writing, pencils, digital inking, digital toning, digital lettering, The Cure Kickstarter management.
Defining Destiny was a three page comic I completed in 2013 for the Spartan Super Hero Legends project. This was part of Michigan State University’s Homecoming celebration. Several alumni and their comics were represented in the program. Steve Boughton reassembled the comic’s panels in the motion version of the comic.
Writing, pencils, digital inking, digital coloring, digital lettering. Motion version animated by Steve Boughton.
Everyday Imaginings was my first formal foray into comics. This minibook is a compilation of four shorts completed while taking Ryan Claytor’s Comics and the Visual Narrative course at Michigan State University.
Writing, pencils, digital inking, digital coloring, digital lettering.
These are a few examples of sketches and illustrations I have done recently. For regular updates from my sketchbook, follow my Tumblr.
Here are a selection of presentations I've done, most of which focus on user experience design and the learning experience. I also enjoy presenting on topics that take learnings from game design and user experience design, then leverage them to help people become more motivated, more creative, and more productive selves.