It’s been a loooong time since I updated this art blog (long enough that the UI to upload images is foreign to me…) but the Hun project has endured since I was last here. I have more projects, now, and I have years of art that hasn’t seen the light of day. I’ll be scheduling out some posts to revive this bad boy again. Hopefully those still around are interested in my ways.
Same may recall this cast, but they have evolved and matured a lot. More info about them specifically to be posted. Synopsis below:
In the muggy folds of the Florida Everglades, a troubled mechanic and a necromancer navigate the swamps to dump a corpse, but instead they find a small girl wandering through the muck. The mechanic leaps to the child’s rescue, while the necromancer recognizes it for what it truly is: A juvenile shapeshifter only masquerading as a human child. Despite this, the mechanic is determined to mother the man eating beast, even when its growing hunger grabs the attention of the gossiping locals and the eager conspiracies of an internet personality. The pair of troubled women must explore their trauma around motherhood, death, and moral surveillance.
You are such a hidden gem!! The art?? The lore?? The humour?? Absolutely fantastic!! "Witch Watchers" and "Hun" both have such potential for basically anything. (Personally I'd make a shrine if it came to exist as a physical media copy, like a book or a movie)
How did you come up with the ideas?
Ahhh thank you! You’re definitely dreaming bigger for my projects than I do myself, which flatters me deeply. I really appreciate the kind words, they’ve brightened my mood in this gloomy season.
I am the kind of person who enjoys the process more than an end product, so I won’t promise anything; I can’t picture myself posting digital copies of books or animating grand projects (my style is a bit hostile to animation, anyway, even if I ever did more than lightly dabble in that craft). But I would like to maybe one day publish a very small number of hard copies of finished works. More because I would love to play with book binding as a fancy, rather than to make a stock of products. But I’d be pleased to share it when it happens.
Witch Watcher will likely be a series of short novels (each a “case” per story), à la an episodic mystery, with faux-technical illustrations for aesthetic and immersion. And then I have a rough novel written for Hun, but it needs more taming and I want to storyboard out a graphic novel for it; Either in addition to, or as a final product of, the prose version.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY that I am a tinkering, meandering hobbyist and not aiming for any respectable, professional effort… And I hope you’ll enjoy my little random walks around my mind garden as I share them, despite this. It warms my heart, truly.
As for ideas…. Well, I just do a lot of reading on various things LOL. I love people, and history, and complex social matters; And I do Wikipedia deep diving, and listen to topic podcasts, and reads random books or watch documentaries on subjects I like. I’ll audit classes or download lectures if I’m down bad. And sometimes my large area of interests will clump into more targeted topics, with a gothic flare to the storytelling and themes.
Hun was born from my growing up in the American south, religious trauma/abuse, the exploitative nature of true crime content, and all of the nasty, starved emotions that go into the failed relationships between mothers and daughters. And two hot women kissing, duh.
Witch Watcher was born from my obsession with medical history and Abrahamic/Roman/Greek mythos. I am fixated on the Humors and Heroics of medical eras past, and the often horrific sociopolitical part that the church has played in the art of “healing”. Biting into forbidden knowledge is punk, having a martyrdom via a self-infected illness is chic, and a fallen angel/shunned immortal teaming up with a morally grey Eve/Pandora type is sexy.
Play my friends' amazing game if you love moody, well-built worlds completely infested with complicated and engaging characters, with a variety of creative cultures to provide sociopolitical intrigue. Or die a coward.
FIG 1. :: VASCULAR CENTER - The parasite imbeds itself into the heart on the host. Due to the quasi-immaterial nature of the vines, this seemingly lethal blockage eventually causes some cardiac-related symptoms and yet does not result in immediate threat to the host's survival.
FIG 2. :: KNOWLEDGE - The parasite is categorized as a Daemonium (demon) rather than an Aegritudo (affliction) because it is sentient and communicates with its host through visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations. There is debate on whether the brain is the true first target of the parasite, rather than the heart, as the first symptom of an infection is the intense sensation that one is no longer alone.
FIG 3. :: INVASIVE SPREAD - The parasite uses the vascular system as a guide to infect the full body, but as infection progresses it can expand beyond and wrap around, into, and through all structures and systems. Similiar to the plant named after it, the parasite will eventually smother the host.
I’ve been (re)reading a lot of classics, especially the gothic/romantic genre powerhouses. I’m a werewolf pervert at heart, but the pure fuck power of vampires cannot be denied.
Work in progress!! Lot of this is visual filler/placeholder nonsense. I need to work on the contrast and filling in spaces with more meaningful linework and motifs; Make it read like I want it to more. But the major shapes and stuff are settled.
I recently got to buy some pages from an antique medical textbook, which inspired me a lot for Witch Watcher. This will be a speculative biology illustration for the parasitic demon Salma is infected with.
Relationship dynamic chart AKA "Salma is being morally drawn and quartered (thirded?) by a trinity of people who can't get along but all want her to agree with them".
Colored sketch; An outfit design commission from earlier this year.
