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creatingblackcharacters · 1 month

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"It takes HOW LONG?" Black Hair is an Art (pt.2)

(This is part two of the hair lessons, focusing on writing/narratives. If you want to know how the styles LOOK, refer to part 1 and its addendum)

Now that you know what our hair actually looks like, we’re going to discuss incorporating that into your writing (original fic, fanfic, webcomics, anything with a narrative). You don’t HAVE to give us a dissertation on "how you studied 'The Black People’s Hair'" in your story. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to CONSIDER the effort and existence of it. The same way you put effort into discussing nonblack hair textures? Should be the sort of tenderness and care you put into discussing ours. It does not stand to reason that I have read thousands of stories describing "the silky, black/blonde tresses/waves that fell down their pale back as their lover ran their fingers through them", but Black readers have nothing of the sort to compare to without seeking our own authors out. Our hair deserves some loving and adoration too!

This is a very long post describing hairstyles and how they can correspond to your character's design and decisions, so I'll put a read more here. The sections are organized into 'Twist Out', 'Afros', 'Locs', 'Braids', 'Black Men', and 'Straight Hair' if you Ctrl F. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time to read all of this at some point though, as I put a lot of resources and explanation into this. I'm trusting you!

The History

As I discussed in the last lesson, our hair is incredibly important to us, and part of that includes the vulnerability and trust that comes along with access to it. This is due to a long history of oppression. There’s a racist history of making Black women hide our hair, as if it would ‘tempt white men’ away, regardless of it were due to actual attraction or the (more likely) rape of Black women. There’s a racist history of touching our hair, as though we are animals or zoo exhibits. We aren’t just going to let anyone touch our heads, so DON'T write that, unless you are doing so to show that it is a microaggression towards your character. Even now, cultural appropriation is rampant. If I were to wear cornrows with hoops, it'd be seen as 'ghetto' or 'gang-like'. Meanwhile, it is a fashion statement for white women. When Miles G Morales showed up in Across the Spiderverse, animators specifically chose cornrows for him, but many people mistakenly took it to me that he was 'rougher and tougher' than the original Miles. This was a racist perception! Hearing the Fade get hyped up in the news as the 'Travis Kelce', when Black men and especially NFL players have been wearing it for DECADES to crickets... it hurts lmao. Point is, you can describe and respect Black hair without being racist about it. Okay? Okay.

Vulnerability

YOUR CHARACTERS NEED TO BE CLOSE BEFORE ALLOWING THEM TO TOUCH THEIR HAIR!!!

It needs to be someone they TRUST wholeheartedly. Again, do NOT let a stranger touch their hair unless it’s meant to be an uncomfortable situation!

Consider CONSENT! Consent is ALWAYS beautiful! Have your other characters (Black or not) ASK to touch your Black characters’ hair! And not in the ‘Oh can I touch it?’ way. But if they’re really close friends or dating, have them ask to help do their braids, or wash their hair, or even just to stroke their hair and face! Or if your Black character is injured with a head wound, and they have to tend to them, have them ask! The asking shows a level of care and respect for your Black character and their body! At any point the consent may be revoked, and that needs to be respected! If they let them tend their head wound, but then smack their hand away after, that’s not ‘rude’- they’re allowed to do that, especially to signify that they aren’t at that level of trust yet. That's still angsty!

One great example of love from a Black character is doing their partner’s hair, or allowing their partner to do their hair. The ‘Hair-washing’ fic is a common thing in fanfiction; we all understand how that shows the depth of the trust in the relationship between the characters. How would you write about that trust with a Black character, if you don’t know what goes into taking care of their hair? If you don’t even know what their hair looks or feels like? The lack of awareness will show, and what should be a beautiful, deep moment will fall flat for Black readers. I wrote one once for my character with locs, and it honestly made me tear up because I realized that I’d never seen one, at least not in the majority white spaces that the fandoms I was in were.

Think about it- how often have you read a hair-washing fic with a Black character? Was it accurate? Would you know if it was accurate? Have you spoken to or heard anyone Black in your fandom space talk about it? Do you know anyone Black in your fandom space to ask? It’s things like this that we have to consider!

If you have a character that is nonblack in a relationship with your Black character, that honestly reveals even more trust because there’s a long history (again) behind that NOT happening! In life, we can’t go to the same places. I can’t go to a white hair salon or barbershop. They won’t know what to do! People are allowed to go through hair school without learning how to work with different, thicker textures. It’s not right nor fair, but it’s a part of the casual, systemic racism in our lives.

My feelings on what Lestat symbolizes aside, the scene where he plays with Louis’ curls in AMC's IWTV was an intelligent way to show that closeness, and how a nonblack character would affectionately play with a Black character’s hair! How he works with the curl in his fingers, rather than trying to pet Louis or run his fingers through- it was an intelligent move on Sam and Jacob’s part as actors to understand that THAT’S how that would go down!

If you have a character that wants to show a violation of your Black characters’ space, touching/harming our hair is cruelty on a very personal level that will generate an extreme reaction.

Think About Your Character!

When thinking about your Black character’s hairstyle, you need to think about your character themselves! What do they do every day? What are their hobbies? Are they Type A, Type B personality? Do they have a lot of time? Are they always in a rush? Are they noncommittal? Are they self-conscious? Artsy? Serious? Are they in a time period where the means to care for their hair are limited?

People make jokes and comments about how Black women don’t like getting our hair wet and dismiss our concerns. But it’s not out of ‘silliness’ or vanity. What you consider ‘just hair’ may have taken days of planning in advance and HOURS of our time! We put a lot of thought and effort into our hair, and it will easily shatter the illusion for your Black readers if you describe our hair poorly or create an unlikely scenario with it. It’s not a joke!

Some Terms:

Protective styles- a style that allows our hair to ‘rest’ with minimal manipulation

‘Tender-headed’- some people’s scalps are more sensitive to the tightness of styles, so it’ll hurt a little bit more and require some more gentleness (Regardless it’s still going to hurt for a bit after a fresh style)

Bonnets- a silk/satin cap of varying lengths that we wear at night to protect our hair and keep the moisture in

Loc Sock- same idea, but for locs

Durag- keeps short haircuts protected; can even help create the wave pattern that many Black men enjoy

Scarf- same idea as the bonnets, except scarfs can be used specifically for straight hairstyles to wrap them up to keep it straight and neat

(It'll seem real legit if you include your Black characters wearing their headcoverings at night! I remember laughing while reading Twilight because I knew that if Edward snuck into my room at night, he'd see me in my scarf or bonnet lmao.)

General Hair Care:

While I don’t completely agree with some of the advertising in this first one (it’s the internet. Can’t go nowhere without someone trying to hawk something) it’s cool in general to explain how our hair looks the way it does.

If you have Black children OCs, it’s important to consider that their parents have to do their hair, and how that will be its own experience! (It can be very stressful for Black children to get their hair done, as it takes a long time and can be physically uncomfortable. There are plenty of stories of burnt ears and tugged tangles and not very nice old women. Children are children! Keep in mind how they may behave while getting the style of your choice.

Moisturizing to keep healthy

Twist Outs

Cute twist out styles

Twist outs are a style that takes overnight to hold, or maybe even a few days! The cool thing is that the twists themselves can be the style! So the tighter you want their curls to be, the longer they’ll wear the twists in. If you want to describe your character with tighter curls, there needs to be a section of time where their hair remains in the twists! If your character has an event, and they want twists… this needs to be done in advance. Your character will NOT untwist them the day of, unless they want weak, limp curls (or you want the scene to compose of them having weak curls).

How long they'll last depends on the activity of your character! If all they do is work a desk job, or they don’t sweat very much, the twists can last some time! But if they sweat, or wear hats or caps, it’s not going to last long. Maybe a week.

Pros: Very versatile! If you have a character that loves trying new looks and enjoy being spontaneous, twist outs are for them! Easy! If your Black character is younger, or haven’t done their hair before, this is a great way for them to start working with their hair! Doesn’t take long (to do)! If your character is in a rush, and they do their twists, they can go just about anywhere. If they’re not self-conscious, this will be just fine.

Cons: It cannot get wet again, or the style will puff up back into your natural texture. It does not last long enough to say “oh my character went on a two year long fantasy adventure with this style.” If you want your character to have a twist out the whole time, they’re going to have to take time to do it. It would be cool if you incorporate a scene where they’re working on their hair, maybe in the background while everyone’s discussing plans or something. Just a reminder that their hair isn’t just staying magically twisted (unless they have the magic to do that).

Afros

Afro Style Guide, Style Guide for Men (works for any gender though)

Wash & Gos are just that- wash it (or really, condition it, you don’t have to shampoo it every time) dry with a t-shirt (to prevent breakage), put some oil and a light crème on it, fluff it up and you’re good to go! Maybe an hour at max and can be done while getting dressed in the morning!

