Behind the Tablet!

Goblins of Razard2 was created by myself and a friend at work. The writer really loves D&D and plays every weekend. I personally am a huge fan of fantasy and its not something you see too often in western comics. (And if you do find it, its very convoluted) So we set out to create a story that we would like to read, since we couldn't find anything like it. To me as an artist, it was less about the story and more about growing and learning. Most of our pages were not rushed, but we took our time and I personally tried to make our pages look really beautiful. I really wanted to be known as the artist who had a really pretty style. (Not sure if I succeeded with that...)

Now, years later, there are hundreds of really fabulous fantasy adventure webcomics. The genre has really bloomed online and I love it. I like to think our comic still has a place amongst the masses.

2 years ago, the writer of Goblins and I, decided we wanted to do something more light hearted and closer to home. We created VSEPR1 together, based off our experiences at the lab we worked at. It was a lot of fun and most of the work for it was done at lunch time, with our fellow scientists sitting in to watch us draw and plot.

Awake3, presented as a rather dark tale about a doll-maker in shameful love with her doll, is really about the first year of my marriage to my husband. I'd gone through some bad loves and I still idealized him quite a bit during the early days of our life together, because he's an actual good guy and that was like a new mythical creature to me. The comic is an allegory of my path to seeing him as a real person and no longer holding him at arm's length or putting him on a pedestal, but making him my partner in life.

The Ruby Machine and The Stone Squirrel are pieces of my observations and emotions in my somewhat drab, industrial midwestern town. Backgrounds are all taken directly from my own photographs taken walking or driving around my usual routes. Young male children are used because I have two young sons. Eventually they will be collected along with other stories I'm developing into one volume. I originally started drawing them because I was courting a publisher who liked an existing color comic of mine but could only accept black and white comic submissions.

The killing of Dreams and The Pretty Sun (both coming up) are faithful and painstaking transcriptions of my nightmares.

Allstory is my deliberate attempt to weave all the art I have ever made and recorded into one narrative. I don't remember how I came up with it, but I really love collaging so I guess at some point I just decided to collage my inner life together into one strip. Many of the images within are also directly taken from my dreams and nightmares. Others are childhood experiences and legends that moved me in childhood and move me still.

Biophilia1 is a chimaera of sorts. It came together from bits and pieces that all arose at a different time and from different backgrounds. The core idea of biophilia - the ability to generate living structures - as a gift, and an institution that teaches people how to master it, came to me sometime in 2013. I originally wanted to write it as a novel, and tried to work on a plot, but it fell through: the concept is literally the only thing that made it into the comic. Two years later, I got an unlikely source of inspiration from my students. I was teaching an undergraduate zoology class at the time and encountered several interesting personality types in the study groups. My mind just started working them together into a story, under the biophilia institute framework. It was going to be a one-shot, but as I got closer to finishing it, I got this nagging feeling that I really should expand it into something bigger. So I said to myself: "What is it that you want to tell with this story?" This is where some of my own struggles and conflicts crept into the mix. I had gone through a period of depression during which I thought a lot about life in general, and I realized that the story I was working on could become a sort of home for all those thoughts. The comic arose as a combination of those three elements.

As for Bright Light, it just sort of happened organically. I started it completely free of any expectations, and then struck into a well of inspiration. It's basically therapy in comic form, in the sense that I just filled it with everything that was building up inside me for a long time. I drew what I never had the chance (or didn't want) to talk about. It was a very cathartic and exhilarating experience, and I don't think I'll ever make another comic like that again.

I currently make a slice of life called JODDAS VAPD (each letter represents the casts name). I'd like to say its similar to the T.V. show Louie or a more well known one being Seinfeld. It isn't really about anything except the daily lives of these characters. I started JODDAS VAPD as a more satirical approach to life as most slice of life is usually overly positive or extremely depressing and I just wanted a series that kind of depicts life as what it is, just life. It's more of something I make because people think life sucks and it's nice to know someone is aware of that too. If my comic can put a smile on a persons face then mission accomplished.

My second series which is won't start until late December "Ivolice and the Emissaries" is about a high school girl who helps a weird animal from getting hit by a car. It's discovered that the creature comes from another world seeking warriors to help the many dimensions from suffering the same fate his world faced by the dimension killers. Through a struggle Ivolice discovers she's one of the emissaries and is forced to be a hero and prevent her world from destruction. I came up with this series back in high school, and with the recent passing of my cat I decided it was time that I actually went through and started making this back burner idea a reality.

That's all I have. I'm also starting a commissions account on Twitter, but I still need more references/images to really get that going.

I started making Background People after my friend borrowed my notebook, and did not return it (T.Ag, if you're here, it's already a year old...). Anyways, skipping about her...
I wanted to create some kind of environment where you could see views of two people in highschool that YA authors tend to mistake: the introvert, and the no-fks-given person. And maybe add a bit of my personal philosophy.
Here it is: https://tapas.io/series/Background-People/1

I've been doing comics since 2012. I started The Birthmarks of the _Dark World_1 in 2013 but I rebooted it in 2014/2015 believe, I probably should re-format the beginning chapters soon.

I also have another comic called The RED GUARDIANS Demons, Deities! that I had started in 2012 but I have rebooted it twice since then. Now its in the second almost third chapter.

I had created the concept of Ray Thunder over a decade ago, but then took a hiatus from comics & drawing after burnout from putting a ton of energy into my print series I had been working on for 3 straight years. After getting back into comics and remastering my print series a couple of years back, I had decided on making a webcomic series. Ray Thunder was the only concept I had that I could jump into right away; I changed a few things and developed the story more so that I could start on it and stay interested in it.

My comic isn't published yet but anyway

I've always loved comics, visual novels and manga (my first ones being tintin I believe). When I was younger I drew a comic based on minecraft. It was kinda cute I found the pages only a few days ago actually. Throughout school my friend and I drew a few comics for different pieces of work (well she drew them as she was and well still is the better artist).

Then my father told me about an online comic he was reading called Sluggy Freelance. From what he said about it it seemed cool so I started reading it (I still haven't finished as they changed their website and I lost my place). This was the first time id ever read an online comic.

A couple of years later I started watching LavenderTowne and when I found out she had a comic I went to read it. I then created an account for the site she posted it on and was like this is cool I should make a comic.

I quite often think of characters in my head and one night I thought of this woman who had a purple mist-like stuff coming from her hand that she could use to fight with and stuff. I then thought about her backstory later on and decided that I would make a comic about it and created some other characters (naming one after my friend lol) and decided that the woman i had thought of shouldn't be the main lead and so i created another character, an young girl this time around 11. I then began thinking about story line. The girl loses her parents in a crowed street after picking up a gold locket. a robber trys to steal it and a woman turns and punches him then then seeing some people tells the girl to run and they run off. the girl is slow and they both get caught and taken to a lab.

I then started to draw and thats where i am now (I'm currently drawing the third page while writing this). I'm not a great artist so I'm kinda scared to post my comic as I'm likely going to get hate if people read it.