Nayah Grivelli

Reading comics was a common activity for Greek artist Nayah Grivelli, to the extent it became completely natural for her to get involved with their creation. At the age of twelve Nayah created her first hand-drawn comics, and it was around this time that she got her first life simulation game, The Sims (2000). Nayah began to create illustrated stories using in-game screenshots, but it was not until the release of The Sims 2 (2004) that she found her medium. She has been creating content exclusively with this game for over a decade, including the 55-volume graphic novel Srath Farath (2016-2020), the short story Roses are dead, Violets are through (2018), and the ongoing webcomic Not my cupid (2021). The Sims 2, like its successors, is highly customisable and allows players to create custom content and import this to the game, such as objects, poses, characters and outfits, and although it has been nearly two decades since its release, players have continued to produce and share assets within The Sim community.

Nayah has tried different genres in her gamics, from fantasy adventure to romance and mystery, although all her works have in common ground a strong character development. The process of developing a character helps her with self-awareness, using the events presented on her gamics to reflect on actions and personal thoughts. Additionally, she perceives that ‘these comics are also a form of meditation in a way and creating them has a calming effect on me‘. According to Nayah, her favourite stories are the most complicated ones,

big fantasy worlds or different eras and lots of scenery are the things I love to create. But it can be time consuming, so I prefer the virtual worlds to create my detailed settings. The virtual world is easier and faster to create, doesn’t need to be created over and over again from different angles, and can be easily customised.

Nayah Grivelli

Gamic creator

Nayah begins the creative process for her stories working on character sheets and the basic storyline, which is later broken down into smaller parts in order to create the dialogue for each segment. She then works on the scripts and looks for plot holes in the stories. Once the narrative is set up, she continues with designing the characters and settings in the game. For this, she either downloads or creates the custom content she needs. Nayah uses ‘poseboxes’ and game animations to recreate the story within the game and takes the screenshots with FRAPS. As she explains:

[the] game came with its own animations [so] characters perform specific actions in the same ways. But through the years, many creators (me included) wanted to create more animations and poses for actions that were not part of the original game. For example, there is an animation box for [fighting]. An animation box and a posebox, are custom made objects that are placed in game, and when you click on them, the sim character performs a specific custom action or takes a pose. There are many themed poseboxes for the storytellers. For example, I’ve created a posebox about drinking and getting drunk, in order to use those poses in my stories.

Nayah Grivelli

Gamic creator

The images are later edited in Corel’s Painter using a Wacom graphic tablet before being placed into the comic templates. Each picture is a panel, and depending on the scene it usually takes around three or four images to make a full page. To finish, Nayah adds the speech bubbles, makes the final checks and add the last touches to the page.

Srath Farath v. 53

The Sims 2 and screenshots of it are licensed property of Electronic Arts, Inc.

Srath Farath v. 53

The Sims 2 and screenshots of it are licensed property of Electronic Arts, Inc.