VikkiComics

Illustrator, Writer, Animator. CommissionsOpen! Creator of ongoing Ww1Fiction Ottoway, see https://ottoway.carrd.co/

[vikkicomics]

Crozier and Fitzjames animated gifs. Cos I haven’t really animated anything since my dissertation. 

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Brother can you spare a dime? I have no income, here is my Ko-fi if you want to support my art with a small donation, bless you!☕

[vikkicomics]

But now seriously.

I'm curious about your whole illustration with that owl 😇

Thanks for the ask, it was drawn from the Nightwish song 'The Crow, The Owl and the Dove," because its one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands. Here are both:

There's a fourth verse about a swan that isn't in the title which is why four birds appear in the drawing. Each one has strong symbolic representations. Without looking up what the song is actually about, it seems to be related to trauma or inner chaos that cannot be remedied by the pride of the crow, the wisdom of the owl, the peace of the dove or the beauty of the swan, because what the singer wants is to return to a state of childhood innocence. Someone made a great fan video where they interpreted it as being about the existential dread of a terminally ill child that can't find inner peace, which I'll also link here:

[vikkicomics]

Read Ottoway volumes 1 & 2 on Patreon!

Now available for paying members.

Read here.

[vikkicomics]

Eric Ethelstan, our favorite Waterlandian. Commissioned by @polsterreich I love their character designs, very distinct! 🖤🌊

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We're in the evil robots are copying our data so they can kill us time line, 1996 Sonic The Hedgehog OVA has never been more relevant.

[vikkicomics]

Two ravens and barbed wire. -My wwi German OC, Oberst Vincent Odinkirk, with two of his ravens on his shoulders. Canonically Vincent is never captured, but I saw Marlon Brando posed like this for 'Young Lions' and wanted to draw Vincent that way.

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"The god of plenty" is a short story I wrote last year, and I just stumbled upon it while cleaning up some storage space.

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This is a deleted scene from Ottoway vol 2 showing some of Vincent and Edwin's backstory, it's going to be extended and edited for volume 4 as the story needed much more build up and context. Since the scene deals with some very harsh themes, I'd like to hear opinions on it.

[alutka2000s]

Why was this deleted? ☹️

[vikkicomics]

It didn't fit with the pacing and deals with sensitive issues that needed more context. I didn't want to introduce Sven in vol 2 and for him to be absent in vol 3 only to appear again in vol 4. This scene links to Vincent mentioning his cousin who he's not allowed to write to and who took the seal of Askja to Sweden in that flash back scene with Austerlitz (Ottoway vol 2), but this part of the plot can still be deduced; there are hints like that Edwin had the amulet at this time, and that he wants to escape Wwi by going to Sweden and that Edwin's dad died at a fairly young age; this isn't the first time Edwin has ran away from a difficult situation by going to Uppsala. Without this scene it's left more mysterious as to why Vincent was banned from contacting Edwin until he was 18, however there's already an idea that Edwin and Vincent's relationship is important and building to something; their backstory shall be presented in a cleaner, more chronological way in volume 4.

[vikkicomics]

This is a deleted scene from Ottoway vol 2 showing some of Vincent and Edwin's backstory, it's going to be extended and edited for volume 4 as the story needed much more build up and context. Since the scene deals with some very harsh themes, I'd like to hear opinions on it.

[vikkicomics]

Pickelhaubes near Bismarck Denkmal Vincent with his hawk Flosshild and his friend Siegfried, stood near the Bismarck Denkmal in Königsberg, in 1908. Vincent is wearing his lieutenant's uniform while Siegfried is still a cadet here. P.S Happy St.Florian's day.

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Otto and Edwin- Little Dark age. 🖤🖤🫣

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Tomorrow is May Day!

Otto's older brothers; Ludwig plays the Hobbyhorse and Peter plays the Fool in this concept art for Moth volume 5. The May Day festival used to be very important in England and Germany, many of the traditions such as the dance of the Fool and the Hobbyhorse were carried on by young men in towns and villages for thousands of years only for the traditions to end during WWi, due to the amount of young men that were killed. In some German and English towns the dance survived or has been renewed. Similar characters to the Fool and Hobbyhorse appear in French, Polish and Scandinavian cultures, but this illustration is mostly based on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The Odinkirks are canonically of Saxon decent and are implied to have reintroduced the dance to their village, which is situated in Pomerania. May Day was celebrated all across Europe but in Germany and England in some places the horse dance had either faded or evolved; even before WWi the Christian church suppressed the dance as it originated from an ancient horse-cult; as a result it survives in the more Saxon regions today and many English and German people haven't heard of the dance of the Fool and the Horse.

[vikkicomics]

Is Ovechka actually a gay if he was forced to have tattoos symbolising it?

Ovechka is too traumatized to sustain a romantic relationship; he's got both poor memory and poor forethought. It's implied the tattoos are because of something that happened to him in prison/Gulag, he is marked that way against his wishes. I wanted to visually signal that he'd been in the gulag, it's also about a body being 'marked for use' as a symbol of how Volkov sees him; a bigger metaphor for how a tyrannical authority views people as cattle who's bodies can be wasted in labor and war. The story is about an authority structure crumbling in the aftermath of an assault on the person who's considered the lowest in the pyramid; Ovechka; a 'lumpenproletariat' who's been in and out of prison since he was ten. Everything is through the eyes of Nulesmurt, the witness, who, as a child, saw his flock devoured by wolves, and his own traumatic memories are triggered by Ovechka's pain.

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"Ovechka" sheet 2. Development, but not a finalization of Yakov Rimsky Ovechkin's character design; his coat is from the wrong rank and year, so next time I'll draw him in a more accurate one for a Russian Private in 1941. In his introduction the eye tattoos on his stomach will be visible. He was tattooed against his will by a criminal gang in the Gulag. The art in the Manga will probably be mostly black and white.

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Austerlitz's introduction part 2. Part 1 here. Updated pages from Ottoway volume 2.

[vikkicomics]

If Yan Kwalkowski is actually a female, what is her real name? Is it even mentioned in "Ottoway" plot? 🤔🤔🤔

Ps

I also want to tell you that such a name for a Polish character is very accurate, because name "Jan" ("John") is actually popular among many generations in Poland and this last name sounds very typical as well 😉

Fun fact: i sometimes think you also did a right choice that you didn't name your OC "Janusz" or "Sebastian". Yes, it would be funny for many readers, but at the same time i'm rather into saying: "Oh no. Maybe better not to run on this stereotype!" (Poles, especially these from my generation, will know, what i mean 😅 ).

Anyway, naming the character "Yan" in fine! ☺️

Ps. Ps

I actually laughed a bit while thinking about possibility of naming a character like that 😂

Script wip for you. This scene is scheduled Volume 4, which will probably give Yan the most panel time out of the four books. I deliberately picked a name Klaus couldn't pronounce 😂.@polsterreich helped me choose. Thank you for your ask!🖤

[vikkicomics]

The reason there is no new art this week is because I spent the whole week drawing that one time in 1912 when Siegfried and Vincent got lost in the Atacama desert in Chile. The file was corrupted when I ran out of storage and I don't currently have the heart to return to this one.