An Odd Experience
I've been on DeviantArt a long time. Over 20 years, since the days when it was pretty dang new. I've never sought a lot of attention on it, and have had very long quiet spans. The artwork I went to school to make, sculpture and printmaking, doesn't really lend itself especially well to this sort of home I guess, so it was always more a place for my sketches and assorted odds and ends. My doodles, even the loosest and sketchiest, related to the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K fandoms, have historically been where the bulk of my page traffic and favorites came from. Which makes sense. That's the part of my rather niche interests that has the most intersection with what usually moves here on DA. I have been fine with these facts, content with quietly doing my thing, and glancing in here every so often.
Doing my Batman/Joker comic Inside Out has been *very* different from that arc, and it's been intriguing to see, though also kind of emotionally complicated.
As of today, in those 21 years, I've had 45.3K pageviews, so a couple thousand a year across those 21 years. Out of those page views, about one-seventh at 6.3k, are from one piece, page 11 of Inside out, which I posted all of two days ago.
I love writing and working on this comic, and it's been gratifying to see the strong response it's getting - certainly far and away more engagement with my work than I've seen to date, by far. Of course, it ties in with a much larger fandom than what I'm used to dealing with, as I usually shy away from pop cultural juggernauts like Batman in my artwork. Fanart and even fan fiction has not historically been my thing, though I know that's one of the quickest ways for a not-famous artist/writer like myself to draw eyeballs on the internet. However, this story is one the beginnings of which that came to me almost in a flash back n 2019, and I felt compelled to write out the first portions of it, about 4 comic issues worth, over the couse of a very short amount of time, then put it down. more recently, I decided I'd like to finish the story, and to experiment with translating it into a more visual medium. I like drawing, but I've not trained in sequential art specifically, and I just don't draw quickly enough, or ink and color well enough, to do this story justice in anything like an approachable time scale, but AI makes translating my writing into a comic on a workable schedule much more practicable. I've long explored the intersection between artist and technology in my artwork, and this is a new horizon to explore. Later on I'll share some of the ways I've engaged my own manual work to inform procedurally generated artwork, and how I've made it a dialogue later, as time allows.
Working with and around the often frustrating and equally often hilarious limitations of the specific AI tools I'm using to generate the artwork in a style and medium so different from what I've trained to do for my manual work, and then editing the results in GIMP, then going into design and layout mode to turn my prose story into a full blown comic book, has been a fun and rewarding challenge. While it feels weird to actually be getting so much attention on DA after my long hermit-like existence and my often infrequent visits to this site, I'm really happy that people like the results so far. I hope my visitors will enjoy the story that the artwork is being created to tell. It's certainly giving me a bit more incentive to come round and poke my head in, so thank you!
I've completed 18 pages of Issue 1 as of a few days ago, and have started in on the fourth and final scene of the issue. Heading into the home stretch, where I'll need to even do a cover at some point soon here! So the buffer is still pretty healthy, and I am pretty sure I'll be able to finish issue 1 before my posts catch up with where I am. We'll see where the workflow is once issue 1 is done.
Here's a quick update on where things are for my project Batman/The Joker: Inside Out. I've completed the first twelve pages of the first issue, and scripts/page/panel-by-panel breakdowns for the first two and a half issues. The ongoing short story/novella it's based on would run through a mini-series of about 5 full length issues, though by the time it's done there will presumably be 6-8 in the total run. It's a specific story with a beginning, middle and end, and of course we're still in the first scene of the first act. I'll post about 3 times a week, at a cadence of M/W/F, until my buffer of already-prepared work runs out, and then I'll reassess what my cadence will be going forward. If you're enjoying my comic, or even if you think it's terrible and I'm a hack, I'd love to have your feedback.
