My art style has been constantly evolving over the past year and a half. I've worked very hard at finding critique and working on improving. I also went through a stint where I was working on the webtoons short story comic alongside my main comic and because of that, I was doing so much artwork each week it really helped me grow much more as an artist.
As far as concept it's been more about refining it down. I reworked the script for chapter 0 three times while I was uploading pages both to try and push myself artistically as well as to fit better in line with world building and plot details I was constructing for the future. It should be settling down and be more consistent and have less need for work like that. I jumped the gun on starting to put out pages because I wanted to get going and didn't want to fall into the trap of continually working on something while never actually making the content. I figured I would learn and grow throughout my first chapter (Chapter 0) enough to be more stable and dig in once I got into the real meat of the comic. Which I believe I have. I still have a long way to go and I'm still always going to be trying to improve. But I think I'm hitting a point of being able to pull everything together more cohesively and I've learned how to research and practice better over the course of the chapter to make everything come out better and with a more whole vision.
I first came up with this idea when I was like 14, so it’s changed a lot. The original concept was to make a world of magic with werewolves and all that. My MC was this happy-go-lucky Mary Su who just seemed like she was along for the ride. Now I’ve fleshed our the story, dropped the werewolf element and added more culture, history, and even some science to explain the magical realm. I also gave my MC a past and a internal conflict where she struggles to think for herself and has to learn not to rely on others to make decisions for her or act as her sense of judgement. The only thing that’s really stayed the same is the LI. From the beginning he’s been the chaotic boy who loves causing trouble.
If you like matter-of-face humor, fantasy, and occasional absurdity. It’s a fun read:
Oh, it's come quite a ways.
It started out as a oneshot novel; I wanted to just write one interesting fantasy story that had no sequels or prequels and ended there.
Mortimer was a quite young half-elf, had some really bad edgy dialogue, and rather than being corrupted by black magic, he had a pact with an extradimensional demonic creature called the Jinxer. The whole series would escalate from Mortimer trying to take small jobs to having to stop the creature without breaching the contract.
Veriesin was actually Ceejay, who was called Frieda in that version. She was the human character instead, and had missing teeth entirely instead of a single quartz tooth (she was still cursed to transform into animals). I only got a chapter in until I gave up, but I still drew the characters for years until I finally decided to tackle the story again.
I unfortunately threw away the artwork over time, but I know Mortimer was actually dressed in gray and had white hair, and the Amberhobs were more rabbit-like and walked on all fours. Not only that, the trio that follows Mortimer were once a single character named Claws, but over time split into three with several working names like Ringbite and Swift - I also had some really yikes-level approach to the character species, which are best left to the imagination, because I was a dumb 16 year old. Louize was always in, but as a balloon-like dragon that couldn't speak.
Funnily enough, though I trashed and changed around most of the start of that version, the ending is mostly unchanged from the Chapter 1 scene we're having right now, exluding of course making the dialogue a little more professional.
Yes, I had made 3 chapter in 2016 most lost to the sands of time. The concept was our MC moving into a town where all the residents were secretly monsters like phoenixes, windigos, black dogs, ect. And plot was less of a plot and more just a weird chapter by chapter ride where the MC is just experiences surreal monsters.
The second version was closer to the current by that I mean it has a plot and the Mc finds a strange book that is supposed to...I had no clue I though I could figure it out latter. So plot was debatable. Only lasted one chapter
The current version dropped the "every one being monsters thing", Had the MC find the book much later, changed her personality. And the plot is an outright mystery on the strange static of the town.
The thing that remained the same was, certain aspects of the character designs.
I wanted a treasure-hunting gothic romance sort of a lesbian drama called Les Derelict, about two lesbians caught in a dungeon of a castle, but I was told it was offensive slur, so I ended up with a dark comedy straight mafia romance called Trapped by the Mafia.
So Crow's Worth is sort of based off of something I wrote in high school but I had to change a lot of things due to me finding them a bit dumb.
So the only Guardian who appeared in the original concept was Tabu. All the character who were changed to Guardians and Tree-People were originally a group of cultist called Nightcrawler. They worshiped worms and would dress in all black and bang tiny gongs before assassinating people. Miss, someone who was trying to escape the cult, was threatened to be murdered for treason. Yet a group of young adults from the group treated her like a queen due to being the daughter of Tabu. The Nightcrawlers were banned from Omnia (originally called The Town of Everything) due to their violent nature, so Miss had to keep her identity secret. The line in chapter 02 where they mention she was on suicide watch was originally suppose to be about how they were watching her so she wouldn't be assassinated.
