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[Music, Page turning sounds]

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My name is Aaron Gronstal, and I work for
the Astrobiology program office at NASA.

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Let's see, my background's in Geomicrobiology, I did kind of...

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start with NASA as a scientist and then kind of developed into other things.

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I've been drawing pretty much all my life. My mother is a visual artist.

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She does a lot of work in inks and watercolors.

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I was kind of just self-taught.

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I did kind of joke that like I finished my
my PhD in Geomicrobiology

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and then went back to being a 14-year old in my pajamas drawing

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[laughing] comics in my bedroom.

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Comic books were definitely kind of one of my dreams growing up.

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Astrobiology is
the study of the origins of life on Earth,

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and the potential for life
elsewhere,

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and that includes a wide range

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of different disciplines and scientists and...

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and different scientific questions and

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the graphic histories were just a good
way to kind of gather all of those

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disciplines and those individuals
together and present the content in a way

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that was more accessible to the
general public, I think.

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Like, the idea is that you should be able to

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to look at the page without any text,

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and get a story out of it.

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And you should be able to look at the text
and get a story out of it,

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and they're not necessarily,
they're telling the same thing from different angles.

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Sometimes without
even realizing it, you're digesting

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the same information in two different ways
at the same time and,

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it can be a really powerful teaching tool.

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Once the
script is all together I sit down and

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and start the actual drawing, and I work
in pencil and ink by hand.

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A lot of people work purely digitally but I do, you know, pen on paper

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up through the inking stage.

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I work first in blue pencil and then pencil on top of that,

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and then inking the pencils.

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By doing a blue pencil you can kind of get

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the sketchy outline of things to begin with.

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Then, once you scan, adjust the contrast,
and make those lines disappear so then

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you can just pull out the ink work at the end.

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And then that goes in the computer
and all the coloring takes place there.

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Once the layouts are complete, I get all the kind of digital files together,

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and those go off to the printer, and then
we start getting proofs from the printer,

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and approving the actual final product.

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It's been really nice to kind of do this and

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have people appreciate it and enjoy being in it and

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which is one one reason like we go and

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get permissions from everybody. Like, I
want the scientists to enjoy this.

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I want them to look at this and go like,
"Ahh" you know, "there I am as a cartoon!"

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and that kind of thing and it's great that 
it's gone over so well with the science community.

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One of my favorite things
with it as an outreach tool has been

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at the conferences where the scientists
are present and I encourage people that

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are picking him up like, you should go
around and get

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you know, Dave Deamer to sign
and you should get [laughs]

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I think especially for some of the young career people

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they've said that that's been actually a
really good way to like,

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go up and approach a scientists whose
work they know but they're kind of

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afraid to like go up and

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just you know
talk to Vikki Meadows even though Vikki's wonderful,

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and she's really easy to
talk to but like going up with the

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comic and saying hey can you sign,
you know, your image

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It's a talking point that doesn't necessarily

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come up in scientific fields all that often. [laughs]

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Issue seven, which was
pre-biotic chemistry and the origin of life,

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that was released at AbSciCon 2019
just this past June...

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and I immediately started work on the next one.

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We're thinking biosignatures...

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and life detection.

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The blue pencil on this is like, really messy,
but once you get down to the ink...

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like, you don't see any of the blue.

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Sometimes I start with the base image and then do kind of tracing paper over it and get the layering that way.

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Anthony Rapp came to AbSciCon 2019,

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as a keynote speaker.
Yeah, he was in Rent.

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And, I grew up gay in small town in Iowa.
Like, Rent was kind of a big thing.

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It was great to meet him in person, shake his hand, and thank him for his work.

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[Mike, off-camera] And what's that day like when you get that first printed copy,

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and you're holding it in your hand, what's that like?

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Terrifying! [laughs]

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It's always hard because you get it,

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I mean, I'm one of those people
that when I create something and...

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and I have the finished product, the first
thing I see is the things that I wish I had done different.

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Like, it takes months, sometimes longer,
for me to kind of look back,