A Little Validation
I define myself as an intermedia artist, meaning I work in many different media, but my academic artistic studies were focused on a studio/fine art context (my degree is in studio art with an emphasis in printmaking and sculpture, some hints of which you'll see in my gallery) rather than illustration, digital or sequential art which are more common fields for DA artists. However, like any decent artist I've always loved to draw, and an important sign of how I'm doing emotionally has always been how much I draw, paint or otherwise produce artwork of any kind. A lot of things in my life, such as my commitment in church, my marriage and teaching my seminary class have been going well and have been very fulfilling, but doing a mundane rather than creative job for a living has been gnawing at me. Lack of artistic expression has been a killer, now matter how good some other aspects of my personal and spiritual life have been. Even if I do stick with a regular job for the long haul, I'll have to produce art just to maintain my own sanity and sense of worth.
My wife knows how much my art means to me, and she's been trying to encourage me to start creating it again, and expressing confidence that if I can get rolling and let my creative juices flow properly I can actually make a living with my painting and printmaking rather than with a job in corporate America - she knows that on principle I loathe working in the private sector even though I like my company and the actual job I'm doing is fine in and of itself. It's been difficult to believe her, especially with how out of practice I've become and the self-hating psychological stuff that goes along with the same. Like most artists I've known, I'm pretty self conscious about my work, and it's hard to feel that any improvements I make will ever be good enough, or that other people will value what comes out of me.
Since it's fan art, I shared it with a particular corner of the Zebra Girl fan community. Then, within a couple of days,
the series creator, came round, saw it and gave it a +fav and some feedback on the piece itself. Getting some validation and feedback from a professional creator whom I respect about what I'd done with his brainchild... that felt really good. While it may be a small thing, the small things matter. Thank you.As he said:
"So I thought I'd create this journal tag thingie, but these are the questions that make me curious. I'm going to reply to the questions myself, just in case you're curious. I encourage you to elaborate on your answers, and not just list the names of the OCs that respond to that particular question, but I undestand if your time is limited, no worries!
I hope this spreads, even just a little. So without further ado, let's get on with the questions!"
How many OCs do you have? (post thumbnails here if you feel like)
Hundreds, possibly thousands. I don't really do fan art - there are probably fewer than 5 pieces of it in my entire gallery. That's because I make a point of drawing original characters, either my own or my friends'. On the RP side, I've been a roleplayer and GM/ST/DM/Whatever for almost 30 years, and I'm a pretty avid writer as well, so I've created over a dozen original settings either by myself or in collaboration, each with many inhabitants of my own creation. My Argent Passage project alone has hundreds of original characters in it. Sadly I don't draw nearly as much as I used to and so my skills in that area have deteriorated a bit (hoping to reverse that soon!), so a LOT of my OCs have no artwork to depict them. For the sake of brevity, I'll pick 5 (a nice arbitrary number) to post and talk about, limiting myself to a few that actually appear in this DeviantArt gallery.
Meet the characters!
Filidh Uhlrik Gunderit MaghOctavius von Beck (Legend of the Archons). The latest (and now my favorite) of the many different iterations of Uhlrik, a character I've set in many different worlds and settings, but this is one from an original Renaissance-inspired fantasy setting. He's a member of the filidh caste (an itinerant bard/lorekeeper, basically), a berserker and wielder of the arcane Principle of Opposition, chosen by the Pillars of Occida to become one of the nine Archons.
Here we have Eel, AKA Linda Lee, a really overcomplicated Dreamspeaker/Virtual Adept dual tradition Mage and adopted Uktena (originally Black Spiral Dancer) Kinfolk and former Fomor (Classic World of Darkness). I've put thumbnails that depict a couple of her different life stages (left is current technoshamaness mode, the middle two are from the brief advance of her mutation just before she was released and became human again, and last is her "main" fomoric mutated form.
Ashaad Aktarrha Khamaal ul-Tarrikh (Argent Passage). I really need to get around to creating a finished drawing of this guy, given that I've written a whole novel series' worth of stuff about him and his huge cast of extended relations, friends and foes already and it's still going strong. He's a very charming and flashy Ashari (tall, lanky goblin) warrior-princeling, diplomat, lover, trickster and reformer with a great adoration for scriptural and literary quotation. Man, this guy's fun.
