Hari Conner is the British comic artist behind Hari Draws taking the crowdfunding world by storm. They are the author and illustrator behind Finding Home, a four-part comic series about queer love in a fantasy world.

With the third volume launching in November, we interviewed Hari Conner to find out more about their stunning artwork funded by successful Kickstarter campaigns.

Culture Pledge: Can you tell me about your illustration skills? You have a degree in illustration, do you think studying helped you find your voice as an artist?

Hari Conner: I was very serious about making comics from a pretty young age – but I could only study “fine art” at school, then went for pretty traditional illustration at uni, so I was always discouraged from comics by teachers. Only after uni did I really start to embrace the stories I actually wanted to tell and combine the detailed art I did in class with cartoons I did on my own time.

Studying illustration gave me a few years to practise drawing a lot when my skills weren’t there yet since I only worked a day or two a week in term time – I was really lucky to be able to do that. It was also valuable in terms of meeting friends with similar interests, having a desk space, and being encouraged to think critically about art. But we had very little contact time or guidance or set work, and I learnt way more from my peers than I did from my tutors – as well as from doing stuff myself like webcomics, comic conventions and merch printing.

Teenagers often ask me if uni was ‘worth it.’ It was mostly what I made out of it – I think lots of alternative things like evening classes and online resources and groups can provide that too. Since now it’s a time where university might not be looking feasible for more young people than ever, I always want to tell people, ‘don’t worry if a degree isn’t right for you’ – and the same with full-time freelance: it’s tough, and it’s not gonna work for everyone. That’s ok!

CP: I’m fascinated by your use of colour palettes. Each page or section has a set palette that really gives you a feel for the setting. How do you pick your colours?

HC: I always plan the colour scheme for each scene before I start out on a chapter, and the colours are really based on the mood the scene is trying to set. Flashback scenes mostly get dreamy colour palettes hue-shifted towards warmer colours, with really stark reds if they’re scenes with traumatic associations. The weather also really sets the mood – a rainy scene can feel nostalgic and cosy, or dark and oppressive, or fresh and springlike – and that all really comes down to the colour. Whether a scene is about feeling relaxed or curious or tense or is foreshadowing something terrible coming soon, I think the colour scheme and lighting can do a huge amount of narrative heavy lifting in setting that mood.

CP: I notice you have bright hair, is this where you got the idea for fae hair? With the flowers representing different emotions? Do you see hair as a way of expressing personality and emotion?

HC: Haha, not consciously – I’ve been dyeing my hair bright colours for maybe 15 years. As a kid, I always thought, ‘if it’s so easy to dye your hair all different colours or dress in strange things, why would you pick the boring options.’ And I never really grew out of that.

I do think there’s a huge potential in animation and comics (especially fantasy) to visually express emotions. Readers often mention seeing similarities in Chepi’s hair with the creatures in Princess Mononoke overrun by darkness or Howl transforming into a demon. I’m sure Ghibli was an unconscious influence – but I also think simpler visual cues like hair swirling around unrealistically in dramatic scenes or even sweat drops or sparkles are all part of that visual language. 

Chepi’s hair displaying his emotions is just a visual metaphor it’s easy to use in different ways and come back to. The character is at a rough point in his life where he’s been trying to suppress all emotion completely – he even starts the prologue with all his hair cut off – but it’s still spilling out of him in this obvious visual way. The series is really about him learning to cultivate and cope with those feelings because they’re a part of him that can’t be separated – and don’t need to be.

CP: Some of the verses in the book are beautiful – one of my favourite pieces of text was in Volume 2 when the wisp is talking. The poetry was perfect. Are you a poet as well? How did you learn to write like that?

HC: Oh man, that’s so nice to hear. I’ve always liked really flowery prose (no pun intended) and love having the magical characters talk in that really roundabout way, almost like poetry. But I sometimes wonder if letting it into the comic too much might be a bit divisive in readers since that tone is a little different to the main story.

I’m definitely not a poet, and writing’s something I never got to study, but I guess I would say I was an author. I wrote a choose-your-own-path book (it’s actually out later this month!) and sometimes do short comics that are more like illustrated stories – in work like that I get to let that part of me run wild a bit more!

CP: Where did you get the inspiration from for your characters? I’m particularly interested in Chepi, as I feel a powerful connection to him. What was your inspiration for him?

HC: I think on some level all my characters – especially protagonists – are based on parts of myself, then invented and extrapolated to a greater or lesser degree. To me, even if the world is total fantasy, stories that are emotionally true are the ones that will connect best with other people. The characters’ emotional arcs are definitely based in experience.

I’m sure specific character elements do also get borrowed from friends or people I know as well, but very much mixed up and mostly subconsciously – it’s never one-to-one. I think that’s especially true of Janek who has a lot of character traits that are really aspirational to me. He has this enormous capacity for patience and understanding, which is something I particularly admire in a few of my friends (one of which reads the comic and, embarrassingly, totally knows).

