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Sep 2017

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.

Demon House1 officially started posting early 2015 but I was mainly inspired by some cool demon designs and comics by Daryl Toh the Halloween prior. I thought, "hey, wouldn't it be cool to design some demons of my own!" and so I did. I had my two main demon designs first, and then slowly built a supporting cast and loose plot idea around them.

Heavy Horns1
is intended to be a mlm romance that I would want to read. I never really liked romances because I always thought the ones available are too fluffy or overbearing on the romance part. I also wanted to present something outside your usual BL tropes and style, something more realistic. I liken my series to the gay interest films you see on Netflix rather than mainstream BL. Although my biggest influence for this series is Est Em, a BL/yaoi author, but her stuff is so different my mind was blown when I first read her work.

Sarota Springs1 is my first real venture into darker story-telling. Of course I still have humor sprinkled in but I wanted to present a bleaker story. Can't say too much else lest I spoil something. I was inspired by Stranger Things and various American Horror Story seasons.

Erie Waters1
was originally a rejected pitch to a queer paranormal romance anthology. I liked my premise so much though that I decided to expand upon it and draw it out anyway. I'm quite proud of this little story, as it's my first completed one on Tap and I think I wrapped it up nicely into a complete package.

OOh that's quite the story! And it really adds up when looking at your comic with the background in mind.

The anime influence it's pretty easy to tell, but I think I could see some of your other feelings and way of thinking translate to the comic, thank to the backstory. So yeah you got the feelings nailed down! Keep it up!

OH and you even made an animation! That's awesome! I animate too and I know how hard and time consuming it is, you even made the armor 3D and animated, so I'm guessing you have rigging knowledge and all that stuff. Impressive I'm sure there was a lot of time spent into the animation!

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.

OOh so many ideas and stories I love it!!!

I see so that explains why the neons look so bright and kinda friendly!!

Well seems you have a lot of fun with this and no problem when it comes to coming up with ideas so that's great Keep going and tons of luck!!

I'm particularly intrigued but the comic idea that everyone would hate, I wonder why or how it interacts with it's audience.

Thanks :slight_smile:

And actually the armor in the animation is 2D animated, but I did use a 3D reference model that is fully rigged and modeled. It makes drawing the armor and characters SOO much easier :laughing:.

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

Aw thanks. I have been creating my story for years now and decided to start a comic a few months ago. Earth's Immigrants is its name and I just restarted it. I hope you enjoy.

And oh my goodness your art style is amazing! Well done!

yes I modeled all the ships and vehicles and weapons myself it takes forever but it's awesome when I need to reuse or change an angle. so I don't have to recall the finer details especially with the ships or have tons of references to look at.. plus 3d Rendering is my job so. figure i'd put it to use in my comic :smiley:

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.

OOOOh well first of all your style is very interesting, there's lots of experimental panels, and they flow together quite nicely, it's a joy to blaze through those pages!

I really love mythology and we don't get to see a lot of Irish stuff going around, so I appreciate it! Seems like a lot of change happened with that story, quite an interesting backstory I wonder how and how much of that will be reflected.

OMG! Bunny Bandits!? that's... adorable!! I want some of those please!

But anyway that's a very sweet backstory, it sounds like fun and feel cozy. I can see the mix of D&D in goblins for sure, but the story feels different, I love fantasy and that one is very unique for sure, the panels are well do and the art style is very nice, they look pretty and crafted, so yeah you can see the work in there! I would say you succeeded quite well!

I've noticed a lot of STEM people tend to do comics, and develop their artistic side, I've notice that a lot, and I like reading comics from different backgrounds, they feel very different. For example I like how the lab in VSEPR behaved, despite having fantasy elements the lab felt like a normal lab, or more like behaved like one.

Pretty interesting comics! Thanks for sharing!

Oh yes!

I remember your comics from my first post! Very experimental and surreal. The Ruby machine is the one that stuck with me the most!

It's so cool to see them now with this new knowledge, and from a completely new light! Makes it much more

Thanks! I'm happy you love it! I hope to make them someday in my life. T^T

For Raise Craze, it was during the hype of the TV show LOST. and I was thinking the show was just watching fans to see what they wanted and ether do it or do the opposite just to keep things crazy. I had an over arching story that was a bit like the movie Ground Hogs Day. I thought it would be funny to make people reread the comic over and over again but with few differences. Things kept getting weirder and weirder that the lot just got out of control and it was just stupid. XD Basically a bunch of BS for plot. But all that has been scratch besides the very opening to the comic and it takes a different route at a plot twist. beyond that I don't know where to go with it. But I might figure it out some day.

Oh, i created Exhekar Tales1 because i like to create worlds and everything in it: The species the monsters, the places, the kingdoms, their language, everything! Like a sandbox game for myself XD. Ah, but that won't be funny to read, so i thought making several stories of that world, explaining bit by bit through the characters those aspects. (Of course, i'm trying to do it in a funny way so it doesn't get boring)
I like fantasy and sci-fi so my world is based on that. My main inspirations would be skyrim, utawarerumono and re: zero (not the only ones of course).
Regretfully i'm not a native english speaker so i can't make jokes or idioms that really works here. And i'm sure my grammar isn't the best e.e
My goal? Seeing you, the readers, enjoying this world, learning from it, making speculations, expanding it, liking the characters or hating them, have fun ;D

For now i'm just uploading the first story, so there's a long way to go

I love older manga/anime, dragons and cats. My comic is actually a combination of two stories I began drawing when I was 15. Alone, I don't think either story would've reached completion, but together, the characters just work so well together that their adventures just sort of ballooned into the comic I have today.

I started it because I was always disappointed when something said it had dragons in it, but then turned out they weren't the main part of the storyline. The people of my world are all dragon/humanoids that evolved from dragons instead of apes. I also like exploring different kinds of relationships and creating depth in my characters to make them feel as real to the reader as they feel to me in my head. I'm a sucker for a good romance, and I do have that as a major part of the story, but the theme of love and friendship (trying not to sound too corny here) is also really important to the story. All the characters genuinely care about each other. That's one of the things that makes manga like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura a couple of my favourites, because there's a lot of love ^_^

Pandemonium started as a short story about a noble being possessed by a demon, and somehow gets rid of it (at the time it was called Possession). It was really cruel at the time, much closer to a horror comic than it is now (just action, gore/horror, zero romance), I guess it was also a way for me to get rid of my frustrations xD
But I'd come up with a lot of scenes in my head with them arguing, discussing, and the demon interfering with her everyday life, and the reactions of the people around her. So I decided to turn it into a proper story (* w *) That was almost 3 years ago xD I'd since then researched angels and demons, the bible, the seven sins, mythological creatures across all pantheons and other related stuff to turn it into what it is now ^^ Rather than just fighting and cruelty, it's now much more about what exactly 'good' and 'evil' is and who gets to decide that, and also about putting the seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues against each other: are the sins really that bad, and are keeping those virtues truly a good way to live? :slight_smile: