THIS IS A WIP don't mind this

it's me, alllgator-blood, it's my main account. woagh

[river-samsa]

Popping on here real quick to drop off the ref sheets for the patients in my comic!! I am adjusting to new medication and it's making me very, very sick, I had to miss a sign painting gig today because I am just hurling from these damn pills, BUT I'm slowly making progress on drafting this comic. The meds r supposed to help with memory loss and inability to focus as well as depression so if it works out, that should be some of my main issues out of the way, and I will be UNSTOPPABLE

Here's some better views bc I know that canvas is NOT going to be visible on mobile:

Full bios will go up eventually, but rn this is just a little teaser of what this cast will look like, and references for me of their monitor placement/general style/the various contraband they can get away with having

[river-samsa]

Okay so I drew a little something...

Catch

Now I flee

(ALSO I NOW NOTICED BUT I FUCKED UP ONE OF THE ANTENAS THINGIES, AHH, just ignore it ignore it 💔)

I'm a few days late, haven't been online like at alllll for my own sake but I drew you something at 2 AM so here I am before I scamper off for a while longer?? When I saw this art I was just like WOAH HOLY SHIT, I don't know if anyone's drawn my actual OCs in years so it was a huge surprise?? This particular one is a pretty important one to me as well so it means a lot to see an artist I really like draw one of my actual OCs, IT TURNED OUT REALLY GOOD BTW- DW ABOUT THE ANTENNA, I CAN'T EVEN NOTICE WHAT YOU'RE REFERRING TO SO IT'S THE LEAST OF MY WORRIES

Your birthday has passed bUT I drew your meerkat/deer sona gnawing on kallamar's head because I'm trying to get back into drawing, I haven't made you anything in forever, and because I thought it'd be funny:

DON'T ASK, I DON'T KNOW EITHER. IT'S NOT MUCH BUT. I'm intrigued by your non cotl art as much as your cotl art, and I thought this would be a good way to thank you for being interested in my non-cotl art as well. And especially thank you for your patience bc my god I haven't posted or interacted normally in forever, I owe a lot to everybody who hasn't given up on me

[river-samsa]

I MADE THESE ALL IN ONE NIGHT/SITTING, they're just sketches ofc but holy shit I took the ideas that had been in my brain since 2023 and finally put em into a physical form. It's them...it's the guys from my imagination...here they are

When they're all done, I'll hopefully be posting all of these individually with a little blurb about their personality and role in the story! A lot of this is subject to change, they're supposed to be representative of real people I've met in the psych ward with some additional traits for Flair or Entertainment. BESIDES Ohchiish, who is named after a real person I will yap about when I finish their ref sheet, but otherwise is entirely fictional.

There's no especially "good" people in this cast, nor are there particularly "bad" people. Everybody is fucked up in some way, everybody's going to lash out at some point or say something completely uneducated that hurts somebody else, but they all have an understanding: they side with each other whenever the staff get involved. I have some of the staff drawn in my sketchbook from when I was housesitting, but I have to redraw them digitally still. The staff are also derived from real life, there's two of them that are actually good healthcare workers and the rest are just. Ahh...you'll see. I'll show those literal medical malpractitioners who's boss, by drawing them as chudjaks in my furry comic......

[river-samsa]

This could be a bit silly compared to the other asks you're getting But. Do you have any general bird drawings you could share?

I have good news and bad news anon:

The bad news is that birds are genuinely like, my least favorite group of animal to draw for comics, I just can't figure out their faces and the wings are hella annoying to draw dozens of times?? I think the only recent bird art I have is from "when the end comes, you'll see" where for one panel, it shows one of kallamar's paintings of a swan being strangled by a snake

The GOOD news is that I hit "draft" on a post I was supposed to make public earlier, and you will be pleased to know one of the main characters in my upcoming comic is a common starling! I should probably go post that now, it's just a first draft sketch but I'm not planning on changing his species anytime soon

I should probably draw more birds tbh, I really love vultures, cranes and grouse especially, it's just very hard making them person-shaped if you're me </3

[river-samsa]

is dirt a self insert/character u project on crazy? im getting those vibes (plus the Mura lol)

YES AND NO, I kinda project hardcore on multiple characters per story. Like for the COTL comics, Shamura and Kallamar got the majority of it obv but to an extent Leshy and Heket also had to share some highly specific issues with me. Lamb shockingly isn't a self insert too much besides the theme of "raised in isolation, grew up to be a fucking weirdo", which is funny because they're INTENDED to be a self insert for the player? Nah gimme the war criminal found family >:)

For Dirt's comic specifically, they're different from me in many ways, but generally they're supposed to be my stand-in to the extent the rest of the cast are stand-ins for people I met during my time at the psych ward. They're a character I love a lot, because when I first started showing signs of schizophrenia in early adulthood and had my first actual psychotic break, they were the character I drew the most at the time. I probably won't go too much into their origins because the art was...hmm. I don't want to look at it??? It was NUTS and very gratuitously upsetting, so it's nice to revisit this miserable wood roach when I'm not blowing them up with 500000 nuclear bombs in every single drawing

