FAIR WARNING: This is going to be a multiple part response. Pictures to follow in the second half.
2005: Humble Beginnings
I've been drawing ever since I could pick up a crayon and scribble on walls. My early attempts at making comics were in early 2005 when I was in third grade. Being a huge Legend of Zelda fan at the time, I really wanted to give comic making a go and before I knew it, I was cranking out homemade Zelda comics whenever the urge hit me. I never published any of them online as I wasn't yet aware of sites like DeviantArt not to mention I didn't have any way of putting them online for the world to see for my mother was very stingy about camera use. After I did acquire ways to upload my work to the internet, the urge had long since passed as I had gotten bored of making Zelda comics and decided to focus more on a fan made doujinshi I was making when I decided to call it quits on the Zelda comics.
In the early days of me making Zelda comics, my art was nothing special as I didn't draw any clothes on the characters I drew leaving any readers I may have had if I ever uploaded them to the internet to guess who's who. That changed on the one year anniversary of my comic in 2006 when I changed the style in which I drew them so that they were much much easier to tell apart. That said, things of course still looked wonky and the characters just stood around mostly with their arms and feet sticking out in perfect symmetry (no joke that's how I usually drew them).
2006-2007: Zelda Comic, Now in color and more!
One day, I got really bored of drawing random strips and decided to draw a comic adaptation of The Wind Waker which of course had to be in color! I also made my own self insert comic and my own self insert to use in the Zelda comics occasionally around this time. I think the title was called Super Boy or something like that. Sadly, I don't have any of the 12/13 issues I drew with me any longer and I cannot recall for the life of me what I did with any of them :/ From what I do remember, It was a lame "magical girl" rip off but with guys instead of girls.
I would later make another colored Zelda game comic adaption that same year this time focusing on Four Swords Adventures. After I finished that in May or so of 2007, I was burnt out on doing comic adaptations of video games so I just went back to making random strips like I was before with the odd Super Boy issue here and there that I would normally make during school hours. In late 2007 when I was in sixth grade, I got the notion to make yet another comic this time a self insert comic like Super Boy had been, but with the world of Bionicle to serve as the backdrop and characters to mingle with. Did I mention I was a huge Bionicle fan back during it's original run from 2001-2010? This of course wasn't destined to last as I drew the cover and then two pages before calling it quits as I had other stuff to draw along with playing video games or Bionicles every day after school back then.
I remember at some point during that year, I had taken an interest in drawing manga style and I had tried but failed oh so many times at nailing down the basics as drawing manga was a huge step up from drawing the weird mutated chibis (if you can call them that) I had been drawing for over two years and counting at that point. Unlike Super Boy, I have thankfully over I'd say 250-300 manga drawings saved dating all the way back to late 2007.
My early attempts at drawing manga warrant a chapter of their own however...
2007-2008: New Frontiers
Continuing on from my last chapter, I had seen some Manga drawing tutorials on the internet here and there mostly on how to draw heads and eyes both of which I would naturally fail at the first several times I attempted to emulate the style. I remember not using my "mock manga" style as I've come to call it in the years since in my Zelda comics. I guess at that time I was too used to drawing in the style I had developed drawing that comic so I used the sister series Super Boy ( which I drew whenever I felt like it as opposed to ZC's several times a month schedule) as the guinea pig to test out my new "skills" I was picking up at the time.
On the last day of the 2007-2008 school year, my mom took me to the library after picking me up from the half day of school we had and my life would forever be changed that summer as I laid eyes upon a "how to draw manga for dummies" book and spent the entirety of the summer of 2008 hungrily devouring it and other books I would pick up along the way as I spent hours in my bedroom with the tv on drawing whatever crossed my mind that day. Remember how I said in the last chapter I had attempted to start a Bionicle comic but never got it off the ground? That idea briefly came back in the summer of 2008 as I drew lots of "concept art" for a possible series, but for whatever reason, I put it off yet again due to other things going on at the time as well as other ideas I had that of course never got off the ground either.
Call it luck or fate, but in early 2009, I would finally realize that dream I had...for a time.
2009-2012: The Three Virtues
It started out like most all drawings do. Simple boredom. One night at home, I felt like drawing a "human" version of one of the main heroes from the original Bionicle saga named "Kopaka"! Feeling content with my drawing, I proceed to draw human versions of the other five heroes "Toa" as they were called in the story one day in math class which I thankfully had at the end of the day that year. Feeling content with what I had coupled with the concept art I had drawn the previous summer, I decided to just go with it and draw as many pages of Bionicle Manga (what I decided on for the name of my homemade fan made doujinshi) as much as I could. I remember every chance I got over from 2009-2010 I would draw. Didn't matter what it was as I did the occasional manga piece that wasn't related to Bionicle Manga. However, because I was still getting the grasp of drawing in manga style, all of chapter one and most of chapter two looked stiff or wonky anatomy wise or sometimes both!
