Mutagenesis - Process journal V

not a huge amount of stuff this time since i've started a new job. it's nothing special but it means i can only do project work on my free days. i'm glad at least to have a more reliable source of income now, lol. here i have some character work, including stuff i posted to twitter recently, and i've also developed a written language to go with the zine. 

like most things i work on, worlds and settings have the tendency to become larger and less enclosed than i was originally planning, and this has been the case with Mutagenesis. this alien world and species will definitely make more appearances in my work after the completion of the zine, as i keep finding myself thinking about the world and figuring out what i want to do with it. 

i've been inspired by early furry scifi creations such as the Skiltaire, created by Mark Merlino/Sylys Sable in 1971, and various species created by Ken Sample/Ken Coug'r in the 80's. many early depictions of furries were connected to scifi/fantasy since furries first started to gather at scifi conventions, so there were many original species that were explicitly aliens or "recoms" - human-animal hybrids. others were invited to participate in these worlds and create their own characters, leading to the rise of zines featuring art, writing and other media that featured such worlds. another example is Vilous, a universe created by Mick Ono and Kiki CR which notably hosts Sergals as well as other species. i believe Vilous has been in development since 2003 and work on it is continuing to this day.

what appeals to me so much about these universes is the level of outside participation and collaboration. i've been a sole author for every project i'm working on, so i think with this setting i would like to invite people to share in it and create their own characters. once the zine is done, i'll probably draw up some finer details about the species and world so anyone can create their own characters. i'm definitely not highly ambitious about it, but i think it would be fun to see what happens :)

anyway, if you want to see my process for the fictional alphabet i've included captions on the images. the main inspiration for the "cut and paste" approach of rearranging existing characters was how Shaun Tan created a fictional script for The Arrival:

and i did not intend to write so much for this entry so that's it! thanks for reading and sticking around, as always <3