Pros: Easy! If they’re doing a full, combed out afro, it’s not as simple, it will take more time. And at night it has to be plaited so that it maintains its length, otherwise it will tangle. But other than that, that’s still not all that hard. They can show off their curls! Black characters can and should have pride in their hair. It’s beautiful. This is the opportunity that you as an author can describe the pure texture of their hair, how it shines in the light, how the coils look, how soft it is! Romanticize Black hair the same way you do anyone else’s!

Cons: None really! Afros are wonderful! Just make sure that your character has a way to keep their hair from getting tangled. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean there’s no maintenance! A pick, a bonnet, oil and water go a long way!

Locs

Five stages of locs

A person who does locs is a loctician.

Can be palm-rolled or interlocked/crocheted

I cannot emphasize enough that you do not want just anyone doing their locs! They can really mess up someone’s hair if they don’t know what they’re doing. I say that to say, for your character, if they don’t trust the person doing their hair… they should. They should not be walking into anyone’s place to get their hair locked; they’d do research first.

The time it takes locs to ‘bud’ (that is, to actually form the loc) depends on the texture of their hair. But it can take up to 3 months to even a year for them to actually ‘loc up’. So if your character just got locs, they’re not going to look neat. They’re going to be frizzy.

As long as they’re washing their hair, keeping it moisturized, and not using wax products (DO NOT HAVE ANY BLACK CHARACTER USE WAX PRODUCTS IT IS BAD FOR BLACK HAIR) it’ll last forever! Locs are incredibly strong, especially the thicker they get! It is recommended that locs are retwisted every six weeks, but if your character has freeform locs, doesn’t have the money or time right now, or they just aren’t that pressed, they can grow indefinitely.

Something cute to write in your stories: sometimes locs do just… fall out. Not the whole thing! But the same way thin hair gets everywhere… sometimes the ends of thin locs just… fall off! You’ll find little buds on the ground. This happens especially in the budding stage.

Pros: Very low daily maintenance! At most they’ll need a bonnet or loc sock, and oil/water mix to spritz and massage in. Strong style that can hold any look- buns, curls, etc. They can be dyed, though it will take a long time to do so. I say that to say, if you want your character to have bright green locs, go for it!!

Cons: Low daily, but HIGH wash day maintenance! So if your character has a fancy date or something to go on, they should not be getting their hair retwisted the same day, or at least not so close to. It’s going to be shiny, oily, and tight, which can cause discomfort. Give them the day to let the hair settle!

Locs are PERMANENT!! This isn’t a bad thing, as much as it is a ‘KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT’ thing. Technically they can be combed out, but that would take a very long time and very precise effort, and most people aren’t going through all that. They’re just going to cut them off and start fresh. If you have a character that would balk at such a choice, locs aren’t for them. If you have a character that’s picky and choosy, that likes versatility, that can’t make up their mind, do NOT give them locs unless they’re making the conscious choice to commit. (Again, this is subjective! Maybe they have locs because their mother died and it reminds them of her! Okay! That works!) If you have a character that’s vain, or at least doesn’t like looking awkward… unless they’re going to style up the awkward stage, they’re not going to want locs. (Awkward stage: the first two stages get considered awkward because the locs look messy. This is because they’re turning from curls to locs!)

Braids

Styles

How long braids can take depend on the style. Box braids can take 10-12 hours to do! Microbraids? You HAVE to have multiple people or you'll be there for damn near a day (and that's assuming you have a masterful braider!)

How long they last depend on your character! If they're like me as a kid, I didn't care how I looked, so my mom got me cheap braids and let me run free for two summer months. So if your Black character is a carefree child! Go for it. But if they're a teen or adult (or are very concerned about how they look) a month to six weeks is about how long braids can stay in before your new growth shows. A character that is usually trimmed and proper having loads of new growth over their braids may symbolize that they don’t have it all together anymore.

Pros: Protective style! Great way to let your character have minimal daily maintenance; oil and water and something to cover it. SOME braided styles allow for high activity and even rain without changing. It depends on the hair that’s been braided in, as well as the style. Incredibly versatile! They can have multi-colored braids, long braids, short braids, beads, trinkets… if your character is creative and bubbly and likes to experiment, the sky is the limit! That can symbolize their artistic expression, just by describing what they look like! So long as they have the time, they can have any look and style they want. No need to commit too long.

If your character is capable of doing their own braids (and locs, btw), they’re amazing. Like… that’s mad respect for them. If you describe your character being able to do their own braids, they’ve got amazing arm strength, patience, and skill. That skilled dexterity can be revealed as a trait of theirs through that alone.

Cons: They take a LONG TIME. Your character is not going anywhere. If they’re getting braids… they’re not going anywhere. If you write your character doing anything fancy the day of, depending on the type of braids, Black readers are not going to believe you. Even if it did get finished, it would be very tight. I currently have a poll going on, and so far, a good majority of the 10+ answers are braids! It cost MONEY. It is NOT CHEAP to get braids done! If your character is poor as a church mouse, they will be doing those braids with their friend in front of youtube. Because it can be in the hundreds of dollars. (Don’t get me started on hair culture right now; BACK IN MY DAY IT COST-)

Hairstyles on Black Men

I want to specifically give space and applause to these hairstyles on Black men, because we REALLY don’t give Black men enough credit for all the creativity they show with their hair! And again, with The Killmonger being the choice style in all these damn vidya games despite almost no Black man I know choosing it as a look… PLEASE LOOK! WE HAVE OPTIONS! Try describing how gorgeous these looks can be on your Black men characters! It would be very nice.

Straight Hair

Well, I was going to explain, but ol ‘Guest Writer’ here pretty much lays it all out! So just go ahead and read this article lol.

Just to re-emphasize, straight hair is NOT something that just grows out of our head that way! It takes effort! So if you have a character that doesn’t feel like maintaining straight hair, they shouldn’t have it! If your character has natural hair and lives in a rainy or humid city, they’re going to be fighting that weather to keep it straight- make sure that’s consistent with their personality!

My best friend used to wash and flatiron her hair every day. Like, laser focused on looking that good, Type A shit (she’s a top money banker now, so I guess it worked out). If you have a character like that, it’s fine! If they’re lazy any other time of the day, they’re not suddenly going to be waking up at 5am to flat iron their hair. It’s not consistent.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much what I have! I’m not the guru on all things Black hair, and I obviously cannot encompass every potential scenario you may have for your characters. Really, my intention here is to get you to think about how our hair reflects our character and personalities, and how when you write and/or draw a Black character, you have that ability! And when you’re able to incorporate that naturally, it makes your Black readers feel seen, like you actually cared about that character enough to give them just as much description as your nonblack characters. You don’t have to be a master at it! Just… occasionally the little things that we can go ‘oh, yeah!’ at would be nice. An equivalent effort would be nice.

Remember, it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

#creatingblackcharacters #black hair #black art #black characters #character design #black writers

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xamag-draws · 6 days

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BBR thoughts 2024

Since I mentioned that I finally dusted off an old project of mine and was ruminating on how I'd remake it, I thought I'd elaborate a little, now that I've solidified some concepts. For funsies

This is gonna be a bit of a long and unfocused one, but I don't share my personal thoughts here often, especially the stuff about my projects I always marinate in. And for once it's something that people have existing context for, so hey why not

So for anyone who hasn't been following me for a gajillion years, The Black Brick Road of OZ was a webcomic that I posted around 2013-2015, back when I was in highschool going on college (which is kinda crazy to think about). It was sort of a darker twist on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, although I definitely leaned a lot more into dark humor more than anything in those first few chapters

I don't think it's available to read anywhere anymore, and I know people have been asking me about it. So here's the full proper archive of BBR, as full as it can be with deceased Flash

I totally used it as an excuse to shamelessly and self-indulgently experiment. It had interactive pages and GIFs and was wayyy too overproduced for what I could handle or what was necessary, but I did have great fun making it while it lasted

Unfortunately, that excess and the fact that I've changed too much as a person by the time I was in college is what ultimately killed it. The direction I wanted to go in was practically unrecognizable from the original idea started back in 2011, so there were many old hold-ups that I felt ruined it

At the time I kinda wished I could start/rewrite it all over, but considering that I pretty much had the entire script done at that point, it felt like a pointless sisyphean task. So I just put it on a shelf and didn't look back for about 8 years, because I didn't know what else to do

Now to be fair, the nature of my art has always been iterative and cyclical; when I feel like my creative juices have run dry I prefer to leave a project to marinate and move on to something else; cycle through other old things and bring in new skills and perspectives into the mix when I'm ready again. Not very productive, but it is what makes me happy to work on my OCs; I'm doomed to hit a wall with them eventually and I need some time to be able to find a new direction

So that said, I'm glad that BBR was left to marinate for that long. I don't think I was prepared, emotionally or intellectually, to tackle it again until now. The Wizard of Oz book (and the entire series of them, really) has always been near and dear to my heart, but there's a lot of context around it that I'm only unpacking now that I'm older