I was asked to dress this OC for a masquerade party on a fantasy-historical spaceship. I wanted to make them seem luxurious in a regal/noble way, inspired by antiqued European styles from various centuries, while still obviously futuristic and new. They had to have a vaguely French flavor to them, but there’s no actual France in this world so that was kept generic. And as the story was a drama, they would come into disarray over the course of the party, and I showed how the look might come undone.
Vicenta Santos was (or is, according to some) a groundbreaking figure. She was born in the Philippines to a poor family as the sixth daughter, joined the local convent as a nun, and climbed the ranks of the Vatican until she could access their resources and fund her medical education on church dime. Her status as a nun left no doors closed to her; She could immigrate anywhere, attend anything, be accepted by any establishment that desperately needed to remain in the Vatican's good graces. Any contempt for women these establishments held was set aside for the pure, noble facade of a respected nun. And she did not squander these chances.
The moment she became a doctor, she no longer needed the shield of being nun; She dropped that act and began breaking ground on a new area of medicine: Witch Practitioning, the combination of modern medical science and old world mystical healing to combat supernatural illnesses. She created a treatment for the Plague known as Virgin's Tears, using afflicted orphans provided by the Vatican in exchange for granting the church the glory of being associated with her accomplishment.
But her student (turned assistant, turned lover), Salma, who she'd been grooming to take the fall for her less than moral tactics (should they ever be leaked), tumbled her kingdom in a matter of weeks. Salma realized that her mentor planned to make her a scapegoat and struck first: Whistleblowing to every form of authority that would listen. Vicenta lost everything she'd spent her life working towards, now left rotting in prison as a criminal.
And the worst part is that Vicenta still can't ignore her ex-student's request for aid, despite herself.
While most priests come into the disipline of Exorcism through lineage or decades of training, Jordanus proved a natural. The Plague known as Snake's Fever is a consuming illness, causing erratic and violent behavior as a hostile demonic entity overtakes a human host and their body is cooked from the inside out by an unending fever. The Plagued are usually abandoned, with only the trained Exorcists able to handle them in their final days; They are a threat to themselves and others, and people have long since decided that anyone infected is at moral and spiritual fault for their own infection.
But when Jordanus' devout, loving, charitable mother came down with Snake's Fever, he knew it was not her fault. With no qualifications, only love and loyalty, he cared for her in her final three weeks. And when the Vatican finally bothered to send an Exorcist, the man was so impressed by Jordanus' endurance that he recruited him into the discipline. Now, Jordanus is the leading authority in the practice; Though, his size and hardened appearance often confirm people's incorrect assumptions about what goes into performing excorisms. And so when the Vatican decided to send an Exorcist to muzzle the heretical Salma Auerbach, W.W., for infecting herself with a Plague, they send Father Jordanus to handle her under the false assumption that he is an expert in domination and oppression or unholy minds.
Instead, the tired old man and his empathetic heart can't resist the hope that Salma may find some treatment or cure. He gives her his support, monitoring her progress to keep less supportive members of the Vatican from hindering her efforts.
Hezekiah Esposito was abandoned to the Vatican's care as a small child when he began exhibiting symptoms of the Plague known as Virgin's Tears. The supernatural illness manifests in infants and toddlers, causing them to cry blood for no medically evident reason. The constant drain slowly depletes them of life, causing a map of complex medical issues that are unresponsive to traditional care. In the final stages of the Plague, they lose their sight and begin to experience visual hallucinations of the divine. Traditionally, all children with Virgin's Tears pass away before they've finished puberty.
Hezekiah was one of the first exceptions, thanks to the treatments developed by a team of cutting edge Witch Practioners. But his survival came at the price of being a guinea pig, his consent never courted; The Vatican sold his body for experimentation to the group, knowing a terminally ill orphan would have no way to refuse. Despite this trauma, Hezekiah formed a close bond with one of the WPs that helped treat him; Salma. He has studied under her ever since he escaped the custody of the Vatican, determined to make her proud and further develop treatments for other Plagued in a world that despises his kind.
Salma Auerbach was born to highly influential parents, meaning she could have been and done anything. But a teenaged crush on a controversial nun-turned-doctor, Sister Dr. Vicenta Santos, led her down a path of unorthodox and highly specialized education and training to help pioneer a whole new kind of medical field alongside the object of her affection. Nothing had ever been hard for Salma until she'd grown to learn just how morally bankrupt her mentor-turned-lover could be. Salma avoided becoming a scapegoat by being a whistleblower instead, and robbed Vicenta of all the glory of their accomplishments while saddling her with all the blame of their wrongdoings.
While Salma has lost the person who motivated her to rise to her current (famous, notorious) career path, the work itself has gotten its roots into Salma. She's tasted success, and she intends to best herself; Salma is even willing to infect herself with a demonic parasite to further her research and cement her name into history. Having to face a demon in her own mind, with no way to veil herself from the knowing gaze of an Angel older than mankind, is just an inconvenient symptom to her.
