This Was Once An Art Blog

35 pages of Maka are now up on ComicFury! Come check it out!

Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state!

22 pages of Maka are up now!

18 pages of Maka are up now! Join me as I make my childhood dreams come true!

Story description: Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state! Inspired by 90’s and early 2000’s anime, such as Sailor Moon, Digimon, MegaMan NT Warrior, and Flint the Time Detective!

Making comics/manga doesn’t mean having to torture yourself by doing things the meticulous, professional way. I choose to make my comics simple and enjoyable to draw! ^w^

When working on “professional” pages, I kept thinking “I hate this! Why would I want to spend hours upon hours on a single page? Every second feels like torture! I hate making comics!” Which made me feel devastated. Making comics had been my dream growing up. It was the thing I loved above all else. What had changed? But then it occurred to me that it wasn’t making comics that I hated. It was doing undersketches, inking, using rulers… the things that weren’t naturally part of my process… the things I did because I was told “real” manga artists do things this way. I thought I had to make manga this way… Until it got to the point that I thought I was going to quit making comics forever. 

And it occurred to me that all I have to do to make myself love it like I did as a kid is to draw like I did when I was a kid. No guidelines, no soft sketching and being afraid of leaving indents in the page, no being super cautious about making everything perfect. The more I tried to be careful with it, the more stress it caused me and the worse it turned out. I realized that once I figured out how to go back to the method of drawing that my child self preferred… my pencil strokes felt so much more confident! Things look better in the first try, even if they aren’t perfect! And rather than dreading it taking my whole life to finish a story, I’m looking forward to drawing it every day! And I even feel sad that it’s going to end eventually!

This has been a total game changer! It’s like I recovered my identity! I had no clue I’d been drawing in a way that wasn’t true to myself all these years. And now I feel like I’m seeing a whole different outlook on my creative ventures. I have a confession. I never wanted to be a fine artist. I never wanted to spend hours on a single picture for it to hang on someone’s wall. What I wanted was to tell stories and create beloved characters, and this simplistic style is just what I need to achieve that!

For those of you who haven’t seen, I’m currently working on a manga called Maka that I conceived when I was just 10 years old! I started rewriting it 2 years ago. I now have 180 pages and am in the process of sharing it online!

Pages 9-13 are up now!

Summary:

Classmates Ken and Mimi have both been having recurring dreams of a fantasy world. One day, when playing in the park, a mysterious woman named Rei approaches them. She tells them the magic land of their dreams wasn’t a dream after all, but a memory of growing up on planet Maka. Now, Maka is in danger, and it’s up to Ken, Mimi, Rei, and their new friend Costen to save it! While traveling across that mysterious world, they must collect 5 keys to rescue the kidnapped princess and restore Maka to its natural state!