I think I always inherently feel negatively about the stuff I've made in the past, like its faults always jump out to me more than the positives, especially the more time passes. I've never liked that, and I do really appreciate the kind things people have to say about BBR to this day. The fact that it still can be recognized and remembered is very sweet

When I left it, I already found it "kinda cringe", and that feeling only deepened with years. When I took my first look back at it, asking the question "how would I rewrite it now?", at first I took a very cynical approach, as in "everything would have to be torn down"

But the more I sat on it, the more I found that I still see some merit and charm in the ideas I was putting out; I just didn't know how to execute them at the time (not to pretend that I know what I'm doing now, but I certainly know more at least). Turns out a lot of my old concepts could be changed substantially with just a few small tweaks. So I'd say that's a nicer way to think about my previous work

If you haven't seen yet, I posted a first draft of my new designs for some of the characters (the main group, the Goods and the Wickeds). Definitely subject to change, but more or less how I see them now

I'm just playing with these concepts; by no means would I attempt to remake BBR right this moment. Call it a pipe dream among my other ones. But just for fun, this is the direction I'd like to take:

Nowadays I'd probably make it a visual novel, with more emphasis on the visual part than the novel because I'm no English prose writer by any means. It'd still let me play a little with the interactivity while helping cut some corners on the drawing part (only some, I imagine I'd go hog wild anyway)

I've always intended for some events inspired by the sequel books to take place in BBR's past. Stuff like Jinjur's revolt or Ozma's rule preceeds the main events here. So I think it would be fun to follow the past of a few key characters alongside the main story. One chapter focusing on the present quest to see the Wizard, then one focusing on the past events (that are maybe reflective thematically); rinse and repeat

I'm also sticking a little closer to the original text in some regards. Not everything that I enjoy from the books would be translated here, it's still just a very loose fantasy on the material; but I'd like to be closer in spirit at least

I like mature, wise and powerful Glinda, I like kind and vulnerable Tin Man, I like the Wizard being a pathetic yet loveable liar, so I'm sprinkling in more of that for example

I'd like to keep some whimsy, but make it more grounded and a bit more serious to be coherent in tone. I think the original TWWOOZ book was a more realistic fantasy in some ways, even for the standards of the time; I like its simple but vivid tactile descriptions and details like bringing attention that Dorothy needed to eat and sleep

I find it funny that Baum specifically was averse to making his books scary or unpleasant, finding that unnecessary for telling a compelling kids story, but they still can get pretty dark and disturbing, at least for our modern sensibilities. Let's just say that I intend to use the Evoldo and Chopfyt storylines for my purposes. In that way, I feel like a "darker" Wizard of Oz retelling can still mostly be tonally in line with the original and balance it with enough heart and occasional humor

I slowly grew to appreciate the quaint old-timey quality of the original series, as well. The first book is both timeless and very much a product of the 1900s. Originally I tried to give it a little modern or at least anachronistic spin, but it was moreso because it's what I knew best, so these days I'd rather intentionally lean into the time period. Still not fully historically accurate by any means, but at least directly acknowledging the influence

The events of the story span across 40 years of these characters' lives, so I'm drawing inspiration from the entire so-called La Belle Epoque: the time period around 1880s-1920s. Basically I'm cooking, and my soup is old Victorian fashion morphing into Edwardian fashion and slowly inching towards flappers

Some new Dolly outfits

Lots of crazy things, political changes and innovations were happening at the turn of the century, which I think is noted and reflected by Baum in the books as well; the character of Tik-Tok might not blow any minds now, but he was one of the first robot characters in literature at that point; and don't even get me started on Jinjur, etc. Plenty of really interesting stuff one could lightly ponder in an Oz adaptation these days

Aesthetically, art nouveau has always been a big artistic influence for me, and it'd definitely be its time to shine here. John R. Neill's illustrations of the Oz books often keep me company as well. Nouveau architecture in particular fits that fairytale whimsy extremely well imo

I'd allow myself a little bit of art deco here and there, but ultimately its intimidating geometrical splendor is an antithetical to the flowery nature of nouveau and I associate it with a completely different era. Definitely fitting some characters like my Wicked Witch of the West, but shouldn't be overused

One of my main problems with the original BBR was that eventually I lost track of what it was even about; and the original ending felt too mean and unfulfilling to be worth it. Now I'd like to stick to the theme of home and family as my main theme, but in a different, more bittersweet way than in the book

An interesting connection I made is that a lot of my aforementioned older key characters (the Witches, Jinjur, the Nome King, etc) all came from the same reformatory as kids, that's how they know each other. In my recent research I learned that in those reformatories it was usually frowned upon to release the children back to the families, which were seen as the original corrupting influence regardless of the circumstance. The reformatory did everything in its power to cut that connection and make itself the only family those wayward kids were supposed to know and love. That's an unexpected tie into the theme of home that I'd like to explore as well

So yeah that's the current state of it. I have a bunch of outfit concepts I'm slowly cooking, although I'm now sure whether I'd post them... But I do miss these funny guys, and I'm glad some people still do as well :)

#my art #xam rambles #the black brick road of oz #long post #ohsees tag

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shinesurge · 3 months

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Webcomic rings run by people within the community are cool and you should support them

I've been loudly struggling a little bit with corporate webcomic Stuff lately so I want to mention something positive to balance it out: webrings run by small groups of creators earnestly trying to support each other are slowly making a comeback and I for one am delighted.

If you weren't around for them in the before times, webrings were just some folks who hang out a lot who feature each other on their websites. That's literally it lmao. There's generally no money involved and it only really functions the way it's supposed to if people have control over their own websites AND genuinely want to participate and get excited about other folks' work, which means the practice has pretty well fallen by the wayside over the years in webcomic culture given. Everything. In the rare event someone decides to do something like this it's usually in the form of a link list somewhere on their website; this doesn't usually indicate any sort of mutual support, it's just a list of what the creator is reading themselves.

A webring, though, is an official banner or hub that people gather under intentionally where each member is more or less on equal footing. It's essentially the concept of "a rising tide lifts all boats" put into practice, each creator brings their own audience to the table in a passive, opt-in sort of way that's different from working for a publisher since there isn't necessarily a Top Spot or a paycheck everyone's vying for, and individuals retain autonomy over both their own work and how (if) they promote each other. You're all at your own tables in an artist alley rather than fighting over the table in the front of the book store, essentially.

I have two rings and one collective for you today!

Webcomic Ring was brought to my attention AGES ago by Holly, one of the artists featured there, and I might have brought it up at some point but I'm doing it again lmao. This is exactly the kind of thing you ought to be looking for; a small group of enthusiastic folks having a good time making their weird little comics. You probably haven't heard of much in the catalog, that's PERFECT in the context of webcomics that's where the GOOD SHIT is. Finding something like this is A Gift go dig around in the longboxes for a while.

Then a few people have pointed me in the direction of the KNIFEBEETLE collective and that's neat too! Most of the comics there are already fairly well-known, but the vibes are excellent and I haven't seen a lot of talk about the collective /itself/ outside folks already in the know. I think it's important for this sort of thing to be more visible to folks who aren't terminally steeped in webcomic culture already so here I am telling you about it. You were probably reading several of these before I suggested it, but that's how a webring works! For it to do its job you should take those bigger creators' tacit recommendation of the less popular titles as a sign to go read something new and strange. Wild, I know these are practices held over from the old internet, but I think we should try and bring them back.

Lastly, I want to mention Spiderforest, which is a collective (slightly different from a webring) BUT still a very cool project readers starved for new stuff should pay attention to.

You've probably seen Spiderforest kicking around for a long time already; they're wonderful and have always been an overall positive force in the community in my experience. They really focus on building up a community, and especially welcoming newcomers and helping them get their feet under them. Full disclosure, I've been asked to apply by a few different folks over the years and the only reason I never did is I don't have the ability to participate in their forums and such as frequently as they want their creators to; it's a very good system (from my outside perspective) that might contribute to the community staying mostly healthy in ways that art communities usually don't and I appreciate it a lot!

ANYWAYS that's all I got for now, just trying to balance out some bad feelings I've been having by talking about some good stuff. Please go binge an archive this week.

#long post #contrary to what i say i do love webcomics so fucking much #there are Reasons i'm fucking angry all the time lmao

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midnightechoes · 5 months

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Five years ago today, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered on Netflix. I had seen a few preview articles about it, and liked what I saw. Those articles mostly focused on She-Ra’s, Adora’s, Glimmer’s, Bow’s, and Catra’s redesigns, and I thought they were fabulous. I loved Adora’s new red jacket and bouffant hair style. Glimmer’s entire redesign was inspired, and I loved that they made Bow black so we could have more diversity in the main cast.

It was She-Ra’s and Catra’s redesigns that caught my eyes the most, though. They made Catra an actual catgirl, and not just in the anime sense where she's just a cute girl with cat ears and maybe a cat tail. She was a full-on furry. It was a brilliant design choice. Honestly it’s no wonder that so many were instantly drawn to her.

