When I saw a Russian figure skater, Dmitrii Kozlovskii, a young man, standing on the podium after pulling all three teams on the top step with him and his teammate, belting out the anthem, it helped me a lot. While I know that stories with the Russian leads are not going to hit it out of the park, I wrote one for myself.
I'm happy to share a link. The biggest thing about the newer versions of Scooby-Doo that I like is the whole crew has more defined and developed personalities. Fred gets to explore his engineering side with his love of traps and is more than happy to step aside to let Daphne shine on cases. Daphne gets to have fun hobbies and channel her inner warrior princess. Daphne and Velma fully support each other and Daphne is right there where Velma breaks down and needs help. Scooby and Shaggy keep the others levelheaded and centered. It's awesome growth.
Oh, this thread is coool.
When I was really little, all I really did was read. I mean, of course I enjoyed shows and movies, but my parents wouldn't let us watch too much, so books were always my go-to. I loved fantasy and post apocalyptic themes, and learned that I hated romance. Even in my most favorite books (Harry Potter, the Inheritance Cycle, and The Hunger Games which all of them I read several times before the end of elementary school) I'd always skip over chapters with a lot of romance. I almost always ended up relating to the guys, but I was actually pretty fine with it; I never needed to look like a character to relate to their personality.
Actually, I discovered webcomics pretty recently. About maybe a year ago I read Ingress Adventuring Company (on their website, I was actually very surprised to find out that they were on Tapas). Like the books I like, I reread it over and over again, and from then I just binged webcomics (mainly on their websites). Like, I ditched books for webcomics. Since I never went onto massive websites, I never did come across a lot of the stereotypical romance ones that are all over other websites, and I found tons of webcomics without much romance that I loved. I think that though Ingress was the first I read, the comic that actually got me to do it was Stand Still Stay Silent (not on tapas, sadly). It's extremely gorgeous, extremely long, without romance and focused on fantasy and post apocalypse themes. The writer discussed how she did her comic, and on one video she talked about how to start a comic. She talked about how if you're unsure, just start it. Just start. And so on November I decided, screw it, let's go.
I decided to make the main cast mostly a blend of ethnicities. It made sense in the story, and though I don't have many personal reasons for it, I figured it couldn't hurt the world to have more minority representation. The top two characters, Alume and Marcy, I relate to a lot, especially with Marcy and her Ace/aro thing. I wanted to make a girl who wasn't some perfect untouchable being, but also not one who's entire personality wasn't a romantic pushover. I also wanted a guy character who felt comfortable sharing emotions with people, who wasn't constantly trying to show how mentally strong they were -- because no one is.
So uhhh yeah that's a lot,, oops but um, yeah
Wow, that sounds pretty dang awesome and makes me think I should check out the new gang supporting each other and really working together to solve cases.
<3
Man this is such an interesting question. It’s gotta be Cyborg from Teen Titans 2003 for me.
He was my favorite Titan. I never thought about why as a kid besides “strong funny robot man who looks like me”, but now I get it. He’s very human, despite his abilities.
I remember that episode where he fights Atlas and is only able to defeat him when he uses his human side to push past the limits of his cyborg parts. He put in everything he had. He had the drive to save his friends because they believed in him and cheered him on. He isn’t a hero because of his powers, but in spite of them.
I really like writing characters who are somewhat out of the norm or really strong, but they learn to not rely on their powers for everything, or have problems that their powers can’t solve. That’s definitely because I grew up watching Cyborg do the same.
Even though Teen Titans Go is weird, I always enjoyed that Cyborg and Beast Boy had a genuine friendship. They aren't perfect but they never judged each other.
My catalyst was Disney's Moana. I'd always been influences by Disney in my art style, and my friend even got me drawing books of my favorite Disney movies. But it wasn't until I saw Moana that I decided diversity and self representation was going to be a big part of my art.
It's strange because Moana doesn't actually reflect my culture, it reflected (some what, seeing as it's a fantasy mash up) the culture of my wife and her niece who I went to watch the movie with. I remember the most important thing was when my wife said "Maui looks like my brother." And he did, he really did, and Moana had the same hair texture as her niece and I (both of us mixed Black). The amount of effort that they put into animating Moana's beautiful curly hair was amazing to us.
Not only was it the excitement that I saw in two people I loved dearly feeling seen, that triggered my shift, but also the over all feeling of the movie. At the time I had recently changed my major from Art to Psychology and gotten a job at a clinic. The song Moana sang about never being able to get away from the water, was how I felt about art. Because even though I was working at an inpatient Adult stress center, the only time I really had an impact on people's lives was when I was facilitating art therapy, or when I would draw a patient and handed them the piece. It didn't matter that I was studying psychology and working in the field, art was still calling me, and I decided that I would see how far I could go.
