joodlez

Verlaine commission + character interaction

I am getting my love of drawing back ;-; I realized art has been draining me more than healing me, for a long time. But I love my friend's characters and they've been feeding me in kind! They also commissioned me again to do the first piece. 

I've been "away" from comics for a while but it seems I can never truly stop comicking LOL. Please enjoy some Emotion!!!

The Heart (Jan/Feb rewards sent!)

"But when you enter the heart of the darkness

You'll find compassion

the part of you who loves you

Someone who just wanted to protect you

But forgot where they came from"

I realized when I draw the dark fellas with Jaime, they have lots of eyes, as opposed to full-fledged demons, who don't have them. Jaime, with her warm and intense light, helps them to open them and remember that they too, were born of love, born to protect and watch over the tenderest parts of someone. In that sense, the darkness at its purest is just another incarnation of angels (who are also said to have many eyes). It's also a reflection of my belief that in order to overcome one's darkness, one has to learn to understand and befriend them.

Also the outstanding rewards have been sent out! Thank you so much for your patience and understanding! I will try to send out March rewards before I leave on my small vacation on April 4th. I hope everyone is doing well!

Avatar Charmer Commission

This was a big set that took me about two months to complete. They are apparently characters from yu-gi-oh cards, and I was to draw them basically cosplaying Avatar: the Last Airbender characters. If you like Avatar, hope you can guess who they're dressed up as! :3

OC fanart, Caim/Astoria + Verlaine

Hello! Thank you kindly for your patience as I recharge my creative batteries. These are doodles of my friend's OCs and will be part of the last rewards back from February I haven't sent out yet. Hopefully in the coming week. I hope everyone is doing well!

an update

hello! sorry about the long silence >< It's been ailment on top of ailment and I've been struggling a lot, even in just getting my big freelance job done. I only really have unfinished doodles aside from the birthday illustration and I want to offer more... so I've decided I will take a break and not send out charges for the coming month so I can give myself some more time to put something fuller together. thank you kindly for your patience! In the meantime, here are some Jo-related things. 

The writing in the first picture is in sequence to a poem I wrote when I was still exploring what we call "Darkness" because Jaime always seems to be surrounded by it:

Pain has many faces:

Fear
Anguish
Loneliness
Rage

and when you reject these feelings,
pain grows into
Desperation and Cowardice
Jealousy and resentment
Entitlement and pride
and
Malice

Demons that hold you back
from doing what is right
Demons that push you
into doing harm

But when you enter the heart of the darkness
You'll find compassion
the part of you who loves you
Someone who just wanted to protect you
But forgot where they came from

Jaime as a character is an interesting thought experiment because she's the concept of love personified. Her story is what happens when someone embodies love so completely that she is by default at odds with her sense of self-preservation; she has no boundaries because love is boundless and indiscriminate. Teo and Bernard protect her because she literally can't protect herself. They are loyal to her as a person but also because they want a world where love is allowed to exist. 

But i also wondered in the case of demons, why they would want to protect her when she is their "natural enemy" (??)... Her relationship with Jo was compelling to me because i got to explore what love and light really are, to demons.

height chart

I have been wanting to make proper reference sheets of these guys, but in order to do that I had to make a height chart first so they're consistent between each other. Here is a kind of a rough go at it.

Comfort, compassion, and prayer

Hello! Rewards for the last month of 2022 have been sent ;-; Thank you so much for supporting me.

Here are some older pencils I didn't share here. Sharing strength, sharing in pain, and offering your heart to others. 

I think the way Jaime asks to know about demons and dark things speaks to the way she recognizes that they are just manifestations of pain. If you get to know and understand what pain is in its different forms, you're able to accept it in yourself and others. "Compassion" literally means "to suffer together."

The last one is actually a couple years old. I drew it when I found out some good people I knew were suffering badly and there wasn't anything I could do to help them. Sometimes prayers don't feel like enough even if that's all there is to do.

some affectionate Jo's

Sorry about the delay in rewards!! I have been Struggling. In the meantime please have some Jaime, casually fraternizing with her demon pal, Jo

HBD JC ;w;

Hello!! Once again I kick off the new year with a birthday card for JC. Rewards will go out hopefully tomorrow (today lol)!

