My goal for 2019 was to finish my comic prologue for David’s Gate and an Owl corps book, but I didn’t meet either of these goals.

First of all I just want to talk about comics for a little bit, particularly shounen.

The shounen genre of comics had always been my favourite genre for the wacky and fun premises it managed to get me invested in when I was new to manga. Despite the fun I’ve had reading the genre, it’s gotten harder over time to suspend my disbelief for crazy powers and plots that seemingly pop up without rhyme or reason.

I found that the shounen I stayed very fond of were those with structured spiritual systems for superpowers (Hunter x Hunter [Nen], Magi [Magoi], and even Naruto [Chakra] come to mind). I loved having something that would let me in a little bit on how the world I was getting invested in worked, they felt like limited rules that unlocked unique forms of creativity. I still had my cravings for cool and wacky fun, but I think my value for intention, research, and writing levelled up beyond some of the initial stories that got me into the genre.

This craving for ideas that touched on aspects of spirituality in a way that still made coherent sense within a large ecosystem is part of what drew me into writing and creating. It gave me a goal, to fill a gap I saw in my favourite genre, with themes, powers, stories, and characters I desired to explore, knowing that they could only be taken seriously if the crazy world they were made in allowed for it.

This brings me to back my own work.

For the past few years I had been developing a structure for the powers in my setting, and it was largely based on my interests in ancient mythologies, theology, my amateur studies in psychology, and general engineering, but I had no way to visualise them under one umbrella for the sake of intuitive coherence. I studied more, and last year I thought I had something I could build on, but as it turns out, theory and reality are two different things. My attempts at realising these Ideas (aesthetic dreams -> intelligible representation in this case) kept resulting in dissatisfaction, failure, and a great sense of self loathing. I just found myself drowning in a sea of chaotic ideas for the larger part of 2019, it made me unable to commit to anything, in fear that I might create something that fell into that category of unstructured shounen comics I couldn’t suspend disbelief for. If my comic fails in the one area I set out succeed at, what’s the point of making it at all? I would rather brainstorm indefinitely than waste potentially inspired ideas on an inadequate execution.

I couldn’t afford to stop creating however, so my focus shifted towards something more self serving with the introduction of the Owl Corps.

The Owl Corps played a minimal role in my setting, but at this time in my mind, it was largely a break from the headache of trying to figure out the fundamental rules of my comic world. I was quite bothered by this shift in focus from something so vital to my comics’ creation, but since I kept finding myself back here, I decided I may as well put in my best efforts, even if at the time the Owl Corps shouldn’t have been my priority.

I love all my Owl Corps characters, and I don’t regret the time I spent working on them, as I still plan to going into 2020. I just wish I knew how to express what I was struggling with a lot better.

Thankfully for my comic setting, I had a bit of a breakthrough in my latest addition to the Owl Corps. 

5V-Eta and Grischa.

I had a few goals in mind that lead to Grischas’ visual design. Yes of course my self indulgence wanted it to compliment 5Vs’ fat bum, but my other aim was to build her a single seater on-road vehicle with hovering capabilities for fast off-road travel. It took me 3 months of studying, and numerous online videos/lectures on engineering and electricity to finally understand how I could practically (or believably) make it work.

What I didn’t anticipate, was for the studying I did on Grischa to turn the cogs in my brain, and give me the practical insight I was missing in my struggle to unify the concepts I created for my settings’ cosmology. I could finally make sense of my brain’s scattered jigsaw puzzle of ideas, and unbelievably, it was all thanks to my devotion to creating a functional vehicle for 5Vs’ huge ass. Embarrassing.

Maybe I sound crazy, who knows. I’ll just sum up my feelings and takeaways from recent developments.

My visual output in 2019 has been quite dismal, hardly inspiring for the grant I won in 2018. The grant has been invaluable, especially for the time it has given me to be able to just sit down, study, and think. I have a much stronger grasp of everything I’m trying to make, and while my setting is a very ambitious one, I have the tools and knowledge to move flexibly and create intuitively within it without having to worry about breaking my own rules, because I found new understanding.

I guess the main costs throughout all this has been, a lot of time, lack of content, broken deadlines, and failed expectations. For these things I’m truly sorry, but I’m also happy about what I can create from here.

To those of you that reach out to me, or still secretly support me in silence, thank you so much. I hope you all had a good christmas, and I wish you a happy new year. My schedule is still a mess, but I’m a mixture of anxious and excited for 2020.