I’ve put up a poll on Twitter and BlueSky asking how you would prefer to get updates with The Forester. If you would prefer shorter comics, but more frequent updates. Or if you want longer comics, but updates are farther apart.
Give those a look. It also happens that you can reply to these blog posts too, if you wanted to say something directly.
Saturday’s update is going to come later in the day because this week I had the fun experience of losing my job!
Don’t worry! I’m still working hard on The Forester and it’s something that I won’t abandon. Life just happens sometimes and we have to adjust when things don’t go as expected. I’m having a lot of fun interacting with you and I’m very happy to see how many people are reading my comic!
So, look forward to continued updates!
EDIT: This week’s update is taking longer than I thought… I’m thinking about doing updates every other week instead. It might not go that way, this week’s episode just would feel very weird if I was to chop it up so that I could keep doing weekly releases.
While I have been working hard at drawing the comic for you, I still am not as far along as I would like. That means I’ve got a ton of drawing to do today! Wooo! \o/
Remember to not burn yourself out when you are working on your projects. Remind yourself of the value you get when you make them. For me, I love to see my story unfolding in front of me. More so than having the script written. It feels much more tangible when the characters are drawn and I can actually see them interacting. I absolutely love it!
I’m also excited to say that I will be applying to be a member of the Spider Forest Webcomic Collective! They are a community of artists who draw comics and promote each others’ work. I’ve already made a few friends on their Discord server and I just love how supportive everyone is. I love giving encouragement and support to everyone there, too!
There’s a lot of great people there and you can find their website here:
We’re getting really close to a design that I was satisfied with. I still sorta do, but I’m very much okay with what I end up with.
I made this and a close friend of mine was like, “That looks like Vex from League of Legends.” I don’t play League and I looked her up then immediately went, “Dammit!” haha!
Sometimes you can’t help but have your characters be similar to something else that’s out there. I think there are artists and writers who are afraid of that and I totally get it. These days, if a character of mine happens to resemble another more popular one, I think “Cool!” and move on if the design isn’t too similar. And then if someone recognizes the influences I pulled from I go, “Yeah! You like that too?” and promptly geek out with them.
I always get pleased when someone knows what I pull from. It means we have something in common and that’s what I like to see.
Lots more to share about how Kyra was designed. She got a smooshed face!
I was set on the idea of a tiny character with the large fluffy tail that this design came about. My style was still developing and I wasn’t very happy with this one after I’d finished it. There was a lot of fundamentals that I still needed to learn. I didn’t know how to fix this design.
There are points in my drawing process that I will talk about later on, but the point I want to keep pushing is that you have to keep trying and trying before you get to your final designs; or even your final style for that matter! Even now I know that my style isn’t where I want it to be yet. So all I’ve gotta do is fail faster!
I was being a major doof and procrastinated on doing the artwork.
I’ll only say that a big reason for that is some real world issues I’m currently fixing that are taking a lot of my energy. I’ll spare the details on that unless you ask me for it.
In the mean time, I’ll show you more on the creative process in creating “The Forester”
This was Kyra’s first design when I started sketching her out. As you can see, there’s a lot there that make it into the final design. Her hair shape and ears are starting to get more refined. Her coat takes shape and the belt she wears gets its first iteration. She has that fluffy tail that I really wanted to work. At this stage, I was just happy to get it down onto paper, but it was very, very far off from where my personal tastes lay.
Again, character design is iterative and the more and more you develop ideas and draw the character, you’ll get the result you want!
So now we get into fine-tuning Kyra’s design. I found from the test silhouettes that I liked having her with a long coat and belt. She gets her distinctive ears and the cowlick in the middle, called an “ahoge.” The term is Japanese and it loosely translates into “idiot hair.” I prefer using the term the “fool’s cowlick” because it sounds a little less hurtful.
At this stage, she has a great, big, fluffy tail! I wanted her to have a chibi style appearance in this phase. There is an artist on Twitter I used to follow in a personal account I deleted a while back. I wish that I could remember so that I’d give you a link to check them out. Their art was very inpirational to this project.
Kyra is still very rough in her design and in future posts, I’ll show you how different her design was compared to the final design you see currently.
I don’t know why I’ve suddenly become so excited to post on social media. It might be because I’ve finally got my comic launched. A big part of my life is now tangible! I’m super excited to share it with everyone and especially to make new friends!
Here’s another part of the design process I took to draw Kyra. Once I figured out the type of silhouette I liked, it was time to narrow down some details. I remember how I used to be so in love with having a fluffy tail on her.
Designing a character is very much a “fuck around and find out” sort of a process. You have to iterate as much as possible. One of my college professors would always push the mantra “Fail faster!” to encourage us to draw as much as possible until we find the right one.
Well, Kyra started out way different than she did today. Here’s the first bit of exploratory drawing and silhouettes I went through to design her.
Ah, yes, “triangle with hat.” It’s gotta be one of my favorite genders. haha!
No thoughts, head empty.
The Forester updates every Saturday.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my website! I'm in the very early stages of making this a full-time gig and it means a lot to me that you'd take the time to come here!
I hope that my stories make your day a little better and that you'll enjoy them as much as I do.