Lunar New Year Bun

There wasn't a proper holiday drawing (lol) but here is a small commission I did for Hiveworks! bunny rel for the new year :3

Happy... Halloween!

Just Jaime and friends being cute on... Halloween...!! I'm just in time :3

(happy holidays, stay safe and warm!)

swingy sketches + wip

hello! Sorry I didn't realize I hadn't posted anything for a month haha... I have been juggling a lot of different pictures at once... @_@ Hoping my health will be better in the coming weeks. 

I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!

Candle

a glow-in-the-dark Jaime with a tiny pain friend

(edit: plus some storyboards apparently asdfsdfadfdf)

firefly

something warm to soothe my kokoro

"Cartesia" (Commission)

Hello! Sorry it took so long for October rewards to go out... my health has been on a decline again and it's been hard to function. Here are some crops of a recent commission that I finished! And yes that sure is a dragon, a thing I draw all the time LMAO

I'm staggering the reward files a bit so I can be more prompt next month! Thank you kindly for your understanding and patience!

Jo's story

Before Jo gives up his powers, he appears before Jaime as a towering figure of darkness. He goes through a lot of internal character growth to achieve the smol version of himself. When he first meets Jaime, he would assault her without question -- well, actually, he asks one question:

"Why are you here?"

"Cold," Jaime would respond.

And he finds himself unable to ask her any further questions, for Jaime's spirit lies at his feet silent and motionless. For many months, she does not stir and he stays with her, paralyzed in conflict with himself, for there is so much he doesn't, and wants to understand. Why was she cold? Why was she seeking solace in Hell? He holds onto the single word Jaime had uttered and doesn't even realize that he'd been incubating on strong feelings of remorse, and a deep desire to help her. 

Teo, after surveying him passively all this time, escorts Jaime's lifeless spirit back Upstairs where she can recover. Along the way, he offers Jo a chance to meet her again, but with stipulations. By the time Jo meets her again, he has cleansed himself of much of his darkness and developed a comforting warmth, almost a fiery heat, intended for Jaime's spirit.

When Jaime finds out that she's met him before, and that he was a brutal assailant, he shares the following:    

"I've always had this crude idea, that “winning” would feel good. That if we eclipsed the light, it was something to feel proud of.  But it was nothing like that. There is no climax, there is no actual fight. I thought I would feel great, but I just felt pathetic. What had I actually gained? I was in a state of disillusionment

about my purpose; the way demons were – The way we prey on the weak and defenseless

and how we tout our actions as grandiose achievements

So was that it? Was that all I was?
I was massive and powerful, but that’s all I ever was: a massive tool.

I wanted to be more.

...

I wanted to be like you.

You were small and docile, but you were so much more than me. You were different.

You and your conviction
Gave you the strength to starve. You had virtues that you would die for. I wanted that. I wanted that kind of agency. That was real power. It was a direction you chose for yourself.

And soon I found my heart directed towards you."

To be clear, Jo is still able to use demonic powers; he just chooses not to as a form of penance for what he's done to Jaime, and as a personal vow of self-respect. His original ability utilizes the long tendrils that skirt around him (exhibit B) to form a dome inside of which his victims are made to suffer. He can exacerbate human fears and insecurities, and feed on that pain, as demons are born to do. He's actually very adept at it, and because of his iconic barrier ability, Jaime and company opt to call him "Shell" until he gets his new name "Johan [Yohan]." 

(Jo is still read with a J sound though)

Attica (Commission)

Here is a cute fantasy moth lady named Attica... this one was really fun! Most of the lines were done in pencil.

Jo (again)

I've been using this wide aspect ratio for some visdef looking scenes haha! Jaime's first encounter with Jo, a little dialogue about Jo, and a small vent art from last week.

(edit: i added one of Jo having a conversation with Bernard)

September rewards sent + more OCtober things

September rewards were sent out a few days ago so please let me know if there are any problems with the files!

I coloured/inked some old pencils of Jaime and the boys being cute. It's been a rough month and my brain just goes caput when I try to do art haha... I'm glad I got to get these done though! Even though the process felt kind of clumsy.

light and space

More anime screenshots because... I love matching sets...

