Nao🍂

This first upload is the full chapter, but future uploads will be half-chapters uploaded every Tuesday, starting in August!

You may also notice there are multiple names on each upload! Huge thank you to everyone who helped me line and color these pages! Please give them lots of love here:

@xaistolis, @leragoessouth, pigeon_plague, @lussantin-by, @achromaticegoist, canadjester, maplestarlights, and bunnycarrot!

My army grows every day >:D

Next part is out now:

As promised, here is the first half of Jampires Chapter Two! Next upload will be August 11th at the same time.

I was the only one coloring & lining this time, but I'd still like to thank each and every one of you for continuing to read and support this series! :D

See you next week!

Previous Part here:

Jampires is a horror story at its core! I know I’ve largely done fluffy light hearted comics previously (Jambound, etc,.) so I want to set expectations. There will certainly be cute moments, flirting, etc! But, due to smilk’s identity, it is all under false pretense

At the end of the day, PV thinks he’s in a gothic romance where he saves a reclusive Lord from a big scary monster, while smilk knows it’s closer to Hannibal With Vampires. Please keep that in mind! <3

Full teaser comic here:

Style update! See the new and improved jampire comic style here:

This isn’t some special ‘motivation’ or ‘focus’ that only I can achieve! I’ve definitely got cookie brainrot which helps, but it’s a combination of things I’ve done to make it so I can do big projects!

The biggest thing by far is making my artstyle something very quick and very fun to draw. Even if you like the look of it less- if you don’t enjoy the process, it’s hard to stick with it. It’s one reason why I play fast and loose with character designs, or change details.

I don’t like drawing Shadow Milk’s ruffled cuff around his hands? Gone! I like drawing PV’s hair a certain way at one angle? His hairstyle magically flips when he faces the other way! Don’t like drawing hands? Merge the fingers and make em weird blobs that imply the hand! Take a torch to every part of drawing that you just don’t like. It’s why I lay out comic pages like I do. I HATE coming up with comic panels, so I just… don’t. Viola, problem solved!

Lineart, rendering, pretty much anything can be avoided if you get creative. My current style is actually, in my mind, still a sketch! I hated clean lineart so I just sketched everything. And doing this so much with the sketch mindset, my sketches eventually became clean enough to be lineart! You’ll notice imperfections and mistakes all the time if you zoom in on my stuff, gaps in the lineart, proportion issues, facial features that should be nudged over, but that’s fine. It’s just a sketch, who cares? The idea is clear!

I used to have some fancy style with lots of rendering, more realistic, the whole deal. I honestly like the look of it more than my old stuff, but I HATED the process. It took days or weeks to paint a single character, I was always in and out of artblock, world’s slowest artist. Them I just said, nah screw this, I want to actually enjoy drawing.

Took inspo from watching ActuallyRea’s art journey and sketchbook tours too! HIGHLY RECOMMEND!! Messy sketchbook doodles, focusing on shorthand and experimenting and making mistakes, and being self indulgent to the max! MAKE ART FUN

The funny thing is, when you draw so much in “shorthand” or doodling, you get so much practice just out of finishing things that it can very much become its own refined style, and your skills improve too. This old stuff I’m uploading is about a year old, but I hope you’ll see the improvement between that and the Jampire comics I’m uploading soon <3

AND THEN MOST IMPORTANT, keep stuff small before you know you can finish it! The jambound comics started out as a 5-page uncolored doodle where I told myself I wasn’t allowed to redo anything cuz I wanted it done. They exist because I wanted to show my dyslexic friend my favorite jambound scenes. They’re not to make pretty art, or get big on social media, they’re meant to just show the scene so I can read it out loud. Achievable goal, and it was only later I was like hey, maybe other people might enjoy reading this too?

Each part was only a few pages max, and it only got bigger when I saw I could do it. I proved to myself I could, and finishing projects and getting to read them over is kinda really fun. I’m most motivated by Jampires because I want to hold this thing in my hands at the end! I proved I can stick with comics in the 100-page range with Jambound, so ONLY THEN did I attempt one big project in that range.

Also having friends who work on projects with you is always a bonus :)

My cowriters are lovely, and I have friends who I’ve yapped about this project to so much, and they work on it with me! Sharing ideas, or even helping line and color pages. I’ll stream or share progress with them, so working on it never feels isolating- more like hanging out with friends! It’s practically a nightly routine to watch shows with my roommates or do drawing calls on discord while working on Jampires. Then, a few months to a year later, boom! You got a big ol project you get to share with everyone!