How "Shepard Kikis" was born: about memories, friendship and creativity

Sometimes a creative idea doesn’t start with a sketch, a character, or a clearly written plot. Sometimes it starts with a feeling. “Shepard Kikis” began exactly like that – with a return to my childhood, old photos, memories, and questions about why some moments in life remain so vivid in our memory, while others almost completely disappear. While creating this graphic novel, I thought more and more about friendship. About people who become extremely important to us at a certain point in our lives. About connections that last for decades and those that one day simply fade away. About loneliness. About the desire to be understood. And finally, about whether a true connection always has to be expressed in words.

Return to childhood

It all started with a fairly simple act – I started looking at my childhood photos. It was strange to realize how much I really don’t remember. In the photos I saw myself, family members, places, holidays, various childhood moments, but some of them almost didn’t exist in my memory. At the same time, I noticed something else – some much older emotional experiences remained incredibly vivid. And not necessarily the most beautiful ones.

I began to wonder why memory works the way it does. Why do we sometimes forget an event but not how we felt at the time? Why can one small moment from childhood stay with us for years? In search of answers to these questions, I began writing a self-reflective journal. At first, it was an attempt to remember. Later, I realized that I was not so much documenting the facts of my life as my inner story. The more I wrote, the less sure I was that memory could ever be completely accurate.

Maybe we remember not what actually happened, but what meaning we give to that event today?

This idea became very important to me in my work as well. Memories began to function not as documentary facts that I had to reproduce exactly, but as emotional fragments. One color. Place. Body sensation. A look. Longing. Shame. A sense of security. Loneliness. Gradually, I realized that this was precisely the language of the story I was creating.

About friendships that last and those that fade away

When I thought about friendship, I inevitably started thinking about human relationships. There are friendships that survive many years, distance, and life changes. But there are also those that simply end one day. Sometimes even without a major conflict. One of my long-term friendships ended exactly like this. Not because of one specific event or anger. It's just that over time I felt that the deeper commonality that is important to me was no longer there in the relationship. What remained were shared activities, conversations, memories, but less and less real sharing of myself.

This made me ask: what does it really take for a connection to last?

Friendship has become more and more like a plant to me. At first, it may be quite small and fragile. But under the right conditions, it begins to take root. It needs attention, openness, trust, care. When all of this exists, the connection grows. But if we stop nourishing it, it can begin to wither. And sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean that something was wrong. Sometimes people just part ways. Maybe that's why, when creating "Shepard Kiki", I didn't want to portray friendship as something uniquely beautiful. I find it interesting because of its fragility.

Connection can provide security, but it can also make us vulnerable.

Letters to a friend

One of my strongest childhood memories is of a friend who went to live abroad. I was about seven or eight. She was my best friend at the time, so her departure felt like a huge loss to me. We started writing each other real letters by mail. I remember the anticipation. The knowledge that the envelope she was holding in her hands was going somewhere. Then the joy of receiving a reply.

Later we started sending each other videos. At that time, filming ourselves was unusual and even a little uncomfortable, but it became a way for us to see each other again, at least for a short time. For a while we tried very hard to stay in touch. But it still faded. Later, social networks appeared. We found each other again, shared what was happening in our lives, and for a while we congratulated each other on birthdays. And that was it. It is not a dramatic story. But maybe that is why it is so real to me. Some people remain in our lives not as part of the present, but as a feeling of a certain period that we only have to experience at a certain stage.

A friendship that needed no words

For a long time, I was haunted by a feeling of loneliness. Even when I was surrounded by close people, it could sometimes feel like something very special was missing – something or someone with whom I could share my inner world. And then a rabbit appeared in my life.

Our connection didn't happen instantly. At first, he was cautious and distrustful. There was a lot of alertness in his movements. And I waited. Little by little, we learned from each other. There were no words. There was no sudden attachment. There was patience. Small gestures. Permission to come a little closer. His first attempt to seek contact on his own. Just a calm presence. Our "conversations" were mostly silent. And it was then that I realized something that later became one of the most important foundations of "Shepard Kikis":

True connection doesn't necessarily require constant talking. Sometimes it lies in the ability to sense when the other person needs closeness and when they need space.

Maybe friendship doesn't start with what we say to each other, but with how we feel when we're together. This relationship became one of the most important impulses for me when creating the character of Kikis.

My memories gradually became Emma's story

"Shepard Kikis" is not an autobiographical graphic novel. Emma is not me, and her life is not an accurate retelling of my life. But there is certainly a lot of me in it and things that I have more or less certainly experienced in my life.

