Announcing the publishing of a comic book I worked on with the RLS Foundation: The Adventures of Patty Pillow! It's a 10 page comic/workbook for kids with RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome) to help them cope with symptoms. Basically, RLS causes a person to have pain/discomfort in their legs at night, but walking around eases the pain. This causes lack of sleep, which causes a decreased quality of life.
Quoting an article the RLS Foundation published in their quarterly Nightwalkers journal, "this booklet follows one boy's RLS journey, teaching him the value of a support network at school, with friends, and at home. With RLS superhero[ine] Patty Pillow by his side, the child explores how to track and treat symptoms, and learns that RLS is just one of the things that makes him who he is."
The story follows Patty and the kids through various playground activities, interspersed with tips on treatments of symptoms (in the yellow and pink boxes) and interactive spaces for kids to draw what their symptoms feel like.
It's so awesome to hold a book that I drew and colored all by myself! It's ALL digital too, drawn from my wacom tablet. I worked very closely with people from the RLS Foundation who wrote the script. We had many discussions and they were very open to my story suggestions, so it was a great collaborative effort with lots of freedom! I think the hardest part was the layouts - there's a ton of content the foundation wanted to get across, and I did my best with breaking up the text. But I think the comic's strongest point is the characters and how they care about each other :) Patty Pillow ROCKS and the RLS Foundation has been incorporating more of her into their awareness campaign! For more info, go to www.rls.org
Haven't had much of a problem with bugs in my current apartment until now. I have a feeling someone else in our building sprayed and so the roaches scattered and escaped to the safety of my clean apartment. But these ones are small compared to the giant ones I had to deal with in other buildings. In other news, I'm getting close to 500 Daily Misfortunes!
