Ninchiru

As the title says.

I have significantly toned down my activity in regards to art, as my long time watchers will know. I slowly come back from this art block that has me in its grip for many years now, but to archive it I have to also reduce the quality of my projects for the time being, as it will keep me more motivated when I have to do less work. My newest comic, Warriors - Clan Life, is the perfect example for it, as the quality is low and rushed, especially the backgrounds.

Back to the topic. I currently only consider 3 comic projects of mine as active, even tho I only work on one of them right now. I see the other two as active, as I have the urge to work on them, while on most of my other comics, I don't have that urge. I still like those comics and am not ready to give them up atm, but for now, they are on undefined hiatus.

"What are those other two comics?" I hear the question that you were not even gonna ask, but which I will answer anyway.

The first one is Pokémon Marble and Dice where I only created the cover and first page, yet. Which I will have to edit or redo, as it's fully German, and I realise that most of my watchers are not German, so I'm gonna convert it to English, even tho I have no idea what most Pokémon moves are actually called in English. But maybe google can help with that. XD

And the second one is Wild-Dogs, where I'm still fighting with myself which dogs I wanna use. The old cast I had created pretty much a few days after I joined dA (Yes, Wild-Dogs was my very first comic here, even tho you won't find any old pages anymore, as I deleted them all XD), or the new cast which I used in a version of the comic that I didn't upload on dA. In both cases no comic came very far, as both versions only had a few pages. No matter what I decide, a redo of the comic is a must, but I want to have a solid story first, which is the hardest part as the basic story I had for it, when I first started it, was just super boring XD It pretty much was just "Dogs don't like their home, go to new place with some troubles, are happy once there" There was no main character to follow, it was just all over the place.

And there you have it.

Having my Warriors comic is fun, and I won't stop for now, don't worry, but it's just a low quality work. I don't put too much effort into it, as some might have noticed by proportions being all over the place with sometimes characters having massive heads or shorter limbs in one panel, then longer ones in the next. The backgrounds are all flat color with no real depth and the characters don't have shadows on the ground. The character shading is low quality as well.

I want to create something with good quality at some point, but I just have no ideas for a story or plot, and improvising a story that is supposed to be in a good quality seems not to be a good idea. I have to come up with a story first, then with characters and also a world or at least setting where it plays. All I know is that it should be about feral characters, no anthros and no humans.

I do have a few stories from the past which i still cling to, like my Wild-Dogs or Thun the dragon, but those never had a real story either, just a very rough, kinda story, but nothing planned out, and those stories usually were super basic, like with Wild-Dogs losing their home and finding a new one after a journey, or Thun the Dragon having his peaceful live interupted by bad guys and defeating said bad guys. It's been done so many times. Yes, I know, most stories follow something that has been done in the past at some point, but there is stories that still get something new out of something that has been done before and then there are stories that are so overused that they just fail at being interesting as people have seen it over and over. Like Horror movies with the typical "Let's split up" chlichee, so the bad guy can kill them one by one.

I still don't know what species I'd like to use. I don't really want to mix too many species together as it could be confusing and the carnivores would automatically end up being seen as the bad guys again, because I would not make them herbivirous and/or super friendly with the herbivors. They are their prey after all.

I'm just not good with coming up with a good story.

This is a list of all the things important to know about my Clan Life comic series.

- The story is not planned. Each page I create is improvised the same day I draw it. That also means that the story has no ending. It will be an ongoing project until I grow tired of it.

- All cats have ages and will continue aging. I have a detailed document where all ages are written down, and to keep it simple, the cats age 1 moon after each gathering. Their character sheets will be updated whenever their age changes (young cats ages change every moon, while for adults only the years are shown on the sheets, therefore it only changes every 12 gatherings/moons)

- The introduction chapters (chapter 1 to 6) are the only chapters that will take place over such a short period of time as they do rn. As my main focus is often creating new characters, that means that later each chapter will cover a period between half a moon and a full moon, so that change happens much faster later on.

- My comic is not playing in a super realistic place, as was visible at the last page of chapter 1 (the fox with glowing markings). That gives me the freedom to experiment around with different ideas. My cats will not start using magic spells, neither will dragons or unicorns appear, but supernatural things are not impossible. Just as I already use rather unusual colors for pelts. Nothing too crazy like bright pink or so, but not super natural also.

- As soon as the last intro chapter is over, I will hold polls frequently to let you readers decide which Clan the story will focus on in the upcoming chapter. The fact that the story is improvised anyway gives me the freedom to adjust the comic to whatever is needed. So, if the readers decide that MarshClan is chosen 5 times in a row, then so be it. We gonna find out which Clan is the favorite :D

- And last but not least, since Birdfeather was the pov character for HollowClan, and he now changed Clans, that means he is no longer a pov character and HollowClan will get a new one Of course, whenever a pov character dies or goes someplace else where the story can't take place, their role falls to someone else, obviously XD

Do not touch baby animals, no matter how cute or helpless they look. Especially not mammal babies, as mother can abandone their young if they smell of humans. Only touch them, if they are in danger (like a fawn laying on the road to "hide") or if they are stuck to a point they can't free themselves. Other than that. Leave them be.

I was nearly a teen when I started to write a book (never finished it) and it pretty much took me til today to realise that this book in it's princibles would have been a work against racism and ableism, lol. It was meant to be a fantasy book, with magic and all sorts like that, with a black main character and her two best, white friends, one of which is disabled.

I only ever wrote three full chapters and made a ton of notes for the rest, but I never finished the book, which might be for the best, as back then I had a terrible writing style, lol.

I would love to pick this project back up and write the book, now that I am much better wih actually writing in an interesting fashion, and also now that I got rid of my way of thinking that I had back then (My parents were big into conspiracy theories and therefore I was, too, as I was just a child who listened to her parents. The first chapters did contain a few hints about that kind of stuff XD)

I would never expect to be successful with a book, but it would be at least one project that I would try to finish, as it stuck with me for so long already.