As for Zelda Comic and Super Boy...I dropped SB after it's two year anniversary (Sept. 2006 to Sept. 2008) and I had begun to decline in how many strips of Zelda Comic I would make going from several a month to just a few a month if even that as I became more and more dedicated to improving my manga style and working on BM. I would soon "graduate" from middle school in May of 2010 and that summer I kicked my creative juices into full gear as I started chapter 3 of BM and would work on page or two per week of the course of the summer between middle school and high school. Due to personal laziness on the last day of summer vacation however...I would end up finishing Chapter 3....in spring of 2011 and I only had a panel left for chapter 3 too!
Ninth grade came and went, but fortunately I would still draw the occasional drawing in my notebook or on lined paper to keep my manga skills sharp! At some point that year, I started work on what would be the fourth and final chapter of BM as I was losing interest in bionicle for the toyline had ended the previous year and I was growing out of it naturally as I became in both girls and more adult stories. The last page I drew was at the halfway point for a planned page count of about 24 and I drew what would be the twelfth and final page of the series in class one day during my sophomore (10th grade) year in 2012. (Ironically a math class to boot).
They say that when one door closes, another door usually opens! That proved to be true as during 2011, I was formulating ideas for a different kind of manga I had in mind. Whereas Bionicle Manga could be classified as a shounen, this project could be considered its antithesis. A shoujo manga!
2011-2013?: Girl Power!
In the summer of 2011, I had tossed around the idea of yet another new comic as I felt BM had kept my art chops too narrow. I didn't want to do another action series as BM already filled that role for me and I had been looking at a lot of shoujo manga at the time and found myself wanting to emulate its style as best I could, so I began doing what I do best and cranked out a piece of concept art for a new series I would spend the next few years thinking about even when I wasn't working on it called Kori No Bara
I didn't get serious about the project until early 2013 however in the latter half of my junior year of high school when I took to Twitter, Instagram, and the beloved indie comic site InkBlazers which at that time was known as Manga Magazine. KNB provided a new challenge for me. Two new challenges actually!
I had never worked on an original series that I could take full credit for. BM was merely a fan made love letter to the early years of Bionicle and with how much Lego had pushed the story in the early years through comics, flash games, and later chapter books, I had my work cut out for me story wise. With KNB, I had to actively think about the characters and plot and which direction I wanted to take them in while also faced with the task of making my main characters and the story itself stand out from most of the drivel I had read in the shoujo category concerning certain....clichés is the word I want to use.
I was slowly but surely getting myself accustomed to using Manga Studio and a drawing tablet I had received on two separate birthdays. MS4 I got in 2011 and the tablet I didn't get until 2013. I had never gone digital until 2013 when I decided it would be far easier to make KNB from start to finish in MS4. Granted, I faced a similar issue I had faced four years ago when I was still getting the hang of drawing manga and doujin's the hand drawn way and similar to how I can't bear to look at early pages of BM these days, I cringe at the art mistakes I made digitally speaking with KNB
Up until I had started my first semester of 12th grade which would also turn out to be my final semester of school period (my school had a program where if you got enough credits to graduate, you could be eligible to not be made to attend the second semester of your senior year as a reward!), I was fairly consistent with making new pages of KNB doing about three pages a week during the summer. Sadly, I put the series on hiatus to focus more on school and when I did finish my last semester of school, I ended up losing interest in the series in favor of working on colored in "pin ups". I've been tossing around the idea of reviving/rebooting KNB lately, but I can't say for sure yet if I will indeed elect to act on said idea.
2014-Ongoing: The Future
Over the course of 2014, I did a few "pin up" girls from time to time as I had gotten my own laptop and a copy of MS5 which has a superior coloring system to that of MS4. When I wasn't doing that, I was usually playing video games or spending my nights watching adult swim. I thought of doing another comic series, but that didn't get far as I plain just didn't have the energy to see it past a few pages. These days, I tend to draw more personal art pieces than I do any comics or Manga. However, the future is of course not written and can be whatever you want it to be as a wise doctor once said! I've already mentioned doing a revival/reboot of Kori no Bara, but that will be a tale for another day...
I won't be posting any art pieces this time as it's late at night right now where I live and I'm about to go to bed!
