Near addressing the elephant in the room.
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Don’t forget to vote for Twin Dragons at Topwebcomics!
http://topwebcomics.com/vote/21879
Thanks for voting!
Hey, I made some valentine cards for everyone 😀
Let’s continue the poll summary from last week, shall we? 😀
1. More backgrounds for the characters
I saw this one appear several times. You people ask for more background on Benji, Cleo and Rex. I’m glad to say that everyone will get more screen time eventually. Especially Benji has two full chapters planned around him and his backstory already. I can’t say exactly when it will appear, as the next two chapters are planned to be different, but the chapters are there and will happen!
2. Hybrid abilities!
How do they breath fire? Do they have scales? How strong are they? Many questions, and I did say last year I would go into more detail about these. I even has some sketches to go with it, but things happened and I forgot about it until it was time for the poll again this year. I do have some ideas on how to implement this in between chapters now, but we will see.
3. Build that world!
Worldbuilding, the basis for the entire world of the story. While I based myself on our current world, there are quite some things that have to be adjusted to fit the hybrids in there. Not all things are adjusted, even in Hybrid City, since we are still in the first generation of hybrids. Many of you wanted to see more of the world, and I will try to do so, both in the comic and outside of it. One thing I saw asked was how hybrids were treated in other parts of the world. Maybe I do some small side comics about that at some point. What I can tell you already is that it’s not like Hybrid City everywhere in the world. Some hybrids don’t get treated very well. This is the reason that many of them move to Hybrid City or another part of the world where they are accepted when they are able to. Jesse and his little brother are such an example. While not treated bad directly, they wouldn’t have much of a future in their home country because they were hybrids. It’s new and lots of people just don’t understand or trust them for some reason.
4. Why dragons? Are there other mythological beasts?
Good question. If you remember my earlier post about inspiration for Twin Dragons, you will know that the inspiration for Kai came from a great dragon OC from RuDragon. This is the reason why Kai and Kaya are dragons. Pretty simple reason, I know :p Are there other mythological hybrids? Yes! They are rare and far between, and generally there is only one of each. Kai and Kaya being twins AND mythological is extremely rare. We will see another mythological in the next chapter, so look out for that 😀
5. How did their old town end up?
I didn’t expect people to want to know what happened to the twin’s old town so much, but here you are, asking anyway xD Truth be told, I didn’t plan this and I can’t answer that right now. Since so many of you want to know about it, I should come with an answer to that, so I will. Once again, I can’t say when, but I’ll try to implement it in the story somehow.
As promised, here is a summary of the poll results. But instead of a litteral summary, I decided to just answer some of the things that were asked about and expand of some of the suggestions. If I were to go about all of them at once here, this would get way too long, so I’ll be posting some for the next couple weeks. Enjoy 😀
1. More human characters! I’ve seen people asking for more human characters in the cast. Rest assured, there will be more humans in the story. Nate is only the beginning. That said, the focus lies on Kai and Kaya and the hybrids, so while the hybrids are considered rare compared to regular humans, the story will have a tendency to focus on the hybrids. It will show us how the hybrids are, but there will be more humans in the future chapters.
I also saw that people were happy with the generally happy tone of the comic. Some people said they didn’t have to fear it would take a seriously dark turn all of a sudden. That’s correct, I like my stories happy and I will keep Twin Dragons in the tone it has been so far. I will have some sadder moments in the future chapters, though. Life isn’t all happiness and rainbows all the time. The hybrids in Hybrid City have it good, but it’s not like that everywhere. Rest assured, I won’t be turning towards dark and depressing, since I don’t like that, but there might be a tear flowing somewhere. It’s part of life.
I got praised for the characters a lot. You all seem to like how alive they are and how real they feel. Thank you for the praise! I tend to think about my characters a lot and have them live out their own life in my head, while all I do is present them to situations for them to handle. It’s both a blessing and a curse, since I tend to think so much about it that I forget other things ^^’
This one came up a lot: How did hybrids came to be? Good news. I already told people last year that this would be revealed eventually. It’s almost time, next chapter will be the hybrid origin chapter! Expect answers to this burning question that’s on everyone’s mind 😀
You wouldn’t believe how many times I get asked about when Kai and Kaya’s wings will grow in xD
The answer will probably disappoint, but they won’t get wings anymore. They’re 14. If they were going to get wings, they should have at least have little ones at this point. I created them as flightless dragons. Sorry to everyone that was hoping for their wings ^^’You wouldn’t believe how many times I get asked about when Kai and Kaya’s wings will grow in xD
On the subject of flying hybrids: Making a webcomic means that I don’t have everything planned out from the beginning. One of the things I told myself is that I will update the cannon rules of the world as I go and as I get asked about it, because there is no way I can have anticipated for everything in existence. One such thing is flying hybrids.
I played with the idea of flying hybrids in the early days of the comic, but the more I thought about it, the more it felts like a bad idea to me. Flying is a very specific specialization in the animal world that requires very specific modifications to the body. I’m talking hollow bones, big wingspan, all those things. It would be pretty much impossible to have a humanoid fly with his or her own wings unless they’re huge AND the humanoid has hollow bones. Aside from the implications this would have on the hybrid itself, I’m also going to be honest and say that this kind of thing would be a design nightmare to keep consistent in the comic itself.
Bird hybrids ARE possible, and they will have feathers and everything, but they won’t be able to fly.
That’s it for now, more answers next week 😀
I normally keep the newsletter content contained inside the mails that I sent out, but it was pointed out to me that this week’s content was something that should be kept online. To say it with their words, the post should be ‘immortalized’ on my website.
The post talked about inspiration, and more specifically about what inspired me to start making the story of Twin Dragons. The following text comes straight from the newsletter. Enjoy ^^
So I recently had a talk about where my inspiration for Twin Dragons came from. Questions like this make me think and I came to the conclusion that inspiration is such a weird thing.
Back when I was inspired to take up drawing, I knew that I wanted to make comics. I was inspired by webcomics, anime, manga,… to make my own stories and I would draw them! My inspiration back then was a whole lot different than it is now. My first inspiration was Love Hina from Ken Akamatsu. He is still my favourite manga authors to date. Sure, there are manga authors that have better art, better composition, better stories, better characters,… But Ken Kamatsu holds a special place in my heart as the person that got me to draw. Needless to say that a lot of inspiration back then came directly from his works.
Fast forward to now, and I see I took inspiration from a lot more places over the years. Inspiration, in my opinion, comes from something that excites you. You could be playing a game and suddenly get inspired to make a story about it. You could see someone walking across the street and wonder what is in the bag they are holding. Suddenly you have all the inspiration needed to write a story about a serial killer that carries around parts of their victims in bags xD
When I was talking about what inspired Twin Dragons, I went and talked about the very first version of the story, that was vastly different, and how I got to where we are now. As I type this, I realized that wasn’t really the answer to that question. It was the process of going from an initial idea to a fleshed out story.
So, the real answer to what inspired Twin Dragons, would be a very simple one. I got inspired to draw my own dragon character when I discovered the artist RuDragon (Phation on deviantart) and his little pink dragon character named Ru. I loved his artstyle and I loved Ru, so eventually, I drew myself a dragon as well. This first drawing of Kai looked nothing like what Kai looks like now. But through the years, Kai stuck around. He wouldn’t let go, and in turn, I wouldn’t let go. Now the comic has been running for over three years, Kai got a twin sister and some great friends. He’s on an adventure of life right now.
So that’s the real answer to what inspired Twin Dragons. It goes to show that great ideas