Belated New Years Illustration

Every year I draw Dax and Airy together celebrating the New Year in some shape or form. Generally, the trend has been to get more and more extravagant and use the piece as a final little push at myself as an illustrator. It's meant to celebrate the effort I've put into my art through the year and say "hey, look how much better this looks than last year's!" Since I've begun working full-time on my webcomic, I haven't been able to find the time to do that in the same way. Last year's illustration wasn't bad by any means, but I just couldn't find myself satisfied with it. It certainly wasn't better than the year before. This year, I wanted to take it back to the beginning with a kind of illustration style I used to adore doing. I did quite a few "fake anime screenshots" of Legacy. I'm sure that some of them are still up. Every few months I'd be taken with another idea, but there must be at least three revolving around a scene like this. Dax and Airymaya, alone at night, sharing an intimate moment. It's pretty much my bread and butter haha. Looking back on it, I think those fake screenshot drawings and the million times I drew these two were what started me on the idea of doing webcomics. They were the closest I'd get for a while. The last few months have made me a bit nostalgic for the feeling I got when I first started with them and their story. Don't get me wrong, I adore my job and my work. I am nothing but grateful, but it's true that having your hobby as your job just isn't the same.

The more I work, the more I seriously look at what about the job brings me joy and what doesn't. My relationship with art has always been a little utilitarian, to be honest. I'd wanted to be a writer before I ever wanted to be an artist, but there were a dozen people better versed than me, even as a child, and very few people seemed to be doing art so I picked that up instead. Besides, what I sorely lacked in prose, I could make up for in art. Now I realize that making a comic means having to be good at both. I don't believe that one can fully make up for the deficit of another. That said, I do think good writing (or at least a good enough story execution) will do you much better than pretty art can (though pretty art certainly catches people's attention). Ironically, becoming a comic creator has made me far more of a writer than I had been in recent years. Sometimes I find myself struggling to storyboard an episode and it's infinitely easier to write the scene out than it is to draw it. I have pages of scene snippets in my script. They're way too long for how a script should be formatted, but I'm just not good enough at art to really portray the feelings I want the characters to show. It's very strange to have the situation flipped. I feel more joy writing than I do drawing some days. There's a relief in knowing that today is a script day and not a storyboarding or lineart day. Maybe it's just because it's a break from drawing. Partially, I'm aware it's because I hate the fact that I am not skilled enough to do what I want to in a timely manner. Even when I know I have the capabilities to do better, I just can't because this is a job and there are people besides me who need this to be finished on schedule. No one sees the shitty script with the cheesy scenes in it. 

When I really started developing Legacy, the story with Dax and Airymaya, I did it purely for myself. However, I also felt immense gratification when others interacted with it. The fact that they also found joy in it brought a whole other kind of wonder to the whole process. I used to babble constantly about minute aspects of relationships and worldbuilding. I still have screenshots of comments and messages I'd received saying that I got people to start worldbuilding more too. I screenshot all the comments I get about my webcomic, no matter how short or silly they may be. I feel like I've grown a lot as a person and creator. I also feel like I haven't changed at all. Given the chance, I'd still babble about minute details that mean very little to the story.

It's a new year, I've been doing art for more than a decade, and I'm the professional I'd always hoped to be. It's a new year and I feel like a new, beginner artist more than I ever have. I can feel my inexperience in every drawing. I can tell my bad habit of not fully listening to instructors when I know a bit about a subject is coming back to bite me in the ass. I still never fully learned how to break things down into their base shapes. Anatomy sucks ass. I drew Dax and Airy because whenever I feel like I don't know what to do, they're the guys I go back to. Again and again and again, I draw them, and I remember that "yeah this sequential art thing is really fucking fun." I love them with everything I am, they are everything to me. I vehemently refuse to fully work on their story until I can face them with my head held high. When I was younger, I used to say (and this will sound very cheesy): they saved me so the least I can do is make their story. Though I am still far from good enough to do them justice, I still want to remember every year that I do this for them. I continue to draw and write and everything in between because I adore the process of creation and, more importantly, I adore the process of reaching out to people and allowing them access to a very vulnerable part of me and in turn being allowed communication with them. It's the greatest honor I could ask for and I cannot express that gratitude enough. I say it over and over and over again but it's everything to me as a creator. Of course, I create because I love the act of creating, but it's also because I love people and connection and art and story have a way of communicating with people in a way I often struggle with.

I apologize that this New Year post is so long-winded and rambly, but that's what I do best and I miss this. Maybe I am just going full circle back to my interests in the past, but now I feel I can do it with a better grasp of why I like it. I don't know where the next year will bring me, but I sincerely thank you for being a part of it in whatever way you decide to. 

All the best,

Poppy