2024 Art Summary

Once again I need to thank everyone who's joined me on this year's journey <3

One of the things I'm really happy with this year is how the "mini-comics" turned into something more ambitious and larger in size. Starting with how the mini-comics last year were usually just 3 frames plus a pinup and then turned into these vertical "webtoon" comics, like on Tapas and such. The longer format has been a lot more creatively liberating and at least I personally feel like they're pretty dang good in telling stories.

This format has worked so well that you've already seen how I've applied it to the Gymbo Orc Comic, which I feel I have much better pacing control over than my previous long-form comics. For example, I'm absolutely very proud of From Rags To Riches, but there are definitely some pacing issues there that I feel I can avoid better with the vertical format.

In conclusion, these vertical comics are a lot of fun and they're here to stay :D

Now onto just giving a bit of commentary for the art pieces I chose for this year's art summary. Just something I felt would be fun to do <3

January: Bellatrix Ultima was obviously a lot of fun since you guys, gals and enbie pals allowed me to indulge in a suggestion of my own. I love drawing muscles and the setting of Stolen Skies is very fun to draw stuff in from time to time. The Seventh Realm is a cartoon, Empire Bay is utopic but Tyrodas is a perfect place to do darker stuff like corruptions and such.

February: Still in the middle of the shorter versions of the short comics, two things I really liked here, the first being the redesigns of the Noxae/ Nightfolk. Really happy with the more bat-like appearance. And the second thing is that I just really loved writing Alphenia and Rhalora flirting with each other in this comic. Are they the OTP of the Seventh Realm or is that title still reserved for Josie and Cassie?

March: March Needs Muscle Mommies! The first attempt on a vertical webtoon formatted comic and you can probably tell since the number of frames is still pretty humble. But I had the specific layout idea for this specific comic from the moment I first came up with it, so it came out very organically and I fell in love with the format from that moment.

April: I don't care how much Mira/TheTransforMistress tries to argue that vampires are a shit tier monster type, I love vampires! (And I love Mira too - as a friend) This one's writing turned kinda messy unfortunately because Patreon changed their terms of service right in the middle of me drawing this one. It was going to be a lot more dub-con, but you can't do that hard dubcon anymore... Well, theoretically anyway. Patreon seems to be happy to turn a blind eye to this stuff as long as you're not overtly non-con. I'm still very happy with this comic, I love the end result on the beach <3

May:  An Orc diva... Top notch concept, right? Incredibly happy with how this one turned out in terms of pacing and how it's revealed that Benizeria is just method acting being such a stuck-up b-word. Lots of people commented on that too, saying that it made it a lot easier to accept that she isn't a bad person, she's just playing one. And she turned out real good-looking too, but as an Orc myself I am biased :P

June: The time traveling shenanigans made this a very long comic with a lot of exposition and a fairly short TF sequence. And you'll notice that I was trying to do some style experiments here, most notable with Rhalora, Alphenia and Gwynn. It was fun trying something new, but as you can see, it didn't really stick. Gwynn looks super cute though, especially in her hissy fit <3

July: Stuck with the style experiments for this one, but it just gradually turned back to my normal style as I was working on this. Very happy with the backgrounds, which I used Dystopika, a cyberpunk city building cozy game, as reference for. A lot of fun establishing the "dark sister city" of Empire Bay, The Sprawl. Hope to set more comics there in the future.

August: Not a Patreon comic for once, just a quick little bust shot of everyone's favorite Gob, Josie. Could have gone with any of the two comics I had made for August, but come on... There's no competition when going up against Josie <3

September: Biased as I am towards Orcs, this chonky cutie is maybe my favorite character of the year. I know I strayed a fair bit regarding her characterization, turning her from an RPG nut to a pervy hyper-dork but it was just too fun of an idea to not realize :D

October: Not too much to say about this comic tbh, except that just like with the redesign of the Noxae in February, refining the Giants' designs was also fun. Not to mention that it was obviously great to add a supporting character to Josie and Cassie's friend circle.

November: The final shot, the coffee drink and the two supporting characters in this comic were all top notch here, but the establishing shot for Empire Bay's Historical District Mall was sooooo fun to work on. Realizing all these settings I have through art is incredibly rewarding for me and it's a major reason I draw to begin with. Can't wait to do more of this in the future!

December: Choosing this specific shot rather than the end result with the two Lantern Fae holding hands might seem like a weird choice, but I just really, really liked how this first frame turned out. It looks and feels just as cold as an actual blizzard and I'm just very satisfied with how it turned out.

And yeah, that's about it. Thank you all once more for this year and thanks for reading. What was your favorite comic of the year and why?

Seeya all in 2025, let's promise each other to make it a good one <3