hi. im alex. he/neos, 20. im an artist, character designer, and illustration major. i like my ocs, lotf, shakespeare, homestuck, and other stuff. catchall blog for whatever i think of. have fun looking around!
persona rentry twitter instagram
( came from the lotf fandom and wondering what the hell is up with the "shoreliners" i keep posting in the lotf tag? read under the cut! )
read about my oc project "life of a shoreliner"
attack them on artfight! ( linked for the month of july )
hi lotf tumblr! ive noticed a number of lotfers are finding me bc of my recent shoreliner post and i realize i haven't properly explained what my deal is in quite a while so here's a full "lore" post for anyone interested!
below the cut is an explanation of how i got from my antics in the lotf community to my original story "life of a shoreliner" (and also why i still post them in the lotf tag). if you recently followed me and arent really sure what my posts are all about id encourage you to read!
"so, first of all, what the hell is your relationship with lord of the flies?"
i first read lotf in my sophomore high school english class around april-may of 2022. i was pretty much drawing the characters from page one. around this time i didnt post a lot of my lotf art for unrelated reasons but i did share them in my personal circles and amongst my friends. after the school year ended in june i went back to drawing my ocs/other characters and didnt think much about the book.
in september of 2022, through a series of strange events i came across the lotf fandom on tumblr. i had a tumblr account at that time, but i hadnt really posted anything and wasnt active on the site by any means which is why i hadnt discovered it before. i then began posting my lotf fanart on here and interacting with the fandom, which brought back the hyperfixation full force and was the beginning of my lotf obsession period.
over the next year or so i was posting actively in the fandom, interacting with people, sharing my art, etc. this was all on an old account that i abandoned sometime in 2023 for certain reasons that i wont elaborate on in this post. i still had a deep love for lotf though and continued to make lotf art and post it on different platforms like twitter, instagram, and discord, where i had also connected with fandom members. during this period my designs for the lotf cast were very sporadic and changing constantly, as i couldnt decide on designs i liked.
after i abandoned my previous blog i created this one and started making posts. i tried to distance myself from the lotf fandom on here for a period of time. i eventually semi-returned, but wasnt as active and invested as i used to be, partly because i was under a lot of stress at the time and had other original projects i wanted to work on. lotf was still a big part of my life at the time, though, and i was still sharing things offsite.
"thats great and all, but you're clearly not still drawing the lotf characters. so what gives?"
well, after messing around with my designs for the characters for a couple years, i decided that my designs/headcanons had become so divorced from the novel that i might as well just make them my ocs. so, in june 2024, thats what i did! i redesigned who i considered to be the main characters (ralph, jack, piggy, simon, roger, maurice), gave them new names, and made them into original characters with their own project. i called them "the island kids".
the island kids would progress through most of 2024 with me, being redesigned ever so often. i was happy to have the characters i cherished so much as ocs now with the ability to do anything i wanted with them. i also enjoyed the distance between me and the fandom it gave me, because though i was still posting them in the lotf tag, i wasnt truly drawing the characters anymore and i felt a lot less pressure to involve myself in fandom activities as much as i used to.
however, though i loved the island kids, i couldnt shake the feeling that something was still wrong. during december 2024, i finally had an epiphany and rushed to redesign them. i realized that while their designs were technically strong, they didnt feel connected with any sort of story and i just didnt feel proud to display them as my "main ocs". i felt like i was still tethering myself down to the traits of the lotf cast and it was limiting my ability to design them well. the redesigns i made that december were drastically different than any iteration that had come before, and i still regard it as the most important and influential step i took in their development. this is the point at which they really started to align with how i imagined them in my head. i put them into a project i called "life of a shoreliner", with the characters themselves being cutely referred to as "the shoreliners". this has stayed true until this day. they were also finally united by a story, which has changed slightly but still retains the core elements from this overhaul.
the shoreliners, for the most part, stayed consistent for over a year. i did do a minor redesign session in may of 2025 in preparation for last year's artfight and because there were a couple things i really wanted to change from their initial designs. the last/most recent iteration i made of them was done just last month (june 2026), over a full year since their last iterations and about a year and a half since they first became the shoreliners. for context, while they were still the lotf cast and the island kids, it was rare for me to go even a month without doing a new iteration or design overhaul, which shows how much more confident i am in their designs as the shoreliners versus any of their other previous forms.
their most recent iterations did take quite a leap from their may 2025 designs because i have improved a lot with shape language, color selection, and my overall character design skills. i also wanted to make some updates to their names, backstories, and other meta info that was way easier to integrate with brand new designs and reference sheets. for me, these current designs capture their personalities and story roles much better than any other iteration ive done of them, and im very proud of them. if youre interested in seeing them, heres the post!
"woah, that sounds like they went through a lot of changes. is there any way to see them all together?"
yes! i recently made full design lineups for each shoreliner so the progression of their designs can be seen clearly. they are labeled with dates and other info. if you want to see just how much they've changed from 2022 until now, feel free to take a look at these.
"well thats cool, but why do you still add the lotf tag on your posts if theyre your ocs now?"
the simple answer is for reach. id actually prefer not to add the lotf tags, but it's an unfortunate truth of the internet that not a lot of people care about original content. i still post them in the lotf tag in case any lotfers happen to see them and are intrigued enough to want to know more. i dont know when ill be confident and/or popular enough to stop using their lotf "legacy" tags, but for now i will keep including them.
that's the end of my big long explanation of how i ended up in the place i am now. im very happy with how the shoreliners have turned out after all this time, and i certainly dont anticipate that theyre going anywhere any time soon. lotf still holds a special place in my heart, and i do still enjoy seeing content about it, its just not what i draw anymore and thats okay. for all of you that made it to the end, thank you for reading and i hope you have a widened perspective on those guys called "the shoreliners" now!
i have also found myself playing this game and to the surprise of nobody i immediately made the shoreliners
(also, a shoreliner 2026 update will be coming soon including a couple name changes which is why their names are different. lowk using this game as a chance to get myself used to their new names so i thought id share)
Doing a museum themed stamp rally for WHA at Denver Fanexpo!
Here's my prize piece, based on Monet's "Bridge over a pond of water lilies" :D
I think it turned out rather nice <3
