Story by Bulwach Sereechaiporn; Illustration by Warinlada Intrathoot
under a team name, ปีกกา (Peeka)
Received the Sci-Fi Comics Award
from Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT)’s comic contest 2014
First published in A Day Magazine,
one of the prestigious magazines for young people in Thailand
English Version
Thai Version
In Media
- Interview with Manager Online Newspaper (The article in 2010 is now preserved in Bloggang website)
"A pair of friends from different faculties of Chamchuri fence (Chulalongkorn University) won an honorable mention for the cartoon writing contest, "PTT Cormic Contest: Renewable Energy", with their 20-pages comic told in a fantasy-style story, which creatively encourages readers to conserve energy.
Congratulations to the two female students from different faculties of Chamchuri fence, "Ms. Warinlada Intrathoot", a second year student of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts and “Ms. Bulwach Sereechaiporn", a second year student from the Faculty of Arts, won a prize from the PTT Comic Contest stage, “Renewable Energy", by the Petroleum Authority of Thailand in collaboration with A Day magazine”.
The campaign aims to provide knowledge and raise awareness of the importance of renewable energy amongst young readers and the general public. Their comics was published in a special collection of short comics, released together with A Day magazine.
Warinlada and Bulwach, the two talented students, revealed that this cartoon drawing contest allows students and the general public to submit works in teams of no more than 3 people each.
The first round of competition required the applicants to submit the summary of their comics and illustration samples for finalist selection. The finalists would then attend workshops to create a real comic.
“Our cartoon is called “One”. It is 20 pages long and tells the story of one girl and one tree, in a spaceship that left the old world to find the new world all lives can live.
The highlight of this story is the combination between fantasy and sci-fi elements. At the same time, it also emphasize the importance of conserving not only energy but the nature."
This contest is an opportunity for both students to take a time off from studying, show their ability in comic production, and make friends with other participants from the contest, who are all comics fans with interestingly creative ideas."
- A Comic Review from A Day Magazine reader
I believe that very few people had a chance to read this story because ๑ (One) is one of the 10 cartoon works that won the PTT Comic Contest award, organized by PTT together with A Day Magazine for young people to submit their comics about renewable energy. 10 award-winning comics were published in a pocketbook, which is given away for free to PTT employees, most of whom don't read manga-style manga. (It's really a waste). Other copies of the book are distributed alongside A Day magazine Sept 2011 Issue. Some stories bluntly impart knowledge and read like a documentary with cartoon illustrations. However, many of the stories succeed in combining entertaining narratives with knowledge about energy seamlessly. In this book, there are works of authors that many people are perhaps familiar with, such as Mr. Mon or Miss Nam, who have many published works as well.
As I read through the middle of the book, there is a story about the battle between a five oil mill heroes and an ink hog who comes to destroy the world. I especially like this story because it's damn silly! (Smiley) I thought that this is probably the story I liked the most in the book, but after reading the last story, I changed my mind because "๑", the work of the team called Peeka (by Miss Bulwach and Miss Warinlada). In addition to creating a rich and believable world in the era of energy shortage, the story also impressively reflects the philosophy of living harmoniously with nature. It's unbelievable that it's the work of an amateur that almost no one has ever heard of in the comics world.
The comic begins with an old tale about how humans were born and helped to survive on the Earth. On the days humans were still a weak, helpless species, elder trees took pity on them and decided to provide shelter, food and weapons to mankind. To celebrate humans for becoming smart and strong, the trees gave them a gift of "fire"; and that was the beginning of all disasters. The story sets in the future, where human beings have spent too much energy that the world becomes lack of energy resources. GMO plants are injected and grown in people's stomach to generate energy for humans. Our girl protagonist also has an old tree, whom she talks and listens to the tale about the past that the tree has learned.
In the world of ๑, people use batteries instead of money (the currency is "watts"). They generate electricity and deposit it at the bank, and travel around with static and dynamic energy. People in the world that lacks energy and natural resources have a very difficult life. They curse their ancestors for not using energy wisely, causing the younger generations to venture the space desperately to find new habitable stars.
Finally, Thailand's spacecraft discovers a star with abundant resources like the planet where humans' ancestors once lived on. The people run out of the spaceship to the planet, proclaiming that they can now return to their ancestors' rich life. Holding in mind that "the strongest survives", they all are eager to hunt as many animals as they can and see no problem in squandering the planet's resources as it is "how the nature is".
To enjoy consuming again, the people take pills to kill the GMO plants in their stomach as they are no longer necessary.
However, the little girl didn't take that pill. She intends to continue living with her plants.
"The strongest survives? If we have to take advantage of our friends to survive, destroy our home planet, and have to wander alone like this, what's the point of being strong after all?”
In the end, humans return to celebrate around a bonfire; the thing that is feared by all plants. The little girl, however, tells the tree with hope that this time humans will not repeat the same mistake because, at least, they were "one" with the plants before...
PTT Comic Contest Year 2 has already set off with a new topic about bioplastics. I haven't read any comics from the event yet because this time they don't hand out the books to us employees anymore.
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