This is Pete Krieger, AKA Stone Fist (Capes). He's a super and a pretty serious brick, whom some of my friends described visually as sort of a cross between The Thing and Marv from Sin City. He's a retired, cynical, disillusioned and crusty former super-hero and military man that walked away from it all and is now trying to drown his bad memories and ignore how lonely and empty his life is, but his past refuses to stay in the past.
Brigitte von Teufel, AKA The Fiend, AKA Die Hexe and many other aliases and code names besides. She was originally created for a game of DC Super heroes set during World War II, but I've taken her in other directions since then, away from the super heroes thing and into a more dark urban fantasy milieu more reminiscent of Hellblazer and the Dresden Files. Brigitte is a hybrid human/demon sorceress who was a nazi agent during WWII but turned against the SS occultists that made her what she is, so she was an outright supervillainess that betrayed her own side in order to save her homeland. By the modern day, she has long abandoned mortal political ideologies like nazism as foibles of her foolish and narrow-minded mortal youth, unworthy of an immortal, and instead devotes herself to learning and the acquisition of occult lore.
Do you have a main/favorite OC amongst the ones you created? Who and why?
That would probably have to be Uhlrik. While the filidh version from LoA goes back about 5-6 years now, I've been tinkering with, playing, drawing or playing different iterations of this character that exist in different settings and AUs for 24 years now (several of which appear in my gallery). You might say we go way back. Heck, my DA account is named after the guy. Filidh!Uhlrik is presently my favorite one, though I still have a huge soft spot for OriginalWFRP!Uhlrik. The current Uhlrik iteration is a heck of a lot of fun, bringing in new bardic lorekeeper/singer elements to go with the prior barbaric warrior vibe, and it's fun bringing across the many contradictions of this character: barbaric yet educated, scary yet gentle, poetic yet warlike and so on. Plus, Opposition as a Principle is very enjoyable to roleplay, driving him on to be dissatisfied with the flaws in what is, and to push back obstinately yet creatively against what he sees as the wrongs that prevail about him. He's a social revolutionary among his own people, the quasi-fey Fomorians, but also a would-be peacemaker trying to build bridges with their age-old enemies and oppressors humanity, employing eloquence in both word and song right alongside his steely sinews and axe to effect change on a societal level.
Let's get to know your OCs by comparison:
Who is the tallest? (feel free to specify height, if you have thought it up)
Ashaad clocks in at about 6'9", so he towers over nearly everybody he meets including even his fellow Ashari (Not the Ugri though, but they're a trollish race so they cheat). At one point we jokingly mapped out the main Argent Passage cast to who they'd be if we dropped them into one of those silly high school AU's, and he was one of the eaasiest to place: the bad-boy foreign transfer student that's also a the basketball team's star player.
Who has the most striking and unique eyes?
Heh. This is always one of the questions with OCs somehow; It's like some sort of requirement in the fanfiction and amateur fiction writer worlds that characters have to have distinctive eyes. Of this list? Hm. Most of them are pretty striking, though not all of them are really unique. I'll go with Stone Fist, because his eyes are actually made out of living jade thanks to the magic that turned him superhuman. Brigitte's eyes are pretty normal blue until she starts wielding magic, at which point they start to turn milky white and blank for a while. Honorable mention goes to Ashaad, whose eyes are really big, brilliant yellow, slit-pupiled and almost totally overtaken with iris like a cat's since the Ashari are night-dwelling creatures.
Who is the strongest? And who is the most intelligent?
Strongest? That's Stone Fist's job: ol' Pete Krieger can throw tanks around, punch bad guys right through buildings and all that good comic book type stuff. He's definitely the top of this heap. Brigitte would take second place, what with her propensity for pulling tank hatches off with her talons. Sorry, Uhlrik: You're really, really buff and strong enough to break chains and smash through wooden doors... but you're in a world that works on a different scale than comic book-dom does. Poor goatlionboy.
Smartest? Probably Ashaad. Dude's got a terrifying intellect and a knack for staying several steps ahead, and he's a past master at playign the old Xanatos Speed Chess. Total Magnificent Bastard/Guile Hero (depending whether or not you consider this fellow a good guy). Brigitte's probably got as much raw brain power, but Ashaad thinks quicker on his feet.