And of course, She-Ra herself. I loved her new look, and her huge ass new Sword of Protection. In fact, I loved it so much that I drew this picture of her before the show even came out:

Then the show came out, and needless to say, I fell in love. And honestly, it changed my life.

I know, I know. That sounds very hyperbolic, and to an extent it is, but in a lot of ways, I’m absolutely serious.

Alright, I have to back up a little. Back when I was in college, and for a few years after, a couple of friends and I tried to make a webcomic called The Devil’s Gate. It was minorly successful but eventually floundered. Then I met some people and we tried to make a video game, which also failed. After those few years, I found myself on my own and trying to rework the concept of my webcomic. Making comics, creating stories, those have always been my dream, and I was desperately trying to figure out a story I could make work, something that I believed in. But it never truly got off the ground. By the end of 2015 I had given up on the comic, realizing that after working on it for years in different forms that I needed to step away from it.

I didn’t really know what to do after that. I was still doing my quick daily doodles, but I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t drawing anything of note. I felt emotionally and physically drained of my creativity. I was honestly getting to the point where I thought it might be time for me to give up on trying to be creative or making things all together.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power came out on November 13, 2018, but despite looking forward to it, I didn’t actually watch it when it came out. It wasn’t until that weekend that I decided to check it out.

I was instantly hooked. I binged through the entire season in two days, and did plenty of crying and cheering. And then rewatched it immediately. I was in love. I was obsessed. It had been a long time since anything grabbed me like SPOP did. I loved the characters. I loved the colorful, sci-fi-fairy tale world of Etheria. I loved how unapologetically feminine it was. And most of all, I loved how queer it was.

I hadn’t done a ton of shipping before SPOP. I’ve been down bad for harlivy for what feels like my whole life, and I was angry when Mika and HG didn’t get together in Warehouse 13, but more often than not I had just been conditioned not to look for queer things in mainstream culture, and even barely in subculture.

That is to say, when I was smashed in the face with Catradora I was surprised how much I glommed onto it immediately. I was absolutely taken with Adora and Catra and their relationship. Both characters were so relatable, and despite not quite being text (although the subtext was so loud and obvious it might as well have been text), it was impossible to not read their feelings for each other as romantic.

It wasn’t just Catradora, even if that was a lot of it. Spinnerella and Netossa being canon from the start was wonderful. How much Glimmer and Bow screamed “BISEXUAL DISASTERS” from the start was adorable. Scorpia’s crush on Catra was as cute as it was sad in its one-sidedness.

I had never really been in a fandom. That is, yeah I’ve liked things, loved things even, but I never found other people to talk about it at length, never found discords just for that thing, never read or wrote fanfic, barely ever drew fanart.

But, I watched SPOP, and then I watched it again. And then I drew Catra. And then I drew Adora. And then I drew them again. And suddenly I was on AO3, a site I never frequented, reading Catradora fics. And then I had an AO3 account. That December I participated in Catradora Week 2018 (I’d never heard of this kind of thing) and drew two pictures for it and wrote my first fanfic.

By the end of February I had drawn more in the three months since the show had premiered than I had in the previous year. I was working furiously on a long, multi-chapter fanfic, and writing more words than I had in the previous couple of years combined.

I was inspired again.

In the 18 months that SPOP ran for, I drew more than I had in years, I wrote hundreds of thousands of words. I felt so rejuvenated and happy about my creativity and free for the first time in years.

It’s hard to put into words exactly how it felt. I was so close to giving up my art and writing, which honestly, would have been giving up a part of myself. An important part of myself. It’s not overstating that SPOP saved me, or at least my creative spirit.

I also learned about the wonders of being in a fandom and fandom things like fan weeks, big bangs, zines. And I made some wonderful friends that I cherish to this day.

Even as I inevitably moved onto other hyperfixations, my love for She-Ra hasn’t diminished. Plushie Catra and Adora sit next to me on my desk every day. Catradora art still hangs on my wall.

The inspiration that SPOP ignited in me hasn’t died either. It’s carried me through a tremendous level of creativity that I’ve been riding since the premiere. It let me create a ton of fan art for SPOP, and then RWBY and then the Witch From Mercury, and I’ve written a ton of fanfics for RWBY and Supergirl. And perhaps the best, that inspiration has helped me create more OC stuff in the last couple years than I had in a long time.

I owe She-Ra and The Princesses of Power so much. I am so happy that it exists and that it happened when it did. I’ll always cherish it.

And for real, Netflix, SPOP spin-off movies WHEN?!

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bogkeep · 10 days

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Would you recommend the SSSS comic? I know little of it beside the very beautiful artstyle and premise

to answer the question of if i would recommend SSSS as a comic: yes, yes i would.

a description for those who don't know: Stand Still Stay Silent is a post-apocalyptic horror + adventure webcomic set in the nordics (norway, sweden, denmark, finland, iceland) that have been isolated from the rest of the world and gone back to their old gods. the the world outside of safe zones is full of trolls and beasts - humans and mammals that got infected by a horrible virus and turned into monsters. the story follows a ragtag crew that ventures into the old world (derelict denmark) on an expedition to collect books.

the comic updated every workday until it concluded in 2022, and consists of two Adventures. the creator had plans for many adventures with these characters in this world, but ended it after two when she wanted to take a new direction with her life.

what i love about it:

- the art is GORGEOUS. it's been a huge source of inspiration for me. open any page and it's a masterpiece, and you will ask yourself "how the FUCK did she update this FIVE DAYS A WEEK"

- the characters are wonderful and endearing. i just, i love them so much. i am so thankful lalli hotakainen exists he is one of my #1 blorbos forever

- the world is so cool. the blend of chunky sci-fi and norse mythology fantasy magic slaps. it goes so hard. i fell so hard for this comic when i got to the big ferry ship with a viking style dragon head prow added to it. it's everything

- it really really gets nordic cultures. it's difficult to explain all the dynamics and nuances but it just gets it. it brings me as a scandinavian a lot of joy to read a story that speaks to my heart this way. the attitudes, the language barriers, the cultural differences... it was so refreshing to me in a media landscape dominated by american stories. when the pandemic hit, i decided to reread the comic because i found such an odd comfort in seeing how it depicted the scandinavian countries reacting to, well, a pandemic.

- there's kittycats

what i don't like about it:

- the most glaring and obvious flaw is that everyone in the comic is white. there's not a single character of color anywhere, not even i background shots or the prologue. there's no mention of the saami people (the indigenous people of northern europe), either. i believe this was done in ignorance more than malicious intent, but the implications are Extremely Bad and it's been bothering me (AND MANY OTHERS) since day 1. that is the number one caveat i will give to anyone wanting to check this comic out. i've been in the discourse trenches and i am not going to excuse this. it's just bad!

- you can tell in the middle of adventure 2 that the creator has kind of lost interest in the work, around the time when she found jesus i guess. like, very few people can keep up work on the same creative project for years and years and years and i think it's fine that she wanted to drop it, but it's a bit sad to see the comic dragged to its end like a limp corpse, and feeling like the creator no longer really cares about the characters.

- minna sundberg has said and done some questionable things, presumably gotten somewhat radicalised over time, and has also converted to hardcore christianity which is what her new works are about. there's nothing about this in SSSS - there is a moment of christianity represented in the story in a sort of mythological sense, just like the other religions, but this was written before minna's conversion. her new works... are a Choice. i have much to say about them, and i have, and im not gonna rehash it now.

SO YEAH hopefully this will help you take an Informed Choice! i got into this comic in 2015 and was deep in the fandom and it's for better or for worse part of my soul foundation now.

i also recommend A Redtail's Dream, minna's "practice comic" before SSSS, based on finnish mythology and the kalevala.

#stand still stay silent #might as well tag this if i wanna dig it up later

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feathernotes · 5 months

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BACKGROUNDS IN WEBCOMICS

I want to talk about sustainability in your work process, featuring our fave: Backgrounds. How to simplify, convey, and deliver in comics! (examples include Phantomarine, Wychwood, Shaderunners and Ghost Junk Sickness) The usual suspect to burnout is often the workload involved. Many ppl who FULL HAM on pages that def need a detail cut for many reasons Main one being: You don’t need excessive detail to tell whats happening in a small panel, in fact, less is better. When you observe a page in its entirety, where does the eye travel? Where does the eye stop? Having a fully rendered BG in multiple panels can actually be a huge distraction, on top of the time it takes to get there. So how do you balance?

In Phantomarine, the most detailed panel is the establishing one, it holds our characters and allows readers to understand the positions they're all in/standing at. Its one panel that provides a specific telling detail: the railings behind Phae indicate we're on the boat.

