A 3 Troy Harris Comic: Why does this brooding hockey player keep giving me coffee? Inspired by Role Model by Rachel Reid
Had lots of fun drawing and colouring these hockey boys! Troy and Harris mean a lot to me so it was great to create this comic in their honour! Please look at the backgrounds, I spent like 3 hockey seasons on it.
One of my favourite things about Exy is that it's a co-ed sport. They really out here like 'we do not give a fuck what your gender is. Can you take a punch?'
“He'd come to the Foxhole Court every inch a lie, but his friends made him into someone real.”
I’m not gonna lie it’s borderline embarrassing how long I’ve worked on this that I’ve spend 2 days tryna figure out how to caption it to make it less embarrassing but oh well. It also made me realise the banner says exy ncaa instead of ncaa exy but at this point that’s none of my business
Short of being inside Nora’s head here is a (mostly) (I think) biblically accurate and to scale model of the Foxhole Court and Nora I have a several questions.
Also rendered so many images of this I had like 50 cameras in the scene would y’all care if I just did a photo dump.
God I have so many things to say about working on this I had to restart like 8 times it was a mess but if I start I won't be able to stop Imao though if anyone's interested in a breakdown of all the sections and materials I would be more than happy to make a post yapping about it.
Viewport renders below
I really wanna expand this and add the ticket both/ food stalls as well as all the behind the scenes areas like the locker room, foyer, foxes lounge, ect. I’ve been slowly mapping out where everything is so shout out to Neil for being overly anxious and needing to map out the layout and exits of every room he walks into.
Everything modelled, rendered and composited in blender, textures painted in clip studio paint.
The Heartstopper webcomic’s first update dropped on September 1st 2016. Today, on April 11th 2026, the story has concluded.
I don’t quite know how to put all of my feelings into one letter. Heartstopper means more to me than words can express, but I’ll try my best.
Heartstopper has defined the past decade of my life. It started as a fun side project and quickly grew into something much bigger, eventually becoming my career. Despite that huge and unexpected change, making the Heartstopper comic feels the same to me as it did on day one. When I sit down to make Heartstopper, I feel at peace. When the world feels so scary and difficult, I have been able to return to Heartstopper, and everything feels okay again for a little while.
Nick and Charlie first appeared as supporting characters in my first novel, ‘Solitaire’. In Solitaire, Nick and Charlie represent the idea that hope, love, joy and connection can persist and thrive despite the trials and tribulations of being alive. So maybe it’s ironic that Nick and Charlie have come to represent this in my own life. They have brought me joy. They have given me purpose. They have given me everything, really. And I’m so grateful for every moment I have spent with them.
Heartstopper is profoundly special to me. Which makes it extremely hard to say goodbye.
But it is time. I always knew that Nick going to university would be the end point of the story. And despite how sad I am to be bidding farewell to these characters, I am so, so proud and excited to have made it to the end and concluded the story exactly the way I wanted to.
Any webcomic creator can tell you that making a webcomic requires a heavy amount of determination and endurance. To draw a page almost every day for the past ten years has required a lot of sacrifice and a lot of energy. But every moment was worth it. And now that it is complete, Nick and Charlie’s story can be experienced from beginning to end, for the rest of forever.
I wouldn’t have made it here alone. From the very start, Heartstopper’s readers have offered so much support, love, community, conversation, and enthusiasm. Knowing that there are people out there who love these characters just like I do has given me the strength to keep going. I’ve also had the support of many colleagues, friends, and family members, who’ve all helped in different ways at various points in the past decade. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been here for the journey.
I have no idea what I’ll make next. For now, I’m taking a break. And I know that Nick and Charlie won’t simply vanish. I expect I will always return to drawing them and writing about them, probably in smaller ways, for the rest of my life, as long as my body allows.
Nick and Charlie will forever be in my heart, hand in hand on a beach somewhere.