I DEFINITELY did not plan it to be this gay, but here we are now 
HAHAHAHA! Like, readers are prolly super fucking surprised at how gay it became as time went by LOL oops for the homophobes out there, I guess?
HAHAHAHA! The first few parts ain't that gay, but it gets so gay as time goes on and now I have SO MUCH plans on how I could make it waaayyy gayer as chapters progresses! HAHAHAHA! I'd be super glad to have you binge it huhuhu!
I’ve dropped some of the more drama filled plot points I had, I was going to have a child death but it would have created some plot holes, I’ve added some better plot points to make the story flow better, gave a character a bigger role than he originally had. I also moved up my ML’s appearance because I can add in some dramatic plots to tighten up the plot more. My characters tell me what to do so a lot of them are doing things differently from what I envisioned.
Right, so this might end up a bit long.
Demetori was started as a book named Luna Darkdawn back when I was twelve on a very old and weird site named Figment (I checked and it has since been redone and isn't a user based writing website anymore) -- this was eight years ago. Since then I've re-written Luna Darkdawn/Demetori about 8 times. I always come back to it every year and decide whether I'm happy with it. The only year I've been happy with it is this year.
The only plot thread that has stayed consistent is the beginning of the book and the villain being her father.
In the original manuscript, which I cannot bring myself to open because it is so cringy, it actually turns into a bit of a love story, this is when I thought I was straight and therefore gays did not exist in my mind. Since then the protagonist has been a lesbian and there are other LGBTQ+ roles in the book.
The book basically grew with me. Other chracters such as a Trans character named Lydia was originally supposed to be the protagonists aunt who eventually went on to take care of the protagonist, but she was reworked and I made her into a family friend with very different motives. In the original manuscript the protagonists mother had died but in their youth had been an immortal maiden destined to take care of a gods library who gives up her immortality for love. Now she still has a mysterious background, but it's a bit more grounded within how the book currently works.
I also around five years ago, when I was going through A-Levels, reworked all of the world the book was set in and actually wrote it all down. I'll show you a little of what I mean in screenshots.
For context, when I was about 12 years old, I wrote three books named The Elven Wars Trilogy. They were basically novellas but I was very into High Fantasy at this point so I wanted to delve into it, which was also set in this one world that I built. To encorporate it into the world I set up different periods of time where magic functioned similar but with key changes.
In this screenshot you can see some of my planning, I went into the map, the countries involved, how the magic system worked, what races were in the world, the heriarchy of their royalty and government, all their policies, whether they were right or left wing. For context I was about 16 when doing this so there were inconsistencies. But overall this is still the world codex I use today for all my fantasy books and short stories, this means that all my fantasy work is generally set within the same universe just in different time periods and they connect pretty well when you read them back to back.
Another thing I have been very strict on in the past few years is how the magic systems worked, which I'm not going to go into here because spoilers, but here's a list of (some of) the types of mages in the book and how they sort of work. The names have since been updated, eg Aquamancer is now Hydromancer. Spirit Casters are now Soulkeepers. Air Magic is now Aerosophy. Basically there's a lot of reworking involved but it has the same core.
So, as time went on and I had developed this world more, I wanted to adapt the original concept of Luna Darkdawn into something that I actually liked. So at some point beteen the ages of 12 and 14 it became Luna Demetori, then I renamed the protagonist as I didn't like the name much (she's named Adeline now), and dropped the prefix. So then it was just Demetori, which was fun and all, but I still needed to write the book in a way I liked. This took another few attempts.
Originally I had two plotlines that connected at the end and two protagonists. Umbra was the co-protagonist and was an orphaned character who used Eastern magic and eventually becomes the main characters best ally. The main character also had an antagonist/friend named Cinder in most of these manuscripts. Originally Cinder was a reincarnated god who lived in the Library the protagonists mother was a part of. Eventually Cinder and Umbra united into being the same character and I dropped the god posession part as I didn't think it fit the story.
The was rewrote yet again, I basically reworked it to be in a first person perspective, then hated it and dropped the book for a year. Until last year when I picked it back up, saw potential in the early part of the story and wrote it from a perspective that made more sense, a character perspective. The protagonist had been abused but never had any consequenses of that, she never changed due to her awful childhood and that was due to me being quite a bad writer in my early years. So I reworked the perspective and once I'd finished the escape ark of the book, I decided to just see where it would go. I sort of planned each arch (there are five in total) and just wrote and rewrote what I didn't like. Some of the original ideas are in there, but very few. It's the same world but how the character interacts with it and how the story unfolds are completely different.
