My name is Owen Hechtman, and I’m an animator, illustrator, and storyteller studying at SAIC. As someone who grew up on cartoons and comics with memorable art styles, I ended up developing my own art style, one that’s sketchy and expressive, qualities that I feel makes it mesh well with positions like a storyboarder, rough animator, or concept artist. Having seen the impact these “silly little cartoons and comics”, as some might dismiss them, can have on people, I want to make things that can make someone’s life better, even if just through giving a slightly healthier mindset or cheering someone up after a bad day.
The Invincible Inkanto, The Invincible Inkanto Cover, 2023, made in Krita
This is the cover for a comic I made about a superhero called Inkanto, based on myself. I have several works about him, the characters around him and the world they live in, which you'll see below. Check out the full comic on my website!
Misty Day, Misty Day, 2024, made in Krita
I was inspired by the lighting of a shot from the game Silent Hill 2 for this one, and was working on this while trying to get more confident with my use of colors. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Color Experiment, Color Experiment(Week Four), 2024, Made in Krita
This was from a class all about color. Like I said, I was trying to get more confident with my use of color in general. This was just me sort of throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck, and I was surprised how well it turned out.
The Biusness, The Biusness, 2024, made in Krita
This one's a bit of an inside joke. My friends and I have a channel in our discord server called "the biusness", where we post silly stock photos of people doing "business". I based this off of one of those stock images. The quote is from my friend Katheryne, who is one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Flat Owen, Flat Owen(Marker Colored Version), 2023, made in Krita
This one was also inspired by my friends. See, a bunch of them got to meet up in person some time back, but I wasn't able to join in due to a busy schedule. So, inspired by the "Flat Stanley Project", I made Flat Owen, for my friends to print out and take pictures with. This is a variant I made to intentionally look like he was messily colored in with markers.
I like to draw. Expressions and poses are my specialty. A lot of my art is wish fulfillment for the child I used to be. I grew up watching stuff about superheroes, seeing cartoons with distinct designs and fluid animation, reading comics with stories that had fun banter, the usual. When I started drawing, I realized I could make things like that. That’s what made me realize that being an artist is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want kids to grow up watching and reading the same things I did, because I helped make those things happen.
But there’s more to it. For the last few years, I’ve been working on a story about a superhero called Inkanto. His real name is Owen. He’s me! And while some might call writing a story about yourself being a superhero childish, I think I’ve made something kind of special with it. At first, it was just “what if me and my friends were superheroes”, but then it turned into something with an original story that has a lot to say about the world, about feelings of powerlessness and hatred, about cycles of abuse, about the flaws in our legal and justice systems, about families, blood or otherwise, and so much more. And then I started realizing that I didn’t just have a lot to say, I had a lot to say about me.
I’m not someone who has a bad opinion of himself. I try to be my own hype man whenever I can. But I do struggle with insecurities, and as I came up with this story, I realized that I was discussing these insecurities through this fictionalized version of myself. I had actually leaned into it unconsciously. Several of the threats Inkanto faces are literal parallels of himself. So I leaned into it further. I made these doppelgangers represent some of those insecurities. Social struggles, general feelings of inadequacy, anger issues. Through fighting these threats, Inkant!Owen, as I’ve come to call him to distinguish him from the real Owen, comes to accept these parts of himself. He reaches out to these mirrors of himself and offers them a hand, and they become new friends. In the case of the anger issues, represented by a monster, he accepts that his struggles will always be part of him. Even if the monster dies, it will always live on in some way within him. But that’s okay, because he knows who he is, and he knows how to live with those struggles. And as he grows and accepts parts of himself, so do I. Some might call it a cheesy self-insert superhero story, but I say cringe culture is dead. What I have here is meaningful. Not just for me, but for any other person who might come across this story and have similar feelings about themselves.
I once saw a post on a website talking about the comic All-Star Superman. In this comic, Superman stops a girl from jumping off of a building and tells her that she’s much stronger than she thinks. The poster mentioned that they happened upon this comic by chance at a time when they were planning to take their own life, but decided not to because of that comic. That’s why I’m doing this. These stories can make real change in the world. They can reach struggling people and help them. Just through words and images, they can have monumental impacts. They can genuinely save lives. If I can do even a fraction of that with my stories, then what I do matters. Beyond the chance of widespread popularity or financial gain, it matters. Not to say I should only consider my art meaningful if it literally saves lives, because that’s an extremely unreasonable standard to expect of myself, but that I’ll keep making these stories, and hope that they might manage to reach someone who needs to hear what they have to say. If, through making these stories, I manage to make someone’s life better, even by just a little bit, then I have succeeded. And hopefully, one day I’ll be able to come back to this and say “I did it”.