Lover of Jesus Christ, Nerdarian, GM in training, Queen of the Bookstore, and InterDimensional Historian. I'm very tired. i-am-a-small-hobbit stole my heart, and won't give it back.
A Christian who draws silly cartoons and eats too many Oreos.
I'm not doing commissions at the moment (just birthed a creecher <3)
I wanted a separate blog for my art, so I will try and post something every Tuesday. I’m also working on a bigger, 4 page comic with Breezy & Co. (my ocs), so come check it out!
a lot of times i would find myself struggling to finish cleaning things when the real problem was that I didn't actually have a permanent place for things to go once I had actually picked them up.
once I was making sure I had shelves or bins or organization things first, it became a lot easier to actually finish tidying things up since I knew where things were supposed to belong
They’re so married to the idea that anyone pro-life is this woman hating Handmaid‘s Tale POS that they just don’t bother thinking things through. Like oh well if she can’t kill the baby then you can’t give her five across the eyes.
I would like to point out that fetal homicide laws already exist. In 38 states and several countries if you assault a pregnant woman and cause a miscarriage you can be charged with murder.
I did not have the pleasure of seeing this comic until the zine dropped, but when I did it made me absolutely bark laughing at my laptop X-D Impulse using the speech bubble/ribbon as a whip to knock Skizz’s sword into the golem is so creative and hilarious, and the final panel slayed me dead (like Skizz lol)! Love your use of visual comedy, Melonjel, top notch work 💛💙
Half a year and dozens of hours of work later, my Big Dang Project for the @impandskizz-zine is finally complete. This has been a passion project and a labor of love for me for almost the entire time I’ve had this blog, and it’s so surreal to finally release it to the world.
My eternal love to Imp and Skizz and the podcast, and much thanks to the mods and organizers and all the other artists and writers who made the zine a reality. Go check it out here!
Also, here’s the final panel without the lines and text boxes through it. Just in case you, like me, want to stare at it for a while.
If you’ve read this far please send me asks about Symbiosis I’ve been working on this thing for months and I’m dying to talk about it
Your design for irl skizz being simplified to a tuxedo shirt is so smart, it would seem kind of out of place for him to be in a full suit but off brand to not have some reference to his skin, so this is a really smart middle ground! It also matches Impulse’s black shirt :] Also including the podcast logo in the title is really cool
The first time that skizz breaks the panel border is skizz “perceiving” other which is cool, it feels like he’s breaking out of the comic to figure out what others cant
Also this is probably unintentional but I really like that the red you used to show disagreements is the same red as Skizz’s tie. It feels like it could represent that Skizz has an inherent understanding of the disagreement, and therefore control over it! The blue of the strings filling up the panel as well as the chains linking is awesome too!
This mountain reminds me a lot of Skizz’s pyramid and the heiarchy of needs! So it feels appropriate in the panel that first brings things up
I really like how the first time impulse breaks the panel is also when it’s talking about his strengths. It mirrors Skizz!
These shoes are sick too. They feel almost referential to Impulse’s cyberpunk vibe he’s had in hermitcraft by looking so modern and fancy, but also seem realistic for someone to wear irl!
When the panels focus on just impulse theyre held still, although tilted, and when they include on the “negativity” they’re shaken and scattered! The color draining out of impulse also reminds me of demise lol. The same red used to represent disagreements is used again here but this time as impulse’s injuries
Impulses strings hold him up here while Skizz is the one whos holding up his strings! Impulse also has a lot more than Skizz so this leads me to think these are the connections they each have to people they care about. Hence why theyre also connected to eachother! Also unintentional but I thought Skizz’s tattoo kind of looks like it’s been changed to say “Power”, so by helping impulse up with that arm he’s almost lending him power to sever the unimportant connections
Him reaching out feels similar to him using his strength of communication again to talk to impulse about whats important. Also this expression is so sweet 😭
And here Impulse severs the unimportant connections and keeps the few that he cares about!
This is just such a sweet comic and really emphasizes what is special about Imp and Skizz’s friendship. Its so cool that you decided to take a podcast episode and adapt it to be visual, that is so difficult to do, and especially about such an abstract topic! Really fantastic job on this!!
Hey hi oh my gosh I think I’m gonna print this reblog out and put it on my wall because you NAILED it ❤️🔥 You recognized so much of the symbolism I was going for, and even pointed out some things that I didn’t consciously realize in the moment, but that absolutely add to the piece!!
Behind-the-scenes notes and further explanation below the cut!
Thank you for commenting on Skizz’s silly graphic tee! It’s one of my favorite design choices that I’ve ever made for him. It’s a fun nod to his Minecraft skin, like you said, while still feeling like something he’d wear IRL!