If you read this far, you deserve some kind of treat. Here's a crudely drawn map I did a few years ago when learning Krita.
If you're interested in reading the novel, Demetori is a finished Manuscipt that I have scheduled to post 3 times per week.
i think my very first concept for spire had it as an episodic/gag a day strip with william and cog?
overall though spire hasnt changed a whole lot aside from cut content that was redundant/unnecessary. a couple mid-season 1 chapters that didnt really affect the plot got cut and i ended up excluding some more rough/edgy/mean spirited jokes that wouldn't hit the way high school me hoped they would when i started outlining the comic.
there was also a LOT more of a steampunk aesthetic, which is apparent in the early chapters, but my interest in it started drifting away (also i got sick of everything being brown) so im pursuing more of a mix of different styles for this world, kind of going with the idea that different decades and the fantasy species' architecture styles are clashing against each other.
Both of my Glints Saga novels have seen various minor and major tweaks through edits, revisions, and planning of the stories.
The major change I made to Papillon comes up much later in the story, and concerns events that are a major spoiler. The alteration I made does a far better job of making the outcome of the story something achieved by the protagonist, and reinforces the theme of Faye figuring out what she wants and needs for herself in life.
Dove had a much bigger change: becoming about Dove. The story concept was originally meant to be a serial-type story, more episodic in nature, focusing on the character who would become the leader of the new group of magical girls, her accepting the responsibility placed upon her shoulders and discovering the other girls who share her gift. The character who would become Nixe Fulton/Dove did exist in that version of the story, in the same sort of role...and eventually, much like how Papillon is a play on the traditional formulas and tropes of the genre, I decided that having the story focus on Nixe and her role in the plot would make for a more unique story, one that could be written in a novel format like the first Glints Saga story.
I like different power dynamics in relationships. I tend to lean towards age-gaps and usually the older person is the one that has more power. My story was originally came with the idea of professor/student relationship... Then I decided I wanted to write about werewolves, but with werewolves, the wolf obviously has the power over the human and I wanted to twist that around. Then I landed on the son of the creator of the collars that could control the wolves would fall in love a wolf 14 years his senior. Then I created a plot around that.
I might return to writing a professor/student relationship one day... But next I'm working on a story that started as a poor fisherman who got caught in a storm is saved by a shark-monster-creature thing and those two fall in love, so I think just plain old human-human dynamics are going to be put on the back burner for awhile
The story used to be about a goody good angel goddess hiding on "earth?" from the evil bad demon lord who wanted to steal her energy and do other things to her. The lead was a uptight nerd (Kiyo) who finds that one of his classmates(Tamani) is the angel goddess in disguise and he joins her friends in their efforts to keep her identity a secret until she could return to heaven. They also fall in love and all that. One of their plans was that Tamani's best friend, Akina, was prepared to be a decoy and everyone was just weirdly cool with it. Akina was an angry tsundere and her love interest was a hopeless romantic nice guy stalker. There was a lot of gratuitous sexual assault moments too.
In the current story, a group of gods died and are reincarnated as "humans?" with amnesia. As they get their memories and powers back they start to piece together what happened. There's no longer morality gods, but gods of light, darkness, time, and energy. Akina is now the lead. Her personality is a lot nicer and her love interest is a chill dude who isn't actively trying to get in her pants. Kiyo is now a side character, who isn't that prominent in the story anymore.
"Hopeless romantic nice guy stalker".... You just gave me severe flashbacks to some of my early work.
Haha, I still have the old version up, it's called Zenchav. The characters were older and it had a darker tone, was more violent as well. The story was spread out through a really complicated system of several stories/comics using reincarnation and soul connections as the linking factor. At one time I was working on 5 colored comics at once that were all interconnected (Zenchav was the only one I put up on Tapas though) XD I dropped the story for a multitude of reasons, but one of the main ones was that nobody was ever going to read that many comics to get the full picture, lol. After deciding that it was too grand a scale for what I was getting out of it, I then did some soul searching and made a short animated webseries concept that was loosely based off of Zenchav (mostly just using the characters) that had a focus on a fashion designing wizard and his polygamist marriage via a ring. I wrote a prequel script for that which then became the basis for my Zenchav rewrite, where I made all the characters younger and the focus much tighter. A lot of the same ideas from Zenchav are tied into it, but everything has been heavily condensed and it's a much smaller project overall. Anyway, the current project is called Ring Spell, and that's where we are now.