OH and when I was in the psych ward, I did daily comics of them to regain my art ability- so basically while I insist they're not literally just me, they're def a vehicle to tell autobiographical stories because frankly I hate drawing myself. Here's three of those comics that are the only non terrifying/depressing ones I have from that time:

You can still see the pencil lines cause they wouldn't let us have erasers in there! I debated erasing em when I got home but I think it's more iconic to just leave them

[river-samsa]

Im sad you decided to stop making fanart beyond what you already planned for cotl but i hope you find joy with your ocs! (Im not leaving just sad cause i really liked leshy in your art style, ill also remove you from the list of cotl artist if you want)

I'm not entirely done with COTL and still have a lot of story elements I want to get out in some way or another, I have probably hundreds of unposted fanarts to comb through and post- and I don't see myself wanting to entirely stop drawing the characters anytime in the near future. So this isn't the total end or anything, I'll still be active for quite some time! That post was just a heads up that this is likely going to be the last year I post COTL stuff on a semi-regular basis, I can't just do fanart forever

I still do love the characters and the game, I just kind of put too much of myself in it and when things got bad in my personal life, it kinda manifested in me having a lot of mixed feelings about it all. Like...I can't help when I get hyperfixated on something and all my thoughts revolve around it, it's a huge facet of my autism and my whole life I've never been able to change that- but when it's someone else's characters in a fandom full of people with differing opinions, sometimes it deals psychic damage to me on a level where it's not responsible for me to keep participating on a regular basis.

I bared myself a lot in those comics, and it was cathartic, but even after showing absolutely brutal shit like leshy seeing kallamar's dead body in his dreams, shamura begging heket to "pull the plug" on them if they can't regain lucidity, narinder being held by shamura as they apologize while bleeding to death- the catharsis I felt is kinda gone? I've just gone through so much recently that I'm not sure I can portray that kind of terror, powerlessness and isolation with the cast I was working with in a way that'd be meaningful to me, so I'm relegating bishop art to be something I do ONLY for fun and comfort from now on. Which is how it always should've been tbh but I am INSEPARABLE from my angst art lmao

[river-samsa]

SO EXCITED TO SEE MORE OC CONTENT FROM YOU!! i have a bunch of your old zines i absolutely adore your character writing!!

AHHH THAT'S REALLY COOL TO HEAR, I'm very appreciative of anyone who followed this blog to see what ideas I have beyond COTL headcanons! I figured I'd have to essentially build my readerbase up from scratch again, but it means a lot to see familiar names pop up in my notifs- and especially someone who remembers me from my OC stuff even before the COTL blog??

Now that we're in a space away from that blog, can I ask: how did you find me???? I've gotten multiple asks over the past few years recognizing me from either my old zines or my cringe bad awful youtube channel, but I never gave out my old handle or posted more than one ref sheet of an OC I think? My art style hasn't changed much but there's just SO many internet artists out there that I'm shocked anyone found me. This isn't me being mad or upset btw I just was always curious!

I always feel the need to attach images to ask responses. Sometime soon, I was going to repost my old comic "the sun hasn't left" with my old crustacean sensation comic characters, so here's the ref sheet for you to maybe go "hey I remember those guys!" and for other people to go "WHO ARE THESE JACKOFFS"

[river-samsa]

HELLO 2 anybody who made their way over here after my recent post, figured I should have something on here that isn't just two ancient reblogs of alligator memes?

Here's the sketch for the main character of my hopefully someday finished graphic novel, which I really wish I knew how to summarize. My OC stuff was never all that plot-driven as much as it was just slice of life type stuff where things happen and people gradually change/learn more about themselves. Most of their comics were made around the last time I was in the psych ward, or even DURING that time, so this comic will basically be "watch this person insist they're the most normal person in the psych ward, but then realize the full extent of their baggage and crumble while surrounded only by people they formerly judged for being 'crazy'". Nearly all the characters are based on real people and nearly everything that happens is taken from real life, just made to be more dramatic/entertaining for the sake of the story.

I'll drop off some art of them for now because I'm trying to clean my room, it's a disaster in here and half of it isn't walkable. And I was thinking of Dirt because the only zine I finished with this character is of them trying to clean their room, spiraling and ending up in the ER?? They're way grosser than I am so I promise this one isn't autobiographical or based on my real room lmao, here's the first four pages til I get around to posting the full thing:

Aaaand here's a couple digital drawings of them I found, I have a lot more traditional ones from when I stayed inpatient a while back. These are from a few years ago and Dirt will look generally like this in the new comic, but definitely with a new personality and redesigned a bit...the way I draw Goat in my COTL AU is more similar to how modern Dirt would look

[ashes2caches]

a helpful guide

[yeahiwasintheshit]