In the bottom left panel,the artist uses the railings again, but doesnt have to render the lights, floor boards, or sea to show where we were, then uses the colours of said BG and mood to paint the rest of the page. This is where colours/gradients and small objects save the day! The same example is here, just flipped. The establishing shot shares DETAILS that you need to show the readers where we are, then the BG of Pavel eating food isnt over whelmed with background characters or other details that get in the way of the ACTION that is to be conveyed

it would be rather distracting if we were to see Pavel eat that bowl, with sooo many more details involved in the panel- instead, the drapes, hues of light, and clever sound effects tell us what is happening. Wychwood does the very same with establishing shots, then KEY DETAILS to provide the reader with where the character is standing, without sacrificing the facial expressions and details of the CHARACTERS that we need to get across

Most detail is in the top panel, the BAR that Julian holds onto is a KEY PIECE to show where they are in the BG already established. Perfect use of BG! Get used to thinking of those key details when changing scenes and establishing shots!

Pick those key details to tell the reader where they are and draw that. If you have a library scene, please just draw that BG once! Take a specific bookcase or key feature, use blocked shapes and colours, and make it less detailed than the provided establishing shot. I also wanna talk about : Action Scenes Focusing on the ACTION of the scenes is SO important when you have them, and often details get lost when a creator focuses on details that can distract a reader! My advice? Most action scenes are best without/need little backgrounds. A few shots from Ghost Junk Sickness demonstrate this. We're paying attention to the action- we've been established where we are before, so let's play in the sandbox now.

Have a panel or two peppered in there, with the same principal as above to ground where your character is, but do not add a BG in every panel. It instantly takes away from the action when it's not integrated as well, and it takes SO MUCH MORE TIME to draw that sequence!

Read More amazing tips: Here are some GREAT examples by the creators of ShadeRunners, HERE who break down how they do backgrounds ( AND CROWD SHOTS!!!!)

TL;DR: Comics are a MULTITUDE of skills and needs. It takes a lot of time and work to pull it off, so working with methods that make it easiest for you as the creator is what will help you maintain that momentum and stability you need! Good luck and get comicking!

#webcomics #advice #backgrounds

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genericpuff · 24 days

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I don't know the term for creators who became popular outside the traditional steps to "make it" in their profession; then when people started taking their work seriously and giving them criticism, these creators saw it as an attack because they are not used to mentors and studies.

Smythe's professional training is vague at best, being a folklorist. Then there's the creator of the popular hell cartoon that became her own executive producer and director in her 20s (I'm not going to say her name since it tends to attract her rabid fans) and becomes reactive to any kind of criticism on Twitter. Then there's that TikToker Devon Rodriguez, who became popular for sketching people on subways, and when an art critic gave a mild review to his art gallery, Devon unleashed his fans on him.

Like am I seeing a pattern here for artists? And I guess, what do you think we can learn from it.

Ah, so this is a very interesting (and broad) topic that we've touched on in discussions in ULO and other webtoon-related communities. So buckle up, it's time for an ✨essay✨

I think the best way I can sum up my thoughts on this issue is: the vast majority of people who become paid content creators don't seek out a job as content creators, a job in content creation is just something that happens to them.

I say "content creation" because this is something that applies to a lot of other platforms and online mediums as well, such as the examples you included (TikTok, Youtube, Twitch, etc.). And don't get me wrong, it's not like every successful content creator out there didn't work their asses off to get to where they are, but for many... it still involves an element of luck. People don't go to school for it, people don't "apply" to become influencers, and much of it relies entirely on just making stuff until it gets seen and propelled into success.

I think a lot of these issues arise with the creators themselves and how they view their own work. The reality is that many of us artists have been treated as the "rejects" of society, we constantly feel like we're misunderstood and have some deep inner pain that we express through our art, and instead of going to therapy, we come up with OC's. It's a lot more fun and it's a lot cheaper LOL Webcomics naturally wind up being the perfect lightning rod for people who feel that way, where we can pour ourselves into the characters, the world, the narrative, in a way that perfectly mixes our talents for art and our need to express our innermost thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the world around us. So when our art gets criticized or rejected ... it can be hard for a lot of artists to not feel like it's a criticism of the self, a rejection of our identities, an attack on our feelings and experiences, because we've tied so much of ourselves to our work. And this can make that transition very difficult for people who are trying to go pro, because being professional demands separating yourself from your work, at least enough that you can view it objectively, recognize its flaws, seek out pathways to improvement, and not take every bump in the road personally.

A lot of successful creators are people who just never made that transition. It's led to an abundance of professional creators who know how to film themselves or react to content or, in the case of webcomic artists, write stories about their OC's, but don't know how to actually navigate the industry at a professional level. They don't know how to read and negotiate contracts, they don't know what deals are actually good for them and which ones are better left on the table, they don't know how to manage teams of people, they don't know how to react to the attention, praise, and criticism of their audience - they're just doing what they've always done, but now they're making money doing it.

None of this is to speak ill in any way of the creators who've found success and are still just doing what they've always done for money. None of this is meant to be a slight on the creators who are using webcomics and art as an expression of their deeper selves (I do it myself, it's very cathartic!) because ultimately that's what makes your work your work, the fact that you made it, with all your good parts and bad. Many of these creators are capable of running their platform without any issues because they've learned how to play the game, or because their platform is made up of people just like them so their audience is more like just a social circle.

But many of them still also can't operate on a professional level and those are the ones we often see getting called out and held accountable when they do shit like, I dunno, scamming their audiences for money or making alt accounts to manipulate user reviews or plagiarizing from other people's work or just being really REALLY shitty to their own audience.

Often times these are people who are just doing what they'd normally do as a hobby, became well known for it, and managed to turn it into a living. But they never actually learned how to turn their hobby into a job, and themselves into professionals.

And artists especially are prone to this because, let's face it, a lot of us are just weebs having fun drawing our blorbos, so of course if we get a chance to monetize that, we're gonna! We should! We should want to be paid for our work and time and efforts!

But we also have to remember that it's a different ballgame, especially if you're turning your audience into customers. "I'm just a baby creator doing this for fun" doesn't and shouldn't apply anymore once you start signing contracts, selling your art as products, taking people's money to fund your projects, etc. because now it's not just your art, it's what you're expecting people to pay for so you can eat and pay your bills and live.

As much as our art is often personal and should be cherished as such, you can't expect people to want to pay for it if you're not setting a bar and meeting it, or if you're not treating your audience with any amount of dignity or respect.

I'm not saying you're not entitled to having feelings or still wanting to treat your art as art, but the line between art and products is there for a reason, it's to set people's expectations and ensure that both sides are having those expectations met. Webtoon creators suffer from the same thing that a lot of Youtube creators and other types of content creators suffer from in this transition, and I feel like HBomberGuy summed it up best:

"In current discourse, Youtubers simultaneously present as the forefront of a new medium, creative voices that need to be taken seriously as part of the 'next generation of media' - and also uwu smol beans little babies who shouldn't be taken seriously when they rip someone off and make tens of thousands of dollars doing it."

It's not gatekeeping a medium, it's not telling people they aren't allowed to have feelings or to want to still have that personal connection to their work in spite of the professional level it's achieved, it's simply just expecting people to actually live up to the label of 'professional' that they're using to make money.

And this especially goes for someone like Rachel, who claims to be a 'folklorist' despite all the contrary evidence that says otherwise. This is the same person who copy pasted the first result on Google as her source on a simple word definition:

There's a second part to that HBomberGuy quote that also actually applies to Rachel really well in this discussion, concerning how she labels herself a "folklorist" and how that's affected and influenced the greater discussion surrounding Greek myth:

"But on the opposite end, Youtubers who act like serious documentarians gain a shroud of professionalism which then masks the deeply unprofessional things they do. We just saw that with James. I think [James] partially got away with what he's doing for so long because he acts so professional about it, so people assume, 'there's no way he could just be stealing shit!' so they don't check. And on top of that, a lot of James' videos contain obvious mistakes and made-up facts... but because they're often presented next to well-researched stuff he stole, no one questions it. I've seen James repeat a lie in his videos, and then other people claim it's true, and link his video as the proof. He has helped to solidify misinformation by seeming like he's doing his diligence."

There's always going to be discourse over what's legitimate and what isn't when it comes to Greek myth, there are loads of things we still don't know simply due to the knowledge being lost to time. But there's something to be said about a white New Zealand woman using her self-insert romance comic and platform to build a veneer of professionalism and legitimacy around herself, as if she's the authority on the subject, while simultaneously relying on first result Google searches and citing works that have no real foothold in the way of scholarly or "folklorist" discussion.

All that's to say, you're right, her professional training is vague at best. She's never completed a longform comic prior to LO, she's not doing her due diligence in actually engaging with the media she's trying to "retell" and exposing herself to the voices of those from the culture that's tied to it, and she's not holding herself to any sort of standards when it comes not only to being a professional, but a professional who's been held on a pedestal for all these years. She's still operating the same way she was 5 years ago - drawing and writing whatever pops into her head and sending it to her editor for uploading, with next to no intervention or guidance. Except now it doesn't have the benefit of being new and having "potential", it's getting noticed and called out more now than ever because it's been 5 years of this shit and it's been getting worse on account of her clearly being burnt out (or just giving up/not caring) and the readers can't be sold on "potential" anymore.

