Tifosi Dreams of Byzantium

Artist, author, cries about European things. F1, Eurovision, Art history, epic churches

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Page 66 - Oh hey, remember how the present is drab and depressing? And it’s not even 1930 yet! 

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I make a webcomic, please read it

welcometoblackball.com

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Page 50

Wow! we made it to page 50! It seems like it snuck up on me pretty fast, so that’s cool. And it looks like the chaps have started celebrating already! As long as they’re having a nice time.

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Page 10

Welcome to the present. Looks like we’ve got a main character sighting

Do you like Lovecraft stories? Do you like comics? Did you know that I drew a Lovecraft short comic with Madeleine Holly-Rosing of Boston Metaphysical Society? Then you’re gonna want to check out the Kickstarter for CTHULHU IS HARD TO SPELL, a comics anthology featuring stories all about the monsters of the Lovecraft mythos! 

The Kickstarter starts SEPTEMBER 4rd! And it’s running for about a month. Plus, if you pledge early, you’ll get some early bird goodies like prints and extra comics. 

If you want to see what the deal is, then check out this free preview of some of comics. I can assure you that they are all great!

[melissajmassey]

Featured on The Demon Archives! Hey cool kids! Check it out: I did a commissioned art work for my pal Dan Sharp over at The Demon Archives! He also was kind enough to give us a nice shout out as well.

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Welcome Back to Vatican Assassins!

Welcome Back to Vatican Assassins!

Hello everyone! Thanks for sticking with me through the hiatus. Or if you’re new, welcome! Thanks for checking out my comic. So here we are, at the beginning again. You may be wondering, when the cardinal rule of webcomics is “DON’T START OVER” why I did just that? There were a number of reasons, the biggest of which was that there wasn’t enough explanation in the beginning to make the story…

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The Planets: Earth and Moon

Our relationship with our moon is like no other in the solar system. So I had to draw them together, spinning around each other in space

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VATICAN ASSASSINS RETURNS SEPTEMBER 2016

“Ghost”

Who’s that behind in Viola? Who indeed....

[melissajmassey]

I make illustrations and comics with markers and pens. I love making art and I’m so excited to share it with you! I hope you enjoy my work.

I now have a Red Bubble store! Check it out!

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The Planets: Uranus

I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do a dark, blue/green color scheme, and that I wanted her on her side in some way to reflect the tilt of Uranus’s axis, but I played around a lot to get it just right. I also wanted to make the rings she’s swinging on look like dust, just as Uranus’s faint ring system looks when the sun shines through them. 

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There’s only two things I wish they had kept from the PV--Ladybug’s hair ribbons, and that awesome song! At least I can have them in fan art...

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5/11/16

The Planets--Mercury

So I wanted to do a series, and I just love space, it’s so cool.The planets of our solar system has always fascinated me. But what I wanted to do was to make my series based off of their Scientific and Physical properties, rather than any mythological or cultural designations that we’ve assigned to them.

So here’s Mercury, the first planet in our solar system! Mercury is a planet of extremes--it’s not only extremely hot, but also extremely cold on it’s dark side away from the sun. So I did very bright lights and very dark shadows to show these “extremes”. The color scheme is based off this beautiful image of Mercury, an ehanced image made of photos taken at various wavelengths by MESSENGER:

Isn’t that cool?

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5/4/16

A tribute to Ayrton Senna

[aphtoncorbin]

Day 29. I just want to say thank you to everyone for all the love and support. Making these comics each day have been crazy draining and stressful at times. It has been like passing a month long kidney stone! Each day I would get small panic attacks about what story I was going to tell and whether or not people would understand them or get offended…The entire month of January I was in a quiet panic because I knew this was coming up. And all the support has been amazing. There were so many days that I wanted to skip or just end early but I didn’t because of the amount of people telling me to keep going and that they appreciated it. It’s been both encouraging and extremely depressing to see the amount of African American people who have responded to me saying that they have been feeling the exact same way but never wanted to talk about it. Towards the end I became stressed out because I was getting so many stories and there are just not enough days in February to talk about them all! So please, if you have friends of color. Not just Black or African American friends, but any friends of other ethnicities, take time to talk to them about their stories and learn about cultures other than your own. Thank you, sincerely. And sorry this was so long. <3

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YES YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES

I love this person. This is the message that should be out in the world

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4-11-16

My friend MK’s DnD character, Lilith, a dervish. I wanted to make a nice birthday present for her. This is how I imagine the character, based on reference pics MK showed me and descriptions in the campaign. 

Check out the speedpaint on my Youtube! There’s also some other speedpaints to check out too!

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Platonic m/f relationships need to be portrayed more in media. People (and especially children!!) need to see that there can be such a thing as men and women being friends without it having to end with them falling in love and getting married - stop that icky “when Harry met Sally trope” according to which men and women can’t possibly be friends because romance will always happen. It’s heteronormative af and gross. I’m talking about this as a lesbian who had to deal with compulsory heterosexuality most of their life: stop pushing romance in m/f relationships that are strictly platonic/not hinting any sort of romance. Please.

[melissajmassey]

I write about friendships all the time! Honestly, I find that they can be more compelling than romance from time to time. It’s super important to portray these friendships. It’s why I love to portray Viola, Fife, and Xy as a trio of friends--just three people who really care about each other and support each other without the romance. It’s honestly my favorite relationship to draw in the comic.

[melissajmassey]

A Viola di Largolinio and St. Bernadette of Lourdes. Resonate!!

You can watch the speedpaint here: https://youtu.be/aY8opbWgt-U

Tried something new with the clouds, I’m really digging how they turned out

[melissajmassey]

3/23/16

I wanted a new top banner image I could use around the internet for my stuff, and was like “hey, why not something awesome with Viola and Shining Light Girl?” So that’s what I did. Man, this piece was fun. I just love it! And my first time with sparkly pens!

You can even watch the speedpaint on youtube! You should do that now!

Read Vatican Assassins

Shining Light Girl coming soon to Tapastic