I talked about Teo's powers so here are the other two:

Jaime's powers are also abstract. She is a light that illuminates and draws out the darkness in people's hearts. She can also technically purify this darkness but opts not to because she believes each person's darkness is something to be respected, and their own battle to be fought. I think this is also why she gets along with demons despite what her inherent abilities are.

Sometimes when she is pushed far enough, she'll weaponize this to cripple assailants. It's a painful thing, to be forced to face your own darkness.

Bernard is a strange spirit, even as far as spirits go. He doesn't feel like he has an age because he's more space than time and makes everything feel less like a linear existence. He's borne of people's desires to come together and stay connected, so he has some control over... fated encounters, to put it one way. He stays with Jaime and reaches into the universe to make sure she gets the right help at the right time. 

He can also weaponize the rips and tears in space he travels through, almost as their own matter. It's kind of terrifying when I think about it. 

OC-tober shenanigans

Hello! I've been organizing a short narrative for AWC over on Twitter for OC-tober funsies! I'm mentioning this here because, even though I share basically everything with my patrons, I realize it's harder to get a grasp on the characters and their stories if you haven't been there since their inception. I thought it'd be a fun refresher for everyone. Please feel free to follow along!

Also I am sorry this month may contain... degeneracy... 

September rewards will go out soon! 

forgiveness

I used to believe that forgiveness was something people simply should do, out of generosity. But there are some things that we don't have the power to forgive without great disrespect to ourselves. Achieving forgiveness for egregious trespasses requires effort from both parties and a part of it happens to be compassion for the guilty and penitent. I wouldn't be the person I would be today if the right people hadn't offered me compassion for my remorse. I think Jaime's relationship with Jo is a story about forgiveness

Hela

It was my friend Manna's birthday yesterday! It's her OC Hela from her webtoon Raising Hell :3 

I didn't realize it would bring the early halloween vibes

threads

I never really illustrated what the spirits can do in terms of their \\powers//, mostly because they're so abstract...? Teo is actually a pretty cool case. He was built to be able to manipulate what's called "channels" by weaving and needling the threads of pure energy that comprise them. Channels are basically gateways from one place to another, and in the spirit realm that's parallel to the relationship between one being with another. Because it's a world without physical matter, being able to secure metaphysical boundaries is everything (comparable to our emotional boundaries), and Teo does that with an iron fist. Because of Jaime's needs, he is assigned to be her bodyguard/bouncer of sorts. I would say he's technically the most powerful of the spirits I've introduced, even if he uses his abilities on a purely defensive and evasive level.

Because of the protective nature of his abilities, he was a hired gun for many shady organizations before his "social work" position with Jaime as a guardian spirit. As he spends more time with Jaime, the nature of his existence also begins to change -- he becomes less mechanical and more organic, and starts to operate with a purpose, making him gradually more powerful in ways he didn't expect.

Jo

something loose to feed my soul 

also hello I am ready for autumn 

Discord Members List

Hello! I realized a few days ago that while I was sick and unable to manage my bookkeeping that the Patreon bot on my discord server wasn't really doing its job properly and expiring memberships the way it should have been. It was kind of annoying to realize that some people were just sitting in my server for months (years??) without paying so I went through the members list and cleaned it out manually.

However I'm not a bot and I already misfired on a couple names (whom I've already contacted) but I might have missed some more errors.

If your Discord ID (or even username) doesn't correspond with the one listed on your Patreon account, I may have deleted your name or removed permissions. If this is the case, after making sure that your Discord ID is properly registered/connected to your patreon account, please send me a message through patreon DMs and I'll look into it. I apologize for the trouble!

- Juby

August rewards sent!

Hello! Sorry I've been a bit frazzled lately, and I made a mistake yesterday where I sent the rewards out to the wrong people (reward packs typically don't go out to tiers lower than The Sun). So if you got a message with a broken link, please ignore it! I sent new links to the appropriate members.

Here is a crop of a recent commission I finished!

another gift

I sent some gifts to a dear friend :3 

Also, please check your charge history to see if they went through -- some people's have been denied for a couple months. Thank you!

giri giri in colour

It's nice to be able to draw more these days ;-; 

Giri Giri

I found a real bop. I love this dude's songs LOL

Jaime's hanbok was styled to look kinda 60s!! I hope it works LOL