And that's all I have to say on that.

#ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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beesmygod · 7 months

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when the cursed princess club does it it's good because it suits the story perfectly, at any point any of the people working on it could google what a possum looks like and improve their portrayal of them, but the way they are drawn right now is already perfect, why "fix" that? I love when the characters do actions and you see the little sound effect of the character doing it, it works so well in there. Also you can see the art has been evolving through time For me I think when that kind of things don't work at all in that type of webcomics is in the a) licensed ones, b) the ones that you know could try to do better and do nothing

one of my favorite panels in CPC is an establishing shot of a hospital that the club is doing volunteer work at (god, long story). you know its a hospital because there's a big red cross outside on the building BREAKING THE GENEVA CONVENTION!!!! god i think i need to actually go find it. the first time i read it i just flew past it because i was invested in the story.

someone actually pointed this panel out and thats when i really looked at it

no windows. no doors. set on a patch of vertical gradient. first of all, this is hysterical. i love this. second, this is the perfect amount of effort required to convey information to a willing audience. i didnt even fucking notice this was taking place in jigsaw's torture hospital while reading it. the art has, at all points, been the bare minimum required to tell a good story. this scene did not require lavish realism or detail because it's a cartoon universe where silly things happen in service of a good joke. i have never been confused about where an event is taking place because the information i need is successfully conveyed to me through the most recognizable icons and things. red cross and building. got it.

i think the sincerity of the work also shines through. this is hard to describe, but there is a large contingent of comics in genres that they believe will make them money either because webtoons the company trends toward financially rewarding it or the perception that those audiences are more willing to spend money to create never-ending streams of emotionally empty sludge. their lack of investment in anything other than clout/$ results in a vapid, hollow shell of a comic with an attractive exterior. but a quick glance through the work exposes the author's lack of investment in their own creation.

the willingness of cpc to draw things fucked up and weird sometimes is charming. its actually taking some risks in going against the aesthetic grain of the sea of webtoons comprised of mostly the same few pre-generated assets. its not like cpc DOESNT use assets, but the light touch and geocities ass fire in the fire place just endears me to it more.

its just Right.

#cursed princess club

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barrenclan · 13 days

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(gestures to that one panel in the new issue) you see you can tell their family because of their matching eyebags

in all seriousness you are making me soo insane. i barely even touch tumblr but every once and awhile ill come check “new patfw updare? new patfw update?” like a lil parrot and i reread different pages so much i just. my brain chemistry has been altered. outside of the story and all that i love how you format the whole thing. ive never seen a comic formatted like this in my life with like the. the. the text outside of explicit dialogue still there you know but it scratches a little itch for me and you utilize it SO WELL. like i feel like if you were to switch patfw to any other format, outside of the effort itd obviously take to make it itd just be. really hard to get right if that makes sense. its just… so tied to its strange little format its great. if i may ask like. stupid question but is this just like a type of formatting you just decided to use or did you see it somewhere else beforehand? bc like it may be common or smth i dont read many comics man

weird tangent aside i love the characters, story all that too of course! theres just. so much to talk abt there i wouldn’t know where. To Start. youve done admirable job of fleshing out so many characters to some degree in the time youve had. some of barrenclan may be assholes but theres something to be said about all of them. beeface isnt mean all the time etc, you know? they dont feel static in the sense that they feel like they are living their kitty lives. slug family in particular just scratches a little itch for me i could go. on and on. i miss asphodel. if you kill any more of them i wont. do anything but i would be very sad.

i cant imagine the type of dedication and effort it would take to keep smth like this going and just. yeah!!👍 good luck with ur silly kitty comic solider

Thank you so much for all your kind words! I'm so glad you like the comic! I've had a lot of fun making it and the response has been truly flattering.

The "style" is not my own creation; it is inspired by one of my favorite webcomics, Paranatural, which transitioned out of traditional comics into this format a couple years ago. :] Like so:

That is what it's based on! And I've seen setups like it in other places before, though none come to mind. However it's not very common in webcomic spaces - although my friend haw does have a new comic @pipjackal which uses a similar setup! Read Pip Jackal, please, for me. And Paranatural.

#ask #anon #chatter

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seeminglydark · 11 months

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Idk if this means anything to you but I'm a comic artist who's had a hard time doing art for a few years. The first four was because of life hardship and lack of time/chronic pain, but now lately I've had time but a mental block. I'm creeping up on 30 and felt bad about myself for "missing out" on my opportunity to be a comic artist. It was really validating to see you post about being 41 (correct me if I'm wrong) especially since you have such wonderful comics that I've been following for a while now. It makes me feel less like I'm wasting my time putting my things in order when I "should" be drawing.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as offensive or anything. It was just comforting and validating. Anyway, big fan! Love your characters a whole lot and hope you have a good day!

Dear Anon

I am 41 years old. I have wanted to make comics my entire life. before my dad got sick, and my childhood kinda fell apart, all i did was draw. after that, i used the stories in my head to cope. life moved on. i was convinced not to accept a partial scholarship to an art school in California. life got hard. i worked at a hotel, and after i escaped an abusive relationship at 22 i hitchhiked/bused far far away to start over. i tried to make comics again, but i had to survive, and so i got another job doing the only thing i knew how to do, hotels. and i worked. and worked. and life got harder and times got heavier and i didn't get time to draw and i worked double hours, 15 to 17 hours a day. and i went four years without drawing a single thing.

i kept working myself into the ground. i was 29 now. i picked up a pen again and drew a red haired boy. he had a hard life and no love and no friends. his problems were on the outside, for everyone to see. he ran away but his problems went with him.

i was 32. surely i was too old now. my time to be an artist was gone. i had no school. no hope. i was so far behind the younger gen i saw online. i cried. all the time. i wrote stories in my email drafts while i worked shifts. i stayed up late trying to learn how to draw again. i cried some more. the boy grew. i called him Fiach. worthy. a raven. later i renamed him Avery. he was like a bird, he had wings, he was my hope. i started writing some friends for him. the people i wished i had around me.

i started finding time and space. i got a new job, something where i was lucky enough to set my own hours. for the first time i had a partner who believed in me. things were hard. but i was drawing now. and that helped.

i went on a road trip and i started drawing pages of an unnamed story on 6 by 8 paper in a sketchbook. i drew 20 of them. 'what could i call this?' i thought. Nothing Seems as Dark...no says my partner. Seemingly Dark. he made me a logo. i was 35. i bought an ipad, i cant do this on paper, its too much story i have too much to say. so i learned how to draw digitally by tracing my own trad art pages.

I spoke to my dad for the last time on June 17th, fathers day that year. he said 'you're good. i'm proud. and you're gonna do amazing things. none of this is your fault. and we will speak again soon.' i didn't know id never hear his voice again. he died a week later.

i turned 36. i kept trying. i'm old, i don't understand the internet. how can i share this?

i stumbled across Lore Olympus. i was introduced to webcomics. id read comics online before but the thought never occurred to me. i opened an account on Tapas. and then i stared at it. what if no one likes it. what if its bad. my art isn't good. i should wait til i'm better. but will i ever really be better? or will i always believe that tomorrow is better? do it now. if even one person gets something out of this story, this story about a boy who is you, a boy who looking for hope, a boy who might make it, then that is enough isn't it.

June 17th 2018 i launched Seemingly Dark.

SD's five year anniversary is in a week. 0ver 700 pages. leaps and bounds in progress with my skills. a printed comic under my belt as of monday. i was always a storyteller. but i was always an artist too.

I am 41 years old, dear anon. I did not truly embark on this journey til i was 35. life got in the way. even now, chronic illness gets in the way. but its worth it. its never ever too late. i believe in you the way my dad believed in me. i reset my life again and again. but I was always an artist. and if thats who you are, and who you want to be, even if things dont go the way you wished they could, you're an artist too.

im 41 years old. i speak about my age, even though i often feel too old to belong in spaces, cuz really, in this case age is just a number. take care of yourself. do what you need to do. and little by little, when your able, carve out your space until it becomes more of a habit. sometimes i think about all the years i lost not drawing or creating. but there's a lot of factors that make me believe had i made my story then, it wouldn't be the story it is now, i needed to live a bit. i needed to find myself. i know this was long, but i just wanted you to see i also had to put my life in order, and getting notes like this reminds me it wasnt at all a waste. im glad i could offer you some comfort. thats honestly the best compliment i could ever receive.

TL;dR I was 35 when i sat down and seriously started making comics, because life always got in the way and so did my confidence. i always feared being too old. im 41 now, still going strong.

#rj rambles #this is really long im sorry anon #i think my late comic blooming story is kinda important for people to hear #thankyou for giving me a reason to tell it

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project-reaper · 3 months

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Moving forward into 2024!

I haven’t really had a proper chance to say Happy New Years, so this will have to suffice, with a little breakdown of what’s been going on and what’s to come!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

I’ve been spending the better part of the last year working on new projects and endeavors. Both with Time Gate and outside of it. From vendoring at markets and working expo’s for the first time to working on art pieces completely outside of Time Gate, 2023 was a hell of a year and it makes me all the more hyped for 2024. That said, I’ve been carrying a weight with me through 2023 that’s made it difficult to enjoy it to the fullest - the weight of knowing that [AFTERBIRTH] is still on hiatus.

This isn’t the longest hiatus that I’ve been on, but it’s certainly starting to approach the record and I wanna get it back on track. Like getting back in shape after spending an entire winter hibernating and eating nothing but junk food, getting back into drawing [AFTERBIRTH] on a schedule is gonna be a process of rebuilding good habits and learning what I can do better to keep those habits alive and well.

The fortunate side to taking hiatuses is that it always does give me a new sense of perspective. In this case, I learned that I put myself through a lot at the start of [AFTERBIRTH]’s production. Like, way more than I realized. At the time I thought I was super capable - and I am! - but now in hindsight I can recognize it wasn’t healthy or sustainable for me to manage that sort of output all on my own. I’m still grinding away at comics like I always do with those other projects I’ve mentioned, but it’s still nothing near the amount of work I put myself through just to meet my own deadlines with [AFTERBIRTH]. I also have this thing called help now in the form of a background artist who’s been working with me on those other projects, which has been an amazing and enriching experience.

Having that time away from [AFTERBIRTH] not only gave me the breathing room I needed to recuperate from the burnout I got myself into, but also got me out of the routines I had stuck myself into, which has given me some new tricks and skills that I’m really hyped to bring back into Time Gate with me.

This does, in a way, mean that I’ve had to really reflect on Time Gate, a lot. It’s a project I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and drawing as a webcomic since I was around 18-19. It’s changed a lot in that time, but I’m finding while a lot of those changes have been reflected in the comic as it is, there are still so many more I want to make - because like the comic, I’ve changed a lot, too, both as an artist and as a person, and considering Time Gate’s always been a sort of personal extension of myself, I no longer resonate with a lot of parts of it that I’ve since outgrown. It’s not so much that I want to hide or take for granted those parts of it that are ‘uglier’, but I want the writing and art to be expressed in the best way it can be because at the end of the day, I’m trying to tell a coherent story that’s enjoyable to read and experience. I’m also the sort of person who learns best by just getting their hands dirty and learning what not to do, and boy, have I spent a lot of years doing just that through Time Gate.

GOING FORWARD

So, going forward, I’ve adjusted my schedule with my other projects to accommodate the time I need to both get back into Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH] as well as prepare for the upcoming convention season. I’ve got a bunch of plans for this year’s markets with new ideas for prints and stickers and other goodies that I’m really excited to make! And I just, overall, want to pull myself out of the burnout funk. You can’t force recovery to happen on your own time but there does come a point where you gotta start taking steps otherwise you get stagnant, and I feel like that’s where I’ve been the last few months.

AFTERBIRTH FORMAT CHANGE

[AFTERBIRTH]’s format will be changing back to page format in its second season. Vertical format works for some projects and stories, but not for Time Gate. It’s been fun, but part of learning what I’m best at is learning what I’m not best at and the vertical format is too limiting for what I want to do with Time Gate in the future. Color will still be remaining!

REAPER RECOMPILED

I will also be working on the Recompiled editions of Reaper. These will predominantly be the first few volumes redrawn and rewritten to accommodate a tighter story down the road. I know, I know, “don’t get trapped redrawing/rewriting stuff”, but I feel the changes that I wanna make are so necessary that they’re part of what’s holding me back from continuing with [AFTERBIRTH] into Thread of Fate and beyond. There are a lot of really silly and otherwise unnecessary writing decisions I made back during Reaper that I currently feel aren’t working for what I’m trying to accomplish in its sequels, and let’s face it, I wrote it almost ten years ago when I was still very much learning, so it’s due for an upgrade. It'll be the last time too, because it'll be putting us on Loop 9999 and remember what Matty said about surpassing 9999-

This will be something I’ll be picking at slowly but surely. When it’s ready I’ll basically be replacing the old pages and updating any new mirror sites with only the new version (I’m currently planning on trying out NamiComi and Lemoon and of course I'll be continuing to post on ComicFury and GlobalComix).

THE BIG GREEN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM-

All of that will basically be working towards my biggest step - getting the flying fuck off Webtoons. Because let me tell you, I've basically spent the last two years like this:

Y’all know that I’m not really one to roll over and take shit from massive platforms, and Webtoons is no exception. I’ve been posting to it since 2016 and I’m very very much done with it; just like with Tapas it’s no longer the site it used to be and there’s fresh competition entering the market that I’d rather put my focus on. At the very least, I want my independence back, if I’m gonna be stuck having to market and network my own work anyways I’d much rather be doing it for my own site or platforms that aren’t constantly undercutting its creators by removing core features and not implementing necessary ones. I as well as many others have been doing our own investigating into Webtoons and we’re basically feeling like canaries in the mineshaft right now, picking up on some massive warning signs that we want to get ahead of. The worst that can happen is that I pull the same stats I pull on Webtoons somewhere else, what a tragedy that would be LMAO

LIVESTREAMING

And then of course there are my livestreams. Like learning the hard way that I shouldn’t have been drawing [AFTERBIRTH] on such a strict schedule, I’ve learned that streaming on the schedule I used to be streaming on just ain’t for me. Call it the ADHD but I’d much rather stream when I have something to legitimately talk about or showcase rather than force myself to stream even on days when I’m really not feeling up to talking. And I’d like to get back into doing actual video editing content, whether it’s speedpaints or gaming videos or commentary stuff, whatever have you. Now that I have a proper PC rig that’s actually built to do heavy duty stuff, the possibilities of what I can create are a LOT more vast and I wanna take full advantage of them!

That said, if you wanna see an example of what the streams will look like when we return, check out this lil’ time lapse demo:

Definitely couldn't do that on my old setup! It might not be regular streaming like before, but it’ll damn well be higher quality and more fun to watch haha

WELL THAT WAS A BIG WALL OF TEXT WASN'T IT

So yeah! That was a lot of words but I hope it clears up everything that's been happening on my end. Thanks for following along with my work all these years, whether it’s Time Gate or my lil’ secret projects or my streams, through all the ups and the downs. Long-term projects like these may take their toll but there’s so much joy in seeing them change and grow over time, and I want to fully embrace and reflect that growth as best as I can through what I bring you guys.

Thank you all so much, let’s make 2024 a good year <3

#time gate #comic #webcomic #project reaper #twitch #twitch streaming #hiatus #announcement

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dateamonster · 5 months

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webcomics*! webcomics baby!!! i grew up reading these bad boys like they were the sunday funnies. im serious i would get up early in so i could check my daily roster of webcomic updates before leaving for school.

webcomics sort of feel to me like my generations version of zines. not that both those things arent still around, i just mean that, in the same way that there was this big boom of super creative zine self-publishing in the 70s through the 90s thanks to the increasing access to copy machines, and later home printing, the early 00s-10s was sort of the moment people seemed to collectively realize they could kind of just upload whatever they wanted to the internet and people would actually see it, leading naturally to another boom in indie art and storytelling.

a lot of the comics that popped up around this time were sort of... rough. raw. weird. there were no rules about what a webcomic had to be other than 1) a comic and 2) on the web, so there was some freedom to be as messy or as precise as the author wanted. this led to some real bangers, and some absolute flops. but regardless of how it turned out i think theres something to be admired about the sheer amount of creativity going into these projects that, for the most part, were purely passion-driven without any guarantee of greater recognition or success.

obviously webcomics are still around, but the culture surrounding them has shifted quite a bit. most people who are willing to put in the work of a longform serialized comic In This Economy are also doing so with the hope of being able to profit or at least sustain themselves financially on their work. theres no shame in that! but it has made the webcomic scene more competitive, more polished, less experimental. capitalism at work, you know.

people arent really as incentivized to try new things and dare i say get a little weird with it when innovation doesnt pay the pills. however that doesnt mean that there arent still artists out there who are challenging that.

i got the idea a while ago that i wanted to put together a list of webcomics that have been really influential to me and my own creative efforts, but i realized that list would be a mile long and wouldnt really give me the breathing room to talk about why those works resonate with me. so i decided instead to make a list specifically of my (currently) most beloved, most influential webcomics that i feel like are doing something unique that sort of pushes the boundaries of what is considered a "normal" comic.

presented in no particular order, with all attempts made to be spoiler-free, below:

nasty red dogs and feast for a king by kosmicdream (18+)

delicious, dark, meaty comics. ffak in particular is like this massive sprawling scifi stream of consciousness thick with blood and viscera and. a lot of highly transsexual erotic cannibalism tbqh.

personally i find nasty red dogs a lot more like easy to get into story-wise, but both are just chockablock full of this beautiful grotesque unapologetic and downright indulgent physicality. its pages dripping with every fluid you can think of and some you cant, and its also compelling surprisingly empathetic characters set against a backdrop of otherworldly rituals, cosmic pre-apocolypses, and worlds inside of worlds inside of worlds. body horror heaven lives here.

mr boop and crimehot by alec robbins (very 18+)

if youre at all into weird webcomics youre probably already well familiar with mr boop, and if you arent theres really nothing i can say other than Please give it a shot, but if you havent been keeping up with alecs work since then you might not be as familiar with his current project crimehot. and thats a damn shame because it is all the comedy, unabashed horniness, and surprisingly understated storytelling of mr boop taken to its absolute max.

crimehot is set in a future where nearly every aspect of human life and culture is controlled by an all-powerful all-seeing computer algorithm. but who cares about all that when theres a ragtag team of ultra sexy ultra horny master thieves going on wacky little misadventures together!

alecs style is blunt and simplistic in a way that comes off as juvenile at first glance, and then uses that presumption to completely blindside you with its actual content, reminding me weirdly enough of memeable classic tails gets trolled. in spite of their potential as works of ironic comedy however alecs comics really give me this impression of total earnestness. crimehot in particular is so blatantly un-erotic, with its complete lack of any subtlety, comically exaggerated (and surprisingly diagetic) anatomy, and impossible physical positions, that it circles back around into becoming, indeed, kind of hot. i think silliness can be hot so sue me!

blind alley by adam de souza

departing completely from my last couple recs, blind alley is a cozy, peanuts-inspired comic strip about the day to day lives of the children of blind alley. its also occasionally a deeply unsettling horror-mystery that has just barely begun to show its hand more than two years in. its distinguishing factor to me comes from the fact that the cozy exterior doesnt seem to be there to conceal or divert your attention away from the growing sense of unease that infiltrates its panels on an increasingly frequent basis as the story progresses. it feels more like the two elements live side by side, horror and mundanity, otherworldly creatures and secret conspiracies living peacefully alongside lazy summer afternoons and goofing off with your friends. it perfectly captures the anxiety of knowing that theres something the grown-ups arent telling you, the powerlessness of being a kid.

blind alley feels to me sort of like if those "what if Nostalgic Cartoon was secretly DARK" media theories were actually real, and actually scary. i might be getting ahead of myself as the series likes to take its time and is really only just starting to peel back the layers, but what ive read so far feels makes me feel like this could be something very special.

boy island by leo fox

beautiful beautiful beautiful first of all. the dreamy, surreal visuals? the colors?? oujhjh.. boy island is set in a world split violently in two, divided into boy island and girl island, and surrounded on all sides by a sea of monsters mutants and ghosts, those sorry souls who committed the trespass of trying to cross from one land to the other, or even live outside of either! a boy named lucille must strike out on his own to make it to boy island, but in doing so begins to discover things about the world and in fact himself that reveal an even greater mission.

im making this all sound very dramatic. its a trans story. its about trans people, being trans. its also about surviving the ripples of a world laid out for you by your parents, managing grief for the ones that didnt, and a funny little blue guy named jounce. also did i mention its gorgeous? hot fuckin diggity it is gooorgeous.

vivians ghost by hal schrieve (18+)

speaking of trans comics!! (plot twist: theyre all trans comics suckerrrr) look, all of hals comics are fucking baller and im sure the book zes got coming out will be too, but ive like Imprinted on this one. its attached itself my brain. much like the main protagonist collin has been attached to by his suicide victim best friend and ex highschool bf viv!

the sketchy art style threw me off at first but it quickly becomes part of the charm and meshes very well with the chaotic pace and gutpunch emotional moments. theres a strong element of magical realism that i honestly think comics as a medium were made for. viv is a ghost, and viv is grief, and guilt, and fantasy, and shame, and glorious trans revenge taken form, and hes not even the only apparition in this story, taking the stage alongside cameos by jesus christ, a detransitioners fursona, almanda palmer, and (checks notes) gonzo for a second there i think.

as a disclaimer (or incentive, depending) no one in this story i think is someone you could really call a good person. some of them are in fact plainly terrible. they are all so undeniably fucking fascinating though. and viv himself gleefully inhabits that moral gray area, deliberately and loudly disturbing any image of himself as a pure perfect victim, blurring lines and thrusting both the characters and audience out of their comfort zone. its a challenging read thats not going to be everyone for sure, but i definitely think its worth the read.

(and if this sounds interesting to you but youre not sure you can handle it, hal has other equally good comics that are still heavy on the trans gay relationship drama but much lighter on the childhood trauma.)

what happens next by maximumgraves

if youre reading this on tumblr i hope that youve at least heard of what happens next by now. thee seminal tumblrina art of our time i swear. it starts with a true crime podcast exploring the strange story of griffin and his accomplice milo, trans teen murderers, the latter of which has since been released from the psych hospital while the former continues to serve his sentence. but thats in the past, and in the present milo still has to figure out how to live the rest of his life.

the story moves rapidly, though not necessarily chronologically, in and out of the real world and the online lives its characters frequently inhabit like its guiding you through a twisted dream. its a comic on the internet about the internet from someone clearly well aware of its more poisonous aspects, as well as the addictive quality it can have for someone who has become otherwise isolated from the world.

at the end of the day though the major appeal i think is the characters, how messy and horrible and tragic they can be, which is all you can really hope for from a largely character-driven narrative. to say much more i think would ruin the experience, but ill say what happens next absolutely delivers on its ominous title, and im waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter.

preeny has to repeat 6th grade by momodriller

on a Much lighter note, preeny has to repeat 6th grade is a super cute adventure series about a magical little kitty named preeny who on her first day of sixth grade is called upon to go on a great mission. its a sparklefur comic!! ive been really starting to dive into furry art lately, and if youre the kind of person who raises an eyebrow at that statement, fine, whatever, but im talking to the cool people right now so keep it to yourself.

art from within the furry subculture is such insanely creative and passionate stuff, and the focus on this subset in particular, calling back to the early 2000s deviantart xD rAWR s0 rand0m era of online culture, feels so intensely nostalgic it makes my chest ache, despite never being heavily involved in the sparklefur scene myself.

the author states in the comics description that the story takes inspiration from her experiences as an autistic child, and even before reading that man i felt it. what really makes this comic unique to me though is that the majority of characters that appear are based on adoptables the author purchased off of, as she puts it, the children of deviantart. i LOVE that. not only is that probably amazing for the kids, it makes every character feel truly unique and adds perfectly to the overall flavor of the world shes created. there is just not another comic i can think of that feels alive like this one.

broccoli soup by secretpie

ok so i know how we might feel about webtoon comics but hear me out. broccoli soup is probably the first comic ive seen to really exploit the otherwise sort of bland and restrictive format of webtoons, utilizing the excess of white space to enhance the feeling of emptiness that characterizes the protagonist broccoli's time in the blank void they call home as well as to make the sparse use of color really pop in contrast.

broccoli soup is a mysterious series thats a little hard to pin down in terms of genre. a strange little being named broccoli spends their days in a vast blankness drinking tea with their loving yet highly suspicious Best Friend and benefactor, doris. doris has the ability to move between worlds, coming and going as she pleases, while broccoli is only allowed to leave when they are on a mission on her behalf. these missions vary, but the goal is always the same: make everything Polite and Good.

as the story progresses, little by little more friends and more color come into broccolis still new existence. the art style also changes from world to world, which imo is a very nice touch. and! theres music! its an interesting project that dances back and forth between fantastical whimsy and some surprisingly dark moments. and thats the shit i like to see.

thats all for now! though if im lucky there will be many more fun stories and projects to talk about in the future. keep in mind as well that this is like barely half of all the webcomics im currently reading, just the ones that most stick out to me as really doing something special.

until next time yall!!

oh wait sike honorable mentions time

awful hospital by bogleech

the only reason this isnt up there with the rest is bc im woefully behind at the moment. ill get back to it eventually! awful hospital is an interactive multimedia horror-comedy webcomic about a hospital that is. well this hospital is simply sub-par to say the least.

hedgehog's dilemma by mellodilla

this ones still a little new to say much on but so far it looks like a cute series. what most appeals to me is that the art style looks like something that fit in seamlessly with an early 90s newspaper comic strip. in particular it has a strong calvin and hobbes vibe to me. just, you know, about wacky lil lesbian animals living their lives.

ok now im done for real

*for clarity's sake, im using webcomic here to mean "a series of comics that was first published and predominantly exists online" so even if a print version exists, i still consider it to be first and foremost a webcomic. this also includes comics that contain a multimedia or interactive element. if its a combination of pictures and words to tell a story, its a comic.

also my list is probably going to end up massively favoring serialized fiction because thats just what i like to read, but i dont necessarily think thats a required element.

#ungodly screeching #recommendations #kinda off topic but also kinda not lol #this got way out of hand #oh also if i got anyones pronouns wrong pls let me know! i tried to track everyones down

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