Emma grows up in a beautiful and safe environment. She is loved, but she spends a lot of time in her inner world. She has a hard time fitting in at school. Other children see her as a bit strange, too serious or old-fashioned. She watches others from the sidelines and sometimes starts to think that maybe the problem is her. In the book, it was important for me to talk about that silent feeling of childhood, when you don’t yet have the right words for your emotions, but you already feel very clearly that you are different.

The turning point in Emma's life comes when she meets a rabbit in the park. That's how Kiki appears. A connection is formed between them that hardly requires words. With him, Emma no longer has to try to be more interesting, more modern, or more like others. She can just be. It seems to me that many children and adolescents know this desire - to have at least one person, animal, or safe space where she doesn't have to prove her worth. Kiki becomes exactly that space for Emma.

Why is the story told by an elderly Emma?

One of the most important narrative solutions for me is “double vision.” The story is remembered by an elderly Emma. She looks at her childhood from a great distance in time, so the reader simultaneously sees both a child who does not yet understand everything that is happening to him and an adult who is already able to give a different meaning to those experiences. For me, this is very close to memory itself.

After all, we no longer look at childhood through the eyes of a child. Returning to the same situation ten or twenty years later, we can understand it completely differently.

Therefore, the diary form became a natural part of the book. It allows the story to be intimate, fragmented, and sometimes even a little unreliable – just like our own memories.

When memories become color

When creating “Shepard Kiki”, I didn’t want the illustrations to just show what is written in the text. It was more important to me that they convey a state of mind. That’s why I chose watercolor and colored pencils. The transparency of watercolor is very much related to memory for me. Its layers are not completely stable or strict – the color blends, becomes more intense in one place, almost disappears in another. It’s like the memory itself. Colored pencils provide another layer – texture, a handprint, the ability to highlight small details.

The first part of the story is dominated by soft, warm, pastel shades. I wanted a light reminiscent of a childhood summer morning or late afternoon – not bright and aggressive, but slightly faded, as if already seen through the filter of memory. However, the color language will change along with Emma. As her internal conflict, loneliness, and desire to fit in grow stronger throughout the story, the atmosphere of the illustrations will also change. Warm tones will gradually give way to richer, colder, and more contrasting shades. For me, color in this book is not a decoration. It is another narrator.

Text and image must tell a story together

What I find most interesting about a graphic novel is that you don't have to choose between words and images. They can tell different parts of the same situation. Sometimes the illustration can be silent, and the text can tell the entire inner world of the character. Sometimes it's the other way around: the text can be very simple, and the real emotion can be hidden in the character's posture, color, empty space, or a small detail.

When creating pages, I often think in a cinematic way. The rhythm of the shots, the zooms, the pauses, the fragments of the environment are important to me. I want to show not only what is happening, but also what the character notices at that moment. Because the story of a person's life consists of both external events and our internal reactions to them.

Why is this story important to me?

In creating and illustrating this book, I return to my memories not to romanticize childhood. I return to understand it. I try to understand where the desire to be seen comes from. Why it is so important to feel accepted. Why sometimes we try so hard to fit in that we start to hide a part of ourselves. Why some people disappear from our lives, and we carry the presence of others within us even when they are no longer around. My memories have gradually become more than just memories. They have become creative material. Not because I want to document my biography, but because there is often something universal hidden in personal experience. Loneliness. Longing. Fear of being different. The desire to fit in. Attachment. The first true friend. Loss. And that incredibly simple feeling when you can be completely yourself around someone.

"Shepard Kikis" is still growing

The first part of "Shepard Kikis" was created as my master's thesis, but the story itself does not end there. For me, this is not a closed page of my thesis.

This is an ongoing authorial project. As I continue to develop the story, I want to talk even more deeply about identity and the desire to fit in. About the moment when, in order to be accepted by others, you begin to distance yourself from your true self. About the fragility of friendship. About loss and return. About how childhood experiences can return in adulthood and take on a completely different meaning.

But at the heart of the story, I think, will always remain the same question: what is a true connection? Maybe it is not measured by the years spent together. Maybe not by the number of conversations. Maybe not even by whether the person is still there. Sometimes a connection remains as a memory that has changed us. Sometimes as a learned ability to be there for another. Sometimes as a small animal that one day just sat down next to you and showed you with its silence that you are accepted.

"Shepard Kikis" is a story about exactly that for me. About childhood and what we take with us from it. About friendship and its fragility. About memory, which is never completely accurate, but still preserves what we felt. And about connections that perhaps never truly disappear – they simply change their form.