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22yo Msian Artist’s Comic Nominated For Prestigious Harvey Awards!

She’s also the first Malaysian to win the Eisner Award!
Editor
02 Sep 2020, 07:00 AM

Main image via Fried Rice & Erica Eng / Twitter

Malaysia is definitely filled with talented people and one Malaysian artist’s webcomic was just nominated for a prestigious comic award!

22yo msian artist’s comic nominated for prestigious harvey awards!

Erica Eng, a 22-year-old Malaysian artist’s webcomic titled Fried Rice was just nominated for Digital Book of the Year for the 2020 Harvey Awards!

The Harvey Awards are one of the comic industry's oldest and most prestigious awards, that recognises outstanding achievements in multiple categories and the awards has been a fixture of the comic industry since 1988!

The autobiographical fiction comic by Erica, was nominated and it is in the running against other comics from DC Comics, comiXology and more in the "Digital Book of the Year" category!

Her comic previously won Best Webcomic for the 2020 Eisner Award, which is considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry and it was nominated for several other prestigious awards too!

Set in 2015, Fried Rice tells a story of a girl named Min, a young artist from Batu Pahat, Johor who's visiting her cousin Lilly in Kuala Lumpur and both the young Malaysians plan to travel overseas to study, with Min hoping to leave the country forever.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This story is largely autobiographical- Min (the main character) is a high school student who wants to study art. I remember feeling entirely lost during high school because I didn’t know how to go about my dreams. Graduating was scary, even though I’d done all I could to build a safety net for myself. I still feel lost sometimes, but in a less profound way since I’ve found that there are many others like me. Still, it’s difficult to be serious about art in the Malaysian public education system. I want to tell a story that I would have liked to exist when I was in high school (or primary school, for that matter). I don’t think it’s a story with wide appeal, but it’s important to me in that way. Thanks to everyone who keeps reading. I’m doing my best to crank out these pages 😤✍️

A post shared by Erica Eng (@paprikapeprica) on

The comic is loosely based on Erica’s own experiences after graduating high school and was named Fried Rice because it was the name of all her files in the early stages and it’s also her comfort food and “has a home-y feeling” that she loves.

Every page of her comic is hand-drawn on paper with pencils and then painted with ink wash before being coloured and lettered digitally on top of the scanned pages and Malaysian readers may recognise many local scenes in the comic too!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Erica Eng (@paprikapeprica) on

The comic is still ongoing and updated weekly and the expected length of the finished comic will be around 200 pages! You can read Fried Rice here.

Erica grew up in Batu Pahat and is currently taking her Bachelor's in Fine Arts at San Francisco's Academy of Art University remotely from her home in Johor.

She’s definitely making Malaysia proud! Congratulations on being nominated for the Harvey Awards and we hope you’ll win!

Info via Fried Rice , Erica Eng / Instagram

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