Who has the most beautiful voice?
Another popular trait of OCs is amazing voices, yay! If we're talking singing voice, for this group it's got to be Uhlrik. Dude's a fey-blooded bard with a really deep, rich singing voice. His speaking voice is pretty awesome too; my writing partner on the LoA series accurately pointed out Michael Clarke Duncan as a good model for his speaking voice, though only in pitch - of course MCD's accent is entirely wrong since Uhlrik's people are sort of a mix of gaelic and germanic mythological cultures and myths. If we're talking speaking voice? Ashaad, hands down. Dude's voice is pure sex, often compared to liquid gold and honey spiced with cinnamon. It's occasionally said in-universe that women's clothes come off at the sound of his voice alone.
Who has the most troubled past?
Oh man. I'm pretty cruel to my major characters, so that would be a bit of a toss up if Linda weren't on this list; Eelgirl has got the others here beat big-time. Inbred girl raised in abject poverty among a family of twisted white trash cultists that worship the Defiler Wyrm? Check. Lots of really nasty physical, emotional and sexual abuse? Check check. A drug habit? Oh yes, though she's finally clean these days. Self harm? Linda's a longtime cutter and has repeatedly been on suicide watch, though she's finally doing better there. Being forced to pretend that the baby she bore at the age of fourteen is her little sister instead of her own daughter, but having to take care of the kid herself anyways since her own parents were basically wastes of skin? Check. Said daughter later getting kidnapped and Linda having a spirit made out of pure sentient misery shoved into the gaping wounds in her soul that all the above contributed to? Abso-freaking-lutely. I think I'll stop now, but I could keep going. Trauma conga line doesn't even begin to cover this girl's life up until her mid twenties. It would be funny if it weren't so absolutely horrible. Seeing her gradual faltering progress towards mental and emotional health and her embrace of akhilanda (the power of brokenness) to help her repeatedly reinvent herself and try to move on has been inspiring and often moving.
Who is the most selfless, and who is the most evil/selfish/malevolent/callous?
Uhlrik's the most selfless and altruistic; the guy's consciously on a quest to make the world a better place. He's trying to bring a measure of peace and understanding between his own Autumn-tainted Fomorian people and the other mortal speaking peoples of Occida.
As for the other evil/malevolent etc side, Brigitte's a merger between a human sorceress and a fury (demon of vengeance, retribution and punishment). Also, she's a former nazi that moved on from nazism not out of regret and the desire to become a better person, but because she decided that the utter failure of National Socialism has discredited it as a political philosophy. ALL mortals are inferior, so insofar as she's concerned there is no point in hating on one ethnic group more than another anymore, since doing so is akin to arguing over the comparative worth of red versus blue play-doh. So yeah, she's an easy lock for that one. Charming woman, really.
Who is the most thoughtful and/or erudite?
Ashaad Khamaal, as a positively labyrinthine philosopher-prince, is probably the most thoughtful, but he's nowhere near as erudite and educated as Brigitte von Teufel. The woman has spent most of the span from the late 1930s until today (with occasional interruptions for warfare and espionage) engaged mostly in academia. Under either her own name or several aliases, she has over a dozen different doctorates and habilitations in an assortment of fields like archaeology, anthropology, classical antiquity, ancient languages, religion and so on.
Who is the most impulsive and hot tempered?
That's not easy... both Brigitte and Uhlrik are prone to berserker rages if they're pushed hard enough, and Linda has only two speeds: stop and kill. Uhlrik's the most impulsive, plus it's easier to trigger his "dead-eyes" berserker state than Brigitte's more literal burning rage, so I'll go with him.
Which of your OCs is the one is the one you consider more revealing about yourself? And what does that OC reveal about you?
Uhlrik, bar none. I've always identified with the persecuted outsider that's just trying to help, the voice in the wilderness who follows his ideals in spite of the odds against anything coming of it. Plus he's got a sensitive, artistic soul and he tries to play the peacemaker.
Finally, tag up to five people from your friends list!
I tag
though they are of course free to disregard the tag if they like. 