first of all, thanks a ton to everyone who kept up with this miniseries and showed their support! my favorite part of making it was getting to share it and see people react to the parts i was excited about.
i have more to say, but first, here are the initial designs i made for the adult characters + their kids and the car. (note: i made these in the same week i released the penultimate comic, but didn’t get to work on the epilogue itself until this past month, so the integrity of the artwork may not be on par with the actual comic.)
anywho, below the cut, i’m gonna share some background regarding how i created this series, to any who may care.
originally it started because i felt like drawing daring reaching out to his siblings. i just kind of wanted to do that, no intention of creating a narrative based on that. but then, i got this idea for another comic, one that would explore his breakup with lizzie from his perspective. so i did that. but THEN i was driving to work and got this awesome idea to flashback to daring’s childhood and use that as a character study, and then i thought, “well what if i explored all three of the charming kids and showcased snapshots of their childhoods from different perspectives and had it all culminate in a confrontation between the three of them wherein they finally work out their differences while using imagery of them as kids to illustrate each of their mentalities emotionally? and then at the end have a time skip to daring as a father with his own kids to parallel his own flashback to being a child and then call back to the first comic with him reaching out only this time dexter and darling are facing him and-” and yeah by that point there was no stopping me from seeing this through to the end because the idea just sounded too good to me.
of course, it’s been over a year since then, and looking back at even the more recent comics compared to the last one + my other artwork from present day shows an uptick in quality that almost urges me to remaster everything and polish its rougher edges. but if i did that i would be taking away valuable time i could be using pursuing my career. which allows me to segway into the next thing…
maybe you already knew this, but if you didn’t, my goal in life is to make comics professionally. specifically, i aspire to be both the writer and illustrator of my own original comics, and this was my first semi-realized endeavor of that kind. so the experience of making this was really important to me.
i know there were long hiatuses as a result of my life interfering, but i sincerely thank all those who were patient and waited despite the circumstances. it does mean a lot. i was always excited to open tumblr to go through my notifs and read all the comments and tags that people would leave. seeing other people interact with your art is an experience that has a profound impact on you. or me, at least.
i don’t expect many people to take the time to read this. you’re probably just here for the content of the franchise that we’re mutually interested in, not for whatever this is. but if you do read this, thank you. and thanks for all of your support. i’ve got more stuff coming, so don’t think i’m done.
