my old comics!

i deep-cleaned my apartment yesterday, i went so overboard my muscles actually feel sore today!! i came across some of my past failed attempts at comic-creating, and i thought it'd be interesting to share them with you!
these are, by far, not all of my early attempts. i might go digging deeper into my boxes full of art from the early years of my life at some point and take more pics of all the embarrassing stuff i did...!

on a side note - i have once again reached that point of "shit, i forgot how to draw, just holding the pencil feels so wrong and weird" and everything i try looks completely off, which is frustrating and keeps my productivity lower than i would like :( but, maybe looking at old stuff and reflecting a bit can help me out here - also i haven't "blogged" anything here in a long time, despite wanting to do it more often!!

i was also thinking that maybe it's time to try something completely different from what i normally do. i've always been super interested in concept art but never dared to give it a shot, maybe that would be some nice exercise to get out of this approaching slump quickly, hmmm 👀

anyway, let's begin!

first up are some sketched pages for my story "shallow sleep", which i have been working on since 2003 or 2004. it was my very first serious attempt at a completely original story, and i had always planned to draw ryou's &charon's story. (if i were to pick it up again, i would definitely give ryou a new name) however, the older i got, the more the story kept changing, i have at least 6 different versions lying around somewhere, some just as written text, some actually got their first few pages drawn. 
the examples below were, i believe, my last attempt from 2012/13? after that i ditched the story, i didn't think i could do it at all. shortly after that, however, i got into doujinshi and drew my first rei/nagisa book and haven't stopped working on comics since then. so maybe there's still hope for shallow sleep to become at least a short story some day!

while version 1.0 of shallow sleep was completely set in a place inbetween the world of the living and the realm of the dead and dealt with how to move on from a life that ended too quickly and leaving everything behind, version 6.0 was set in an alternative world to ours, where charon, death god in training, came to live with humans to learn about them, in order to understand them better and be able help their souls cross the river when their time has come. which turned out to be very difficult, when he fell in love with a human. 

if i were to pick this up again, i'd definitely have to change the plot a little again, but the main story/message i wanted to go for since the very beginning, is still the same.

bonus: one of my very first attempts at handling copic markers feat.charon and ryou XD

i don't know what year this is from but i can still see the "trying too hard to stick to the rules" in the drawing. back then i had no experience with markers whatsoever and still used the "proper" copic paper, which is actually the worst paper for markers ever :'D i never finished this piece, i'm glad i didn't waste any more time and copics on it hahah. but oh well, everyone has to start somewhere, right?


next up - a short comic i did for a contest once. it's called "exodium" and deals with a young girl who just lost her beloved pet, heard about the rainbow bridge, where all pets go when they die to be reunited with their owners some day, and she decides to go look for that bridge, because she can't live without her good boy. her journey is followed by the person who protects and takes care of the rainbow bridge and everyone living there, and he tries to stop her from running towards her own inevitable end, but, of course, she can't hear him.

it was an 8-pages long short story that actually won a prize, too XD i don't remember which year it was - probably also around 2011/12? anyway, here's the cover and some page WIPs (i inked traditionally back then)

aaaand a big jump to 2016! i got into quite the rut for a long time and just couldn't draw anything at all. fanart wasn't fun anymore, working on original stuff wasn't fun anymore. my partner recommended trying something NEW, making new OCs, and just let happen whatever's gonna happen with them. and so i did just that, and suddenly these two were born:

i think it's very obvious just in this piece, that drawing didn't feel natural at all. i can SEE the struggle, it looks so wrong and not like me at all. i don't know if that's visible to anyone else, too??

either way, they have no names, they were supposed to be for a short story with only a liiiittle dialogue, about a magician and his pet rabbit "apple" and a homeless boy. i wanted it to be a mix of victorian era stuff with some modern 21st century influences. and i wanted it all to be drawn with pencil and then get some sepia makeover in photoshop:

i actually forgot where i wanted this story to go, i didn't write anything down back then OTL but - halfway through page 8 i got out of my slump anyway and went straight back to whatever i had been working on originally and i haven't touched these two ever since.

it's interesting to see changes in style and medium, even if this is not a very good documentation of my progress over the years. i might actually do that in the future - unearth every single comic i have ever worked on, put them all in one post and see what exactly changed when LOL;;

but i do hope that this little glimpse into some of my old works has been a bit entertaining to read and see! i certainly had a good time when i found them yesterday :>

as mentioned at the beginning of this post, for the past days i've been feeling a bit down over my art and i feel unable to produce anything good :/ i might either a) give it a rest as much as i can for now and hopefully this feeling will pass or b) try something DIFFERENT, paint some backgrounds, do some studies, try to draw in a completely different style?? we shall see. if case B happens, i'll share my sad attempts with you, of course x)

for now - have a great sunday!  and if you actually read until the end.... KUDOS TO YOU, you're awesome

PS: don't forget today is mother's day!! go call your mother!!