Design student provides illustrations for A Hero of Our Time graphic novel

The graphic retelling of Mikhail Lermontov’s famous novel is scheduled for publishing at Moscow’s AST in April 2024 and is illustrated by Yekaterina Yakubova.

Yakubova says about her love for comic books, “I’ve been into comics since I was five years old. The first comics I read were about Disney fairies. It struck me then that it was possible to unite the drawings with a common plot. Since then I began to think up my own plots and unusual characters and realize my fantasies in drawings. As a teenager, I learned that there are a number of publishing houses in Russia that create their own line of comics, and that artists freely cooperate with them. From that moment on, I began to seriously consider a career as a comic book illustrator.”

AST employees got familiar with her work and reached her directly. “I was elated,” confesses the young artist. After submitting a test assignment, she was contracted by one of Russia’s biggest publishers.

Before finding the dream job, she had been drawing for social networks, stickers, and zines, and was a frequent contributor of thematic events.

“In four months, I had to create over 200 illustrations for the 130-page graphic novel. It was very complicated initially, and I spent much time on each page, but the process gradually became smoother. In the end, i spent only a third of the initial time on each page,” shares the interviewee.

The most difficult thing was to find several hours each day after classes and to work on weekends. “I started preparing for my work by rereading Mikhail Lermontov’s novel. After that, I made a large presentation with sketches of landscapes, locations, clothes and appearance of the characters. I devoted a separate page of the presentation to each hero of the novel, where I described his character, appearance, and clothing. Having collected a visual map, I began to create an image of each character,” she says about the process.

A graphic novel is something new for Russian classical literature, and it may not find its way to the readers easily. However, as the illustrator thinks, it may be a good medium to draw in younger audiences and those don’t read at all.

Concurrently, Yakubova works on her graduation thesis about adaptive interior design for schools for children with disabilities.

The novel is already available for preorder in bookstores.