I wrote about my goals/anti-goals for the comic somewhere, with additional explanations. I figured they might be interesting for you, but I can't post them directly because the thread would be dozens of posts and awkward to read. So here's a link instead: icy.wyvern.rip/notes/al5e32...

Today I completely rewrote the comic intro. I don't want to spoil too much again so here's only one page. You can tell that I'm getting more comfortable with the format.

Drawing a sleeping (kinda) dragon from behind: Extremely unfamiliar territory. At least I don't need to make it very detailed thanks to the filter.

Eeping floof (I'm still not sure about the whole composition of this page, but I want it to be more than just text boxes)

The initial excitement about the comic project has faded a bit, which is a good thing because now I'm in a better headspace to approach it calmly.

I'll try to add some visualizations for what the protagonist describes here. The tricky part is making them not weird ^^

I think I can show you this without spoiling a lot since it's very much in flux. This is how I plan the comic for the next x pages. It's writing the story and making sketches rolled into one step. I wish Affinity had some more options for guide lines that aren't just horizontal or vertical.

I really need to think about the story now before I can proceed further. Namely, do I want there to be sibling(s)? At least one parent is a given because the intro with the darkness is the protagonist sleeping under the parent's wing.

Noise + Halftone lines makes for a really cool effect for flashback panels

I'm working on the comic's logo today. I hope I also find a good name for it

Having a long-term project is good for me. It gives me a goal. I was getting aimless because my previous goal had been to get good at shading. And a comic is just fantastic because it touches on so many areas: storytelling, layout and design, drawing a huge variety of subjects,...

He's the protagonist of the comic. I actually wanted to find a different art style while drawing this as well, but that didn't work out. 😅

I've been playing around with Affinity to establish some basics for the comic project. Things like the fonts, bubble designs, tool usage, and so on. I think my workflow will essentially be a dynamic storyboard where pages start off as text descriptions, then sketches, intermediate art... (1/3)

The first thing I did when I started the comic project was writing down what I wanted it to be and what not. The "turned into a creature" genre has been tackled before, but no story matches my own vision of what it should be (which is fine. The world doesn't need to cater to me). (1/5)

I will post updates about the preparations here.

As a community we’ve been around for about 30 years, I think we have a reasonable grasp on what the common experiences of therianthropy are. Identity is one part of it, but it’s deeper than that and I hate to see it become diluted to become meaninglessly vague when other perfectly good labels exists

I think it's time for me to stop clinging to the therian community and related ones. There are too many differences between how I approach this topic vs. how these communities work.

The legs were too small. Not anymore. Technically this is now "complete", but I still need to add stuff in the background

Drawing the left foot gives me so much trouble. I can't make it look quite right and the angle is so unusual I can't find references. The right one is easy because the toes point upwards and only slightly away from the viewer.

Good thing I got better at shading because with the new wyvern design it has to carry the entire depth

A year ago I was working on a wyvern POV drawing, but I never really completed it. Watching the new dragon isekai really makes me want to pick up again and do other projects like it

This paradox is actually one of the reasons why I avoid therian and related spaces: On the one hand, the core of it is that people "are" creatures other than human. On the other hand, the culture formed around it only highlights the fact that they are, after all, still humans.

I see where you're coming from and I think it makes sense. It works differently for me, though. I can only say "I am a (creature)" when I'm currently acting as my character. But offline or whenever I need to look at myself from a distance, I am very definitely a human.

One way I handle this is via my online identity. The internet is magical because everyone's perception of you is controlled by how you present yourself, detached from your physical appearance. I use this as a form of roleplay to "become" a creature which represents me more genuinely.

I always have a hard time talking about my development throughout my life. It isn't a series of clear milestones or grand realizations, but rather a continuous process where small changes accumulate over time. There's also the fact that reflecting on it automatically leads to reinterpreting it.

Like I said on my main account, this one is for posts which I feel don't belong there. One topic this explicitly includes is my desire to be an animal and how I handle it with my characters and art, and other related topics. It's a significant part of who I am and sometimes I want to talk about it.

Using this account the same way as its fedi counterpart is going to be challenging because the latter usually gets long-form posts. It's easy when the character limit is 8192 instead of 300. 💀