Duskbirds Comics

A side-project sketch-comic by @Landylachs

[duskbirdscomics]

Duskbirds #31 | “Stardust” Originally Published: Tuesday July 30th, 2024

Idle thought from the other day I managed to pen down.

The alternative title I was playing with was "Starcatcher," which is fitting for Elsium. Let me know if you like one over the other!

Full info/thoughts for this page here.

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com 🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #30 | “Click-through Rate” Originally Finished: Sunday May 20th, 2024

Currently enjoying listening to the audiobook for Outrage Machine by Tobias Rose-Stockwell, where this passage struck out at me.

Full info on the official page for this comic here.

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com 🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #29 | “Mattress” Originally Published: Monday October 16th, 2023

It seems we need to acquire a mattress topper at some point!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com 🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #28 | “Angel Island Dracaena” Originally Published: Thursday September 7th, 2023

I went on a hike to Angel Island recently. It was the first time I’ve been there. You take a ferry to the island, which makes it feel like a special little trip.

We took our time during the hike, which turned out to be very fun, because I didn’t know there would be additional sites to see other than general wilderness. There were plenty of those, as well, to be sure – such as this giant version of what, to me, resembled a huge specimen of the “Dracaena” plant we have in our kitchen!

I had no prior knowledge of this plant before, and because we had just started Pikmin 4 around this time, I could not help relating to the starting parts of the game. When your little alien astronaut friend exclaims, “The plants on this planet are huge!” While you, as the player, cannot help thinking how silly these aliens are – how they are unaware by how they are the tiny ones!

More rambling about the hike and plants in the full Duskbirds.com post! https://duskbirds.com/2023/09/12/angel-island-dracaena/

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #27 | “Glorious Sunlight” Originally Published: Friday August 4th, 2023

Managed to polish this one up this morning. I’m sure it’s been noticeable how the style has been fluctuating with these recent pages – I’ve been trying out and deciding which style I want to use more often for Duskbirds. I enjoyed painting the style Duskbirds #23 was in (“Dishes”), and think I used a similar workflow to this one. It’s satisfying to paint, and a bit faster than the sketchier brush I’ve also been using.

In terms of Duskbird style, I’m also fluctuating between two or three different designs – let me know if you prefer any over the others, as I like them all equally!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #26 | “Tiny Jades” Originally Published: Monday July 31st, 2023

Sadly, also a true story. Happily, Portulacaria afra are very resilient. The jades were eaten at the start of the July, and all three plants are budding now! They should hopefully recover without too much issue.

More about our jade saga under the cut!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

We also visited a bonsai nursery last week, and I wanted to ask them if they had any advice for sparrows eating our jades. It was very strange to me, because we had the jades out last year, and the birds didn’t touch them

I was expecting this to be a normal issue, and that there would be some sort of advice we could follow. To my surprise, the bonsai keeper said he had never heard of sparrows eating jades before! The reason I was interested in asking him was because I had tried to search this issue earlier this month, and was surprised that I couldn’t find anything about it. It being uncommon explains why my search had been fruitless.

However, he commented that, “They must have been thirsty.” This would make sense,because of how much water jades store in their leaves. There was a heat wave here last month, which could explain why the sparrows had demolished our poor jades in search for some relief from the heat.

We’ve been trying setting out a little water bowl/bird bath for the sparrows since then (just an empty planter tray we’ve been filling and emptying each day). The sparrows haven’t been touching it so far, but the weather also became cooler since our visit to the bonsai nursery. The sparrows haven’t seemed to be picking off the new buds that are sprouting, and hopefully if it becomes hot again, they’ll go for the water bowl instead this time.

Fingers crossed for our tiny jades!

[duskbirdscomics]

Duskbirds #25 | “Short-Form Content” Originally Published: Thursday July 27th, 2023

I tried this for fun as an experiment recently, and was very amused by how in-depth YouTube’s real-time metrics are.

