The Art Archive of Kah

So I had this little series project that is currently named “Trunks and Goten in High school” AU that I will try to put all of my DB headcanons in. It’s my take on what happens with Trunks and Goten during their teenage years before they turn 17 and 18 (and if I’m able to, may span into their adulthoods too) so it will be somewhat based on EoZ and DBGT.

To sum it up, Goten and Trunks, now at 15 and 16 years old, enter new high schools and begin to have their own lives and different ways of growing up, but what they don’t expect at all is some complicated feelings they have for their best friend that accompany them along the way. So yeah, it’s a coming of age story mixed with friendship, romance, actions, family moments, etc. You can think of this like a LGBTQ+ romance shounen manga/fan-comic, it’s not 100% a Toriyama style manga (in terms of drawing style and storytelling) ok lol my apologizes to the pure DB fans 😂

These are some of the setting up sketches I made along with some information so if you skip this you’ll probably be a little confused reading the comics, but if you don’t read this, it’s ok too since you’ll be able to experience new feelings when you read them I guess. This series will contain many short comics, every comic is around 8-10 pages, and, be it just setting sketches or short comics, will be updated from time and time again, based on my ability in continuing this.

It’s a series I somewhat do for fun, so I’ll be happy if you can enjoy reading it, and it’s completely fine if you’re not interested in it too, don’t need to think too much about it, and feel free to skip this ^^ But I hope you’ll have fun reading it just as much as I have fun drawing it!

P/s: I almost forgot, Goten is the protagonist while Trunks is more of a deuteragonist, but yeah both of them are the main characters. And Goten is bisexual (or, Trunksexual lol)

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(Updated on August 16th, 2022) The comic series project is a work in progress, the reading order is below:

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 (loading...) (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) | Chapter 6 (prologue)

Soft-rebooting preview

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Concept sketch of reimagined Son Goten for the current webcomic I’m drawing, or a future short film or whatever as long as it’s my personal project. I sketched this instead of working on actual featured movies btw, it’s kinda ironic.

I already wrote the whole plot for the thing and this is the stuff you would see on my patreon, but since I’m currently focusing on work and life more and have been pausing the site and its billing for a few months => I’m now posting stuff like this here until I’m active again.

The urge to draw for The Unspoken webcomic again came from a work meeting with my favorite arthouse director for his upcoming horror movie that’s in the pitching stage (I’m drawing the movie’s storyboards btw), and we kinda talked about the desire and courage to make something uniquely yours that you love, even when it’s not for the general audience. So this happened, and I realized how much I still love my personal projects, even when one of it’s based on other people’s work lol.

Hope I can return to it again during the holidays, even just a lil bit.

<< previous part

Synopsis of what’s currently going on in the Chichi arc of this story: Chichi and Goten have begun the martial art trainings, but along the way, Goten accidentally “unlocked” the secret to the power that can change his life forever: the existence of Ki.

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If anyone still remembers (lol i don’t blame you guys if you don’t, it’s been half a year), this blog, or me personally, has a long form passion project called “THE UNSPOKEN webcomic” that’s inspired by Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball that started since 2021, in the midst of Covid until now. It follows Goten and Trunks’ story and rewrites things in a more matured perspective, and currently, the project is being halted at Chichi and Goten’s martial art lessons due to many things that are happening in my life that I have to take care of and be resposible for.

My life is currently too eventful for me to actually sit back down, calm my mind and do personal things tbh, especially when i’m living in Asia, where “harsh working conditions are praised and exploited to the max”, “family and heritage are important™” and “forsake the individuality, embracing the collectivism” are the social norms. So that leads to me feeling burnt out all the time, even when i already have one of my favorite jobs ever: being a storyboard artist, and drawing my childhood dream of being a comic artist on the side.

This is, most definitely, not a vent post or anything like that. It’s more of a comic update, along with the artist’s reasons for postponing the project aka it’s due to somethings that’s out of their control, so the readers won’t have too much expectations in terms of regular updates for the comic, and can enjoy the things that I can offer here, whenever I can.

It’s still my favorite project, no doubt, but lots have changed throughout the years, and I feel like I myself outgrew the loving project, but also feeling like a growing yet lost child that knows so very little and keeps making mistakes on the things i like very much. But at least, I try my best to be a better person every day 🥴

Ngl, I no longer have any drive to draw anything fanmade for any other creative intellectual properties. This is not because I don't like them, no. Some new IPs these days are actually great and I respect all kinds of creative outlets and labors 👍 But it's more due to me drawing storyboards as a job, and that makes drawing fanworks feel, uhm, kinda weird. It makes me want to be involved with the official studios or companies more with their brand, instead of drawing fanworks only, if that makes sense.

The other day, I got an offer to be an art lead and storyboard supervisor for this Korean webtoon/comic company, but it failed due to me not having enough webtoon or comics related professional works in my portfolio, since I storyboard for TV commercials and films more (but me typing this also means that I'm currently having less gigs than usual, hope it won't be long because i do love my job). I did have some professional comics on my hand but they're like 2 years outdated already.

And the thing in here is, I desperately wanted to introduce my webcomic here that I'm very proud of bc of many reasons. But I couldn't because 1, it's fanwork, and 2. It looks professional, yeah, but I didn't have any official contract with the original IP company to draw this. And that's how thing ended on a stalemate.

So, maybe this Dragon Ball webcomic is the last "fanwork" project thing from me, and since it's a hybrid between creative project and fanwork, I still have so much love for it and want to return to it when my mind gets rested enough to continue. But other than this? Nope, no more. Can't draw without being paid now, since it's literally what feeds me food and bills. And especially with the rise of AI? Everyone is selling themselves off bad.

Since I grew up in the late 90s, all I can think about teen Trunks and Goten is through the layer of nostalgia, with them wearing the late 90s and early 2000s clothing in something like a US setting, and Trunks using the latest phone technology at the time since he's a tech nepobaby: the legendary flip phone.

I think for Goten who was originally a mountain boy to be so hooked on things like phones and texting and girlfriends and dates when he grows into his adolescence, is because Trunks was his original influence until it wasn't.