Art!, Cadence, Error, Original Characters, Redefining Evil, Ronan, Ryan & Me

inktober etc.

I decided to try to commit (cautiously) to Inktober this year because I had so much success doing my 100 Days project last year. 21 days in and I haven’t missed a one and I’ve produced some pretty painterly pieces around a theme. In fact I’m writing this at my (new) job but I have some more to add to the inktober dump when I get home.

The prompt for this day was “stuck” so I was going to do a sexy conflict with a dagger involved but I wasn’t in the mood so I did this purple skinned orc type instead.
Kawaii boobie fun colors
I almost couldn’t generate an idea for “pick” so I threw it in as some dialogue haha
One of the earliest prompts that I really got into
Ahhh…Solaris
My kid being a tall skinny gremlin
Ronan was getting weird with his toys
a quick family portrait
I spent so many days working linelessly I was beginning to doubt if I could be satisfied with lines, so I did just lines
Ronan kept asking for Mommy, Gaggee and Ronan pictures when he’d look at my old pre-baby family portraits. But we’re poor so I haven’t gotten this one printed yet.
this prompt combined two days so i could spend more time on this archangel gal
so ronan was super sick this week for the first time ever and it gave him super toddler powers that almost broke us. but yet he’s obsessed with the stars and moon like a true witch’s child.
sexy danny after he popped up in my dream, using the same lyrics i used a decade ago
last night i had a dream i was crushing on the crow lady from kikis delivery service since ronan and i watched it this week, but she told me she thought i had a thing going with andrew but i was afraid he was going to friendzone me. ronan was very confused and couldnt figure out if i was drawing mommy or daddy. story of my life ronan. story of my life,
Art!, Emotional Breakdowns, Error, Manga, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Writing Journey

quarantine/riots/manga DONE

Shocking all of us, I FUCKIN FINISHED Code: Compromised (best name I could come up with). It rounded out at 298 pages, infuriatingly. Haha. It’s not super high quality, overall I’d say though the images are better and more artful and obviously more skilled than when I was 18, realistically the paneling and bubbles are about like they were when I was a teenager.

I think the concept was super solid and the plot was really tightly knit, not trying to do too much, and the development of Micah and Andrew’s relationship was really tender and balanced (even if it oogs my husband out because Andrew’s older than Micah, sorry, I have my kinks, if you can even call “age difference” that…the teacher/student thing maybe, but age is shrugs.)

I go back and forth on whether I want to plunge into a “real” draft of it but I know I’d want to use my computer tablet for that, and having the time to do that seems like a distant dream.

I have to give an invisible blog shout out to All Time Low for their new album Wake Up Sunshine literally being the anthem for this whole story. It was fun to use a really old band’s new work to create my first new work in a really long time. I haven’t figured out how to best document like, I don’t know, the growth of these two since they came around in middle school. I know soon I want to add a page for this story to My Mental Breakdown but that’s another thing I have a hard time imagining squeezing into my stupid adult life.

The weirdest part about this project is that I’m really happy I finished a story but it was almost physically painful how obsessed, compelled I felt to work on this. At times in the last few months I was neglecting not only my child but my husband too and that was…weird. Writing feels like its cost has increased greatly since I was a carefree high school student. And the funny thing is that I don’t even feel “wowed” by this project’s quality, but if I’d put out 298 quality pages I think I’d be dead now.

So, more resolution on this project to come, but in the meantime, IT REALLY IS DONE! wow!

Here’s some art!

One of my favorite lines from ATL – “cause I’m not too far, and you’re my favorite place.”
GLOWY SMOOCHY
Hands down my favorite page in the whole thing, and the upside down bi flag was coincidental; its’ a sunrise too hahaha. IT’S SO CUTE THOUGH GODDAMN

i had my headphones on and my husband just texted me from the living room that i was breathing very heavily, i guess these guys make me pretty hot haha
After musing on the accidental bi flag in the last page I threw this together today. I realized it is actually Pride month. But most people are keeping their mouths shut about it since there’s not going to be a Pride festival right now and the country has been literally up in flames for the last two weeks. So I think they’re realizing their Pride is not…super appropriate in light of Black people being murdered by the police. Yeah, current events in the captions of anime boys hugging!
k so apparently Harry Styles revolutionized the fashion world and like, the song that he was wearing a crop top in is some 70s trash garbage, but I thought Micah would be excited at the opportunity to wear a crop top, so I did this haha.

Lastly I wanted a statement to live on my blog forever about recent events. A lot of white people are having potentially their first encounters with white guilt so Black Lives Matter is currently a very trendy slogan to get behind, in addition to many white people stating for the first time that they’re mad about racism. As someone who went through their teens blissfully unaware of the diversity around them, before stepping into a very whitewashed community for a year, before stepping deliberately back into a diverse neighborhood in South Minneapolis without fully grasping how I was still contributing to systemized racism and also basking in my white privilege, who then read Counseling the Culturally Diverse by David Sue, who then felt super guilty for glamorizing diversity and being a bit exhibitionist about diversity in my art, who has then backed off from pretending like I have a place to speak about or be part of the Black community, who has then come to some sense of peace about things, who has now realized many people did not go through all this…I have done a lot of smh at the white community around me, well-meaning as they are.