I think I’m also influenced by fantasy characters I saw growing up that didn’t resonate with me, because it makes me want to write something different. For one thing, I read so many classic fantasy books populated entirely by thin, white, tough, straight guys, which didn’t at all reflect my friends and surroundings growing up in south London. So when I’m writing fantasy, even if it’s inevitably a bit clumsy and from my limited perspective, I do at least try to draw from a slightly broader range of cultural influences than ‘pseudo-medieval pale military men in castles fantasy’ – there are enough of those. It also makes me want to write complex queer relationships in fantasy, and even just characters with a simple premise – a regular person on a long journey who doesn’t really suit it; one of ‘the fae’ who doesn’t really fit in with the ideas from myths; character arcs that are more about personal struggle than saving the world.

CP: The third volume of Finding Home is currently gathering funds on Kickstarter. Where are the print copies available? Will there ever be a bind-up, omnibus edition? And when can I get my hands on Vol 4?

HC: Yes, it just finished up! You can still pre-order physical copies in my shop, though they won’t be posted out till after the Kickstarter. And Volume 3 will be available on ComiXology and my itch.io when it comes out in December.

I can’t imagine printing an omnibus edition myself since it’ll be about 600 pages total – only if a publisher picked it up!

I really want to do volume 4 justice – I always write the endings of my stories first, so I’ve had the end planned for years now, and I want to make sure I give myself the time to do it right. It’s also a big 200-page book, so even if I rushed and worked on it full-time flat-out, it would take a solid year at least – comics are incredibly time-consuming to make! So it won’t be for a good year or two yet – though for anyone keen, my Patreon gets updates on the rough stages and final pages as I draw them, so they’re always the first to read.

CP: Do you think, with Kickstarter LGBT, that queer people are visible enough on crowdfunding platforms? What else do you think could be done to support our community?

HC: I’m not sure, really. I honestly think a lot of people making queer comics turn to crowdfunding platforms when traditional publishing deems their projects too ‘niche’ or ‘divisive’ or ‘risky’. There are people out there making queer comics with tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers, for whom crowdfunding is still the best option in comics. You know, even Check, Please! got picked up by a publisher after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter. It’s a platform that’s really visibly showing publishers that people who want to read queer stories and pay for them are out there in their thousands. So I think it’s gradually shaping the wider industry.

CP: Why did you choose to crowdfund, instead of self-publishing via Kindle, or even seeking an agent? Is Finding Home the first project you’ve crowdfunded?

HC: (I don’t think kindle self-publishing translates to comics?)

Finding Home is serialized as a webcomic on Tapas a way behind the print books, and I do sell digital versions after the Kickstarter. But to me, the best way to read it is all at once, and the best way to tell people about it and get enough pre-order funding to afford print runs and shipping is crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is how most people I know in indie comics print their work – with places like Iron Circus paving the way for that model back in the day. Printing webcomics does feel like a thing crowdfunding is particularly useful for – when an audience has gradually been built up over the years, and the thing itself is ready, and you just need a way to connect those two things – and to build up hype around a launch.

The first project I crowdfunded was printing a book of a 240-page webcomic I drew over four years – by the end of that comic, I was so so much better at comic art and writing, at layouts, at file prep, at printing, at promoting it on social media, all that stuff. Really I learnt on the job.

There are future projects I definitely would want to be with an agent for, and it is something I’m looking, for now, I’m more established – especially because I’m disabled with a lot of mobility issues. I need carers and assistants to help with pretty much anything physical like shipping books – I can’t even go to the postbox without a wheelchair. So that makes scaling up Kickstarters actually really tough, even though it’s something I would have loved to do if health wasn’t an issue. Fulfilling them has just got more and more difficult the more popular my books have been, so although crowdfunding allows for a lot of possibilities, for me it may not be something viable in the long term.

CP: How has crowdfunding changed your life? What would you be doing without it?

HC: Damn. I really don’t know what I’d be doing without it! 

I really love making physical printed books out of my comics, and I don’t know if I could have taken the plunge without crowdfunding. Being able to move into physical books is a big contributor to comics becoming a more viable long-term career for me – which is especially important because my health means I can’t work a ‘day job’ since I’m mostly bedbound (I draw lying down in bed).

I think Kickstarters also help get a different set of people’s eyes on your work – which can be to your advantage if you’re making something you’re confident in the appeal of and just want more people to know about.

I actually wrote this choose-your-own-path book Into the Dungeon in 2018 that ended up like, 1500% funded on Kickstarter. It funded in the first couple of hours and was the most popular thing in the publishing category for ages. I was just watching the numbers tick up, half excited but also kind of scared because my illness makes packing any books up myself almost impossible. Of course, I was really pleased with the book and wanted lots of people to read it, but my health made it so hard! I was just thinking, can I hire my friends to pack books? Can I even fit 2000 books in my house?

But it was amazing getting this book to so many people, and people would tell me about playing the game with their friends or partners or buying it for a geeky parent, or even sometimes playing it with a whole class of kids or afterschool groups and getting them to draw their character and stuff. And the amount of attention helped a publisher notice the book – so now, almost two years later, it’s actually my first published book, and it’s coming out later this month.

It’s so exciting – but one of the best things about it is no longer having to post copies out myself – it’s a huge relief!

As well as occasionally leading to other opportunities more directly, Kickstarters also really helped me realise that there is genuinely an audience for the stuff I make. I’ve always been worried that writing the kind of queer fantasy I want to read wouldn’t have a wider appeal, and crowdfunding is a particularly clear way of counteracting those doubts.