Okay no but the podcast logo being a part of the title was literally the thing that made me choose the name Symbiosis in the first place. I was trying to think of synonyms to “harmony”, hit “symbiosis”, realized that word has an i and s at the end, and went RIGHT OKAY WE’RE DOING THAT NOW
I had so much fun with the composition of this comic, as you can tell. Drawing the panels off-kilter and things bursting out of the panels for emphasis was an absolute delight X-D
The “Disagreement Red” being the same color as Skizz’s tie was a last-minute decision, suggested to me by one of my best friends, Redboots, on one of the art livestreams I did while working on this piece. I waffled between several colors—especially orange—before Redboots suggested the red, just to keep the color scheme simple and keep the visual momentum going. At first I wasn’t happy with the red being associated with Skizz—why would I want the color of the disagreement to be a part of his color scheme, as if he’s part of the drama somehow??—but I love your interpretation of it! It’s his red because it’s in his wheelhouse. It’s not foreign to him. It’s not his happy Communication Blue, but he does understand it, and that’s his superpower. Freaking love that interpretation, I wish I’d thought of it, LOL
And the Disagreement Red popping up again as Impulse’s injuries was once again incidental, but looking back I once again love your interpretation of it and I wish it was intentional 😂 Not only does the grey mean Negativity, but the red means Disagreement, and Skizz is capable of taking control of Disagreement while Impulse is wounded by it.
Those shoes, man. I hate drawing shoes, they’re the bane of my existence, but I knew that with how much emphasis was going to be on them in this comic I’d have to make them look cool LOL
SKIZZ’S PYRAMID MENTIONED!!!!!!! Also you’ll notice that the sun behind the mountain is Impulse’s yellow! It’s the thing he’s trying to reach; but even if you can climb the mountain, you can’t bring down the sun. Similarly, Harmony (by Impulse’s definition, making everyone happy) is a noble but ultimately unattainable goal.
I didn’t think of the Demise connection, but I love that X-D Grey in this comic symbolizes Negativity, so the more Impulse engages with Negativity—fighting with it, being wounded by it, and even using his inner Negativity against Negativity in the form of the grey shield—the more it drains the color out of him. He himself is becoming Negative. He’s becoming the thing he wanted to destroy.
Also freaking love your interpretation of the panel with the Strings. The main things that were intentional here were how many Strings Impulse has compared to how few Strings Skizz has; it illustrates what Skizz says later about his “list” being small. Impulse cares about everyone’s opinion, and it holds him captive. Skizz only cares about a few.
But with that being said, one of those opinions Skizz cares about is Impulse’s!! And Impulse cares deeply about Skizz too! So yes, they are connected. Their relationship being illustrated as the junction between Impulse’s Yellow String of Harmony and Skizz’s Blue String of Communication is one of my favorite pieces of symbolism in this comic. Their friendship is the result of combining both of their strengths. It shows that true, healthy relationships are reciprocal; they require effort from both sides to succeed.
I absolutely hadn’t intended for Impulse’s Strings to be holding him up, while Skizz holds his up—again, the reason I did that was more to balance the composition of the panel than for symbolic purposes—but oh my gosh now that you mention it I love that. Impulse’s emotional stability rides on the opinions of others. He uses them to “lift” his spirits. Yet they also hold him from above and control his actions like puppet strings. Meanwhile Skizz has very few strings, and he holds them, not the other way around; illustrating that he has control of his relationships, rather than them controlling him.
Skizz’s tattoo has indeed been changed, but sadly, it is not anything nearly as meaningful as “power”. Look closely. And maybe think about some shenanigans with Tango from early Hermitcraft 10…. ;-)
100%, Skizz reaching out to Impulse with his blue String glowing in the middle of the panel is meant to convey him using his power of Communication to talk to Impulse and lift him up out of his slump. In a way, this panel illustrates exactly what’s happening in this comic as a whole: Skizz talking Impulse through and out of his Negativity.
And the final panel. Oh my gosh. This is the one that made me want to do this comic in the first place. As soon as I had the picture in my mind of Impulse severing some of his Strings, and them laying arrayed around his feet, symbolizing his freedom from the suffocating opinions of others—all the while being in the arms of someone who truly knows, understands, and loves him—I knew I had to do this comic. It means so much to me as a fellow recovering people-pleaser. As you can see, Impulse has not severed all of his Strings. Neither has Skizz. Both of them still have outside connections, relationships that they care about, direct lines to their hearts. The moral is not to cut everyone out of your life and care about no one’s opinion; the moral is to be careful and judicious who you let in, to choose your inner circle of people carefully. And among all the other loves and connections that Imp and Skizz have, they also chose—and continue to choose—each other.
Again, thank you so so so much for your analysis of this comic!! It was so lovely to wake up to your reblog this morning 💚 You absolutely saw the vision, and even more!
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