How I Came Up With The Story "Oasi's Fallen"

As my art continues to grow on my social platforms, I have noticed an uptick of viewers asking questions about my lore, engaging in entertaining speculations about what is to come, and pointing out similarities to other popular stories in today's culture. While speculation can be fun, I do want to help inform those who may be wondering how exactly I came to create my story and what content has influenced my art style. I will keep it as short and sweet as I can.

STORY:

Since I was in elementary school, I had always been fascinated with the history of wars. War taught me many things, including how people can get through the worst of times - whether it was a soldier fighting a hopeless battle, or a family risking everything together by hiding refugees. If real people like that could get through those things, I certainly could wade through whatever life threw at me. Consequently, this application forever affected my art and writings.

Several years ago, I was kindly asked by my husband to write him a short story. He needed a pick-me-up. My habits did not fail me. I decided to write him a story based on a true account from the American Civil War. This account recalled two men who were stuck in a trench together. The twist was that due to their condition, the two men did not know if they were on each other's side, and they had to rely on one another to survive the night.

Now me using my creative liberties, I took this concept and placed it into the future with other things I fancied: space travel, war machines, medical weapons, and romance. I then gave this 10 page chronicle to my husband, and he ended up loving it. So much so, in fact, he asked me to expand it into a whole book. Now there was a titillating idea. Unfortunately, I knew my writing capacity was limited to mostly short stories; writing the whole thing out would be quite the feat for me. However, I darn well knew I could DRAW the whole thing. So here I am, drawing like a maniac.

The Oasi Bits have a similar tale. I've always doodled little comics to make the people around me laugh. I started doing this using characters from my novel since the military setting created a lot of humorous opportunities. The few people I shared these with only fueled the fire by asking for more. My husband also encouraged me to share the comics on my social platforms, telling me the public would enjoy them too.

To summarize, yes, this entire series started out as a short story I wrote for my husband. We make a good team, what can I say?

ART:

I blame my art style on my massive consumption of all things animation and comic books. I adore the art form, and I consume it frequently when I'm not reading WWII books. Although I don't have a preference when it comes to which animation studios I like best, I will say that the TV show "Zoids" had a profound impact on me as a child, and probably sparked my interest in giant fighting robots and the anime genre. Many hand-drawn DreamWorks/Disney movies were also motivating. I loved the way the animators captured human expressions - and I found myself desiring to do the same. Comic artists, especially ones illustrating for Marvel and DC, showed me how to capture movement and perspective within panels themselves. All these things combined have shaped how I choose to draw.

When it comes to characters, Raina's design was not inspired by anyone in particular - I just wanted her to have pale skin, dark hair, and purple eyes from the alien gene she carries. She has short hair and a muscular build due to her occupation as a soldier. Levin's design needed to look somewhat British-Australian since Oasi is essentially Australia on steroids. The earth of Oasi is red and tinges the inhabitants' skin and hair red, which is why many Oasians are ruddy. I made both Raina and Levin conventionally attractive because audiences enjoy looking at attractive people (and artists enjoy drawing them).

CHARACTERS:

Lastly, as far as backstory and personalities go, I wanted to write my characters after people I found not only inspiring, but beautifully tragic: real life survivors of war. Raina and Levin are both conglomerations of war heroes/survivors. Their personalities I merely created based off of their zodiac signs, Raina being a Scorpio and Levin being a Capricorn.

The rest of my characters I created in similar fashion, picking someone's backstory from history then adding a personality to it. I like basing my characters off of real people or personality traits I have studied. This keeps me as a writer consistent with each character and prevents unwanted immersion breaking. It also avoids the self-insert problem and writer's blocks.

SUMMARY:

I hope this provides some insight into how this whole series was created and what has inspired it the most. The important thing to remember as a creator is that there is nothing new under the sun; people will speculate and compare your work to others' - and that is ok. A good story is a good story. Create for you and what makes you and your fanbase happy!