I feel you there. I grew up pretty "Tom-boyish" and my interest aligned with it though I did tend to get crushes on fiction characters often haha. For me I don't have to relate or look like a character to enjoy them, but it's nice to feel seen in the media I consume sometimes :).
That's what's up! I flippan LOVE webcomics. It's so dang swanky that folks can just create whatever tickles their comic fancy and post them online for folks to find them with ease. I love comic book shops, but the selection can be rather limited if you don't like superheroes (I do by the way, BUT I like so much more haha). Ingress Adventure Co is so gorgeous! I started it a while back, but haven't really had a chance to catch up in a while. Stand Still Stay Silent is another one I need to catch up on!! Thanks for all the reminders of awesomeness fyi haha!
Yas I love it get it!! One of my fav quotes I first heard from the creator of The Less than Epic Adventures of Tj and Amal (story is 18+ fyi) was "How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time." I know she isn't the originator of that quote, but hearing her say it really resonated with me and gives me motivation when I'm feeling overwhelmed at the journey I've taken up in webcomics, and in life when I'm procrastinating to be honest haha.
Also, feel free to plug that comic here!!
That's pretty dang beautiful. I remember that watching that ep and thinking how heartfelt that moment was. Even though Titans Go gets a lot of flak they did carry that over in another episode with cyborg through like this epic rock ballad and he was able to save the Titans once they encouraged him by singing his epic theme song. Silly I know, but the heart was there.
That's some grade A character development and well roundedness right their!
Ahhh that's what's up! That's so dang beautiful I got a few tears in my eyes and I'm here for it! Moana is such a beautiful film and I'm happy that it brought such joy to your hearts and inspired you!
You can change the artist job, but the artist soul still thrives haha! Also, feel free to link your work!
Thanks! Also, that is like, the best way I have ever heard heard webcomics described!
Uhh, my comic's here, it's the first one I've ever made so the first four pages are pretty rough but I'm starting to get more into the groove. I'm definitely gonna check out yours, (after the math google meet I'm a bit late to oops) and thanks!
I still love Moana to this day, my other niece always nags her mom to put on Moana when she knows I'm coming over, lol.
I have two fantasy webcomics, both focus a lot on nature, diversity, and queer relationships, all things that are important to me.
Hehe <3
Ah looking good though and hey, we are gonna look back at these early pages and go "Dang we've come a long way!" haha. I love seeing the change a webcomic creator goes through from start to finish (especially in first timers bc the growth is just neat to watch).
It's our artist journey serialized and I'm here for the ride!
Oh yeah I watched that one! TTG is definitely an interesting show, but there’s heart when they want it to be there
Honestly? Half anime, half literature.
See, I'm weeb trash (though a lot better than I was as a kid, lol), so I've always had a love of kitsune, and as an extension, foxes. My imaginary friend for a lot of my childhood was a fox. I loved books and shows and movies involving anthropomorphic animals, from Redwall to Balto.
But, something always rubbed me the wrong way; that foxes are always the evil animal. Their cleverness is always associated with maliciousness in media. Foxes of First Dark/Hunter's Moon was the first piece of literature I had read that didn't paint foxes as evil--smart, adaptable, yes, but not evil, having only seen Fox and the Hound as my first piece of good fox media. I've spent a lot of time looking for stuff in a similar vein, but it's very few and far in between. Redwall's foxes are evil, Warriors basically takes a huge dump on foxes (to the point where RPers will assume EVERY fox is a bloodthirsty killer), any other Disney fox is basically the sly trickster that ruins everything...Even Zootopia follows this trope (though Nick does get better, ofc).
So, long story short, I got sick and tired of always seeing the fox as the bad guy. I wanted to throw off the chains of that trope and make other animals the "bad guys". So I started taking my fox characters and building them a universe where they could live fruitful lives. I wanted Hunter's Moon, but taking elements and lore from the kitsune and combining them. So that's what my webcomic is: taking that trope and destroying it.
I think high school me would be rather proud of what I'm working on; I'm basically writing and drawing all this for her.
I feel you there. Anime and manga definitely got me into the idea of making my own series and comics first. Yeah I has a Naruto head band and a keychain filled with anime characters about a mile long that I dragged everywhere. Not the same I know, but I always enjoyed characters that have fox faced grins. Yeah they were always up to something, but they were the most enjoyable to follow.
You are totally right, foxes do get a lot of bad rap and I started thinking about foxes in media and the only not villainous one I could think of was the fox and the hound...and the son from Fantastic Mr. Fox (but it's been a while so I'm a little fuzzy on the movie).
Yas I love that! be the change you want to see 100%!!
Awee, that's beautiful and I'm sure she would be proud!