Many of my friends, Black and white alike, were in the cities protesting following the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white fucker of a police officer who is now being charged by our amazing Keith Ellison for second and third degree murder. Riots ravaged my nearby city. Shit got destroyed. Uncle Hugo’s was burned to the ground. I was…quiet, withdrawn and depressed, wanting to flee the country as snapshots from apocalyptic games, movies, books flashed in my head, thinking about my innocent albeit white male son growing up in a crumbling country. Since then it seems like there is some really important systemic change that’s beginning to happen, and a lot of organizations, like BLM, have received amazing charity funding that they’ve been scrounging for for ages. And I’m really glad for that. But I know with most traumatic events, the people who weren’t “hurt” by it will move on with their lives. And I wanted to make a statement and a commitment to not forget that I always have and always will support powerful movements like Black Lives Matter. And I am committed to raising my white male child to make this world a better place for his Black brothers and sisters, to know that he has privilege, to encourage him to use it to improve the lives of those who have less privilege than him.

On this blog, Black Lives always have, and always will Matter.

Art!, Error, Manga, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Writing Journey

i’m obsessed (but it’s still unnamed)

So suddenly the coding manga I’ve been writing has amassed 156 pages and I’m about 70% done with the story. It feels really amazing but also kind of…weird because, while the story looks actually quite similar in quality to my high school writings, this one really feels like the very compelling rough draft of something I’m going to go back through before long and write in the quality of Dumping a Dragon.

Andrew and Micah THRILL AND DELIGHT ME, I love them as a couple so much. It honestly makes SO much sense and their personalities perfectly complement each other.

The story stays SO MUCH SMALLER than the other manga I’ve attempted to do and feels much more intimate, manageable, and fleshed out because of that. Really the only thing I need to refine during the final version will be the presentation of the Codeys and Scripts but that’ll be easier when I’m not writing the whole thing in a notetaking app haha.

I also made doodle sketches for all the chapters since they’re sorted by chapter in my app so here are those!

I’ve also been absentmindedly doodling them in between chapters whenever I briefly lose my flow, like I used to.

Here’s me and Andy and Micah planning to dye Andrew’s hair since I actually do his hair down in quite a few scenes but it basically ends up looking like my current hair haha.
Aaaaaaaaaand my precious refined baby lovely picture I did last week. It’s featuring lyrics by All Time Low, who I listened to in 9th grade but came out with a new album in April that I stumbled across in Amazon music and fell in love with. And I got to use my shiny brushes in ProCreate. And shiny colorful shading. <3
Art!, Error, Manga, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters, Writing Journey

it still doesn’t have a name

So I can’t believe it somehow got overlooked in my blog – I think initially I was probably  a little embarrassed – but I’ve been kicking around a new idea for a novel/graphic novel for months that finally just kinda, I don’t know, took off on its own. I was really into the idea of writing boyxboy love for the first time after I realized I have trouble writing a functional, blossoming hetero relationship because I’m no longer trying to fill my own void for romance. Plus it felt very appropriate to hook Micah and Andrew up. And Danny made a brief appearance where he then died like usual haha.

Anyway the idea has always felt super solid (started from reading A Sorcery of Thorns btw) and I was just hung up on the visuals, so I was just like who cares and I did something to keep moving and now that I’m entering drama/sexy territory I’m just kind of flying into it. I’m also excited about the idea of writing out the rough draft and figuring out an iPad program or something to refine it once it’s all written down.

As it’s progressing it’s definitely turned out a bit spookier than I expected but like, in a cool way I guess!

this is from like december before I had started trying this project as a graphic novel again. I kept Micah’s blue hair but I gave him a fresher style and I love it, it’s a good contrast to Andrew’s hair which I usually draw down like Howl/Haku now (which unfortunately is the same length as my hair and thus sometimes he just looks like me. Haha. Old problems never go away.)

I have way more doodles and whatnot on my ipad but I just can’t bring myself to blog on my ipad especially since I’ll never ever get an ipad keyboard. I have so many physical keyboards! I cannot abandon my actual PCs even though Ryan bought me airpods yesterday and I haven’t stopped using them since. >.>

Art!, Error, MicahxAndrew, Myoku Needs a Tag, Original Characters

a prolific january

not gonna lie, i am posting this in february, but i had it ready for the last month! it’s been busy…

most notably, when i was brainstorming for my last failed writing project, i started mulling over micahxandrew. micah has been likely bi for a while and i decided andrew if not asexual would kind of just try everyone before settling on no one. so i did a kawaii couple photo on my ipad. fuckin love it. happy st patricks day?
ingrid <3
been watching sailor moon with the bb. her design tho
booty n booby
FUCKIN CAT TOWER