More thoughts in the full post on Duskbirds.com! https://duskbirds.com/2023/07/27/short-form-content/

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #24 | “Thoughts, Dreams, Memories” Originally Published: Tuesday July 18th, 2023

It becomes a bit strange if you think about it too much.

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #23 | “Dishes” Originally Published: Monday July 10th, 2023

I was quite ashamed when I had this realization, haha. I’ve subsequently added more movement to my day since then!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #22 | “Cozy” Originally Published: Friday June 8th, 2023

The most cozy!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #21 | “Hug” Originally Published: Thursday June 22nd, 2023

Essentially my childhood.

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #20 | “Spicy Tuna Temaki” Originally Published: Sunday June 11th, 2023

Sadly based on a true story.

More background on this page under the cut!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

The original sketch for this is actually from a while back, and underwent many revisions. It’s why the art style is different from the current Duskbirds style – the characters in this page were originally one of my anthro bird characters. Instead of specifically my “duskbirds” species. I tweaked their designs to make them match the duskbird species more – mainly giving them glowing “dusk” eyes, instead of the normal eyes they originally had.

Despite the difficultly I was having finishing this page (parts of it never looked quite right to me), I liked the idea for it – mainly because it was very funny when the scenario happened in real life. Because I wasn’t pleased with various aspects of how the comic looked, I set it aside many times. But, I wanted to finish it eventually.

I finally decided to over the past week or so, and pecked away at it here and there over the past few days. My main issue is it was challenging to have the first panel read as cute, or at least happy, instead of creepy. I don’t think I quite succeeded, but trust me that this is worlds better than what I originally had. Maybe I’ll add an earlier version here at a later date. I have to think about it. Whether my ego can take the embarrassment (haha).

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Duskbirds #19 | “Apple Vision Pro” Originally Published: Thursday June 8th, 2023

Despite the technology being very impressive and potentially groundbreaking, the trailer was so creepy to me!

More thoughts in the full Duskbirds.com post! https://duskbirds.com/2023/06/08/apple-vision-pro/

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #18 | “Stress-Eating vs Stress-Fasting” Originally Published: Thursday June 1st, 2023

As a kid, I used to be the top panel. Nowadays, I tend to be the bottom panel. Ideally, I hope you aren’t either panel!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #17 | “Messaging” Originally Published: Wednesday May 31st, 2023

Probably 95% of the time when anyone takes a while to respond, it’s the bottom panel. But even when we’re aware of this cognitively, it’s weird how our minds try to trick us into this 180-flip – depending on whether we’re the recipient versus the sender, haha.

The original title for this was “Texting” – but then I realized. How often do we still text nowadays. (Personally, I only really text when communicating with my parents.) I still tend to call Discord or Messenger chats “texts,” though, even though they are not technically the same.

I wasn’t sure if that would make this comic panel appear confusing, and I changed it to “messaging” after the comic was mostly finished. Do you think this makes it clearer/more accurate, or would “texting” have also worked?

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #16 | “Pourover” Originally Published: Thursday May 25th, 2023

I started sketching this around when I first started becoming more interested in brewing coffee at home. Which, like many, was during the 2020 pandemic – and also, like many, was largely facilitated by the wonderfully charismatic coffee YouTuber, James Hoffman.

Without intending it to, manually brewing a pourover soon became my morning routine – one I continue enjoying to this day!

This comic is also the first one I’m posting that was edited using Krita, a free & open-source painting program I’ve been trying out! I’m really enjoying it so far.

More coffee rambling in the full Duskbirds.com post! https://duskbirds.com/2023/05/25/pourover/

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury

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Duskbirds #15 | “Communication” Originally Published: Monday May 15th, 2023

This is inspired by the general sentiment of the era we’re currently living in.

This is also the first Duskbirds comic where I switched over to the current font! (“Cartoonist’s Hand” by Shyfont)

More random thoughts in the full post for this page on the Duskbirds.com’s official site!

-- 🌙 Official Site: Duskbirds.com

🌙 Duskbirds on ComicFury