Artist's commentary
The Class
https://chanomach.fanbox.cc/posts/1977216
From blog post:
Last year, I drew a picture of a class photo using emoticons. Among the responses I got, there was one comment that said "I thought it was a graduation photo." I thought, "Oh, graduation photo, huh? I wonder how they take those for people who couldn't attend." and the image of putting up monitors in the classroom showing everyone's individual portraits came to me. I thought, "let's give it a try." It might've been timelier to draw it in time for graduation season last year, but I was unsure about throwing something like this out there at a time when everyone's feeling anxious, so I think it was for the best that I drew it not last year or next year, but right now, but I'm not sure. I was wondering if it'd come out looking caricature-ish as I drew it, but as it went along it started looking kind of like the poster for some death game movie, so I went with that as the accompanying text for the tweet.
My initial image had the monitors laid out more cleanly. The first row would be on the floor, the second on chairs... something like that. But then I kept developing it like, "Maybe I should make them floating?" → "Then let's hang them up with some outstretched cables." → "This is gonna take a hell of a lot of cables." → "If the cables are wound around the monitor in an X that's kind of disturbing." until I ended up with the ominous look we see here. Honestly, even I caught myself going "Uwaah..." along the way, and decided to make this into a drawing that makes you go "Uwaah..." I don't regret it.
I also had the idea of making the images on the monitors be video conferences from everyone, but that would mean that everyone would be at their own house, living normally, and while I think there would be some weight to a drawing that conveys that too, I thought "No, that's not what a class photo is like", so I decided on simply having still images. The other class photo drawing from before I like quite a lot, but I really like this one too.