I have a comic again and it is a strange feeling. On the one hand, I am getting out ideas that I’ve been sitting on for an eternity and a half and on the other it’s just odd. I planned on abandoning this comic, then redrawing this comic and now I am continuing it. Funny, when I thought about doing something beyond my Filthy Figments work it never occurred to me to pick up where I left off. That’s common sense. Sometimes I am violently allergic to common sense though. After looking at Lovemagic, there may be a reason for that.
So on deciding to continue Lovemagic, I forced myself through the archive and oddly got embarrassed. Not because of all the sex and rampant nudity. Only because of my lack of skill but I noticed that the further I got, the better it looked. By the end of it, I could no longer deny that I hadn’t improved (hopefully there’s enough double negatives in there to say I improved). This inspired me to rocket out of the miserable artistic rut I’ve been in and lead me to draw again. I could start anywhere since LM never had a story. It does now but I wouldn’t say it’s coherent…okay maybe it is but I did inject the whole deal with liquid batshit. Sometimes I’d write a script just to do the opposite, or I’d forget there was a script until the last minute. I’m such a strange, strange lady sometimes.
Then other ideas poured forth. Well, one idea came up that I wanted to do out of amusement. I wanted to make a love pillow. So if Lovemagic becomes popular…like really popular, I’ll make love pillows and then people can hold my characters at their own risk. There’s more ideas but I probably won’t do them. I’m so sheepish when it comes to my own abilities. It may not sound like it but I really am. Merch can wait. Someday it will happen. I’ll make my own love pillow…oh wait, I have a husbando. There is no need for love pillow. He is a pretty good one despite being a little on the bony side.
Speaking of the husbando, he was the one who convinced me to move on. I was obsessing over redrawing my comic when he was all ‘why?’. That was it. But for the sake of writing, well pretend a sword duel on a moonlit beach was involved. He’s a trained artist with a commercial degree so I come to him for a lot of questions, advice, and flatting. I suck at flatting my pages but he’s ridiculously thorough. Even when I flat something, I always ask him to take a second look and he does because he’s chill like that. Anyway, he is my in-house expert. He appraises my stuff and expresses approval/disapproval/where the hell did that laser come from when I have need for it. He liked the comic. In fact, we kinda met because of LM…NOT LIKE THAT! It was somewhat innocent. I drew a character that vaguely looked like him and I thought I heard something about people accusing me of drawing him. I thought he was saying that but it turned out I was misunderstanding a comment. I tend to do that. But then he was all ‘lol u draw porn. I like porn.’ Then I was like ‘I like porn too.’ Then we dated for about five years and we even find a way to to try a sex doll since there are some amazing dolls on the market now which are shockingly realistic, see this great guide for more information . Surely, this was a romance of the ages!
Another thing about Lovemagic was the problems it brought me. I lived with my mother at the time and she is a very conservative, fundamentalist Christian. So her oldest daughter drawing porn didn’t go over so well. There were a lot of arguments that ended with me getting covered with olive oil. It’s symbolic so it wasn’t like my mom just put me in a headlock and dumped oil on my head. Also, my step-dad was not so conservative and I found out he’d been secretly reading my comic whenever I was away from the computer. At least he was until I started clearing the history and turning off auto-complete. It was a cyclone of religious awkwardness. If I were more cynical, I could had fun with it.
The thing about Lovemagic now is that I know what to do, how to do it, and why…or at least I think I do which is more than what I had when I started. It won’t be the same as before but I don’t think I’ve lost sight of my roots and that’s great. You should never lose the memory of where you started even if it was drawing original Sonic recolors on deviantart. Progress is progress. But I think that whole deal about knowing the past to know the future was a little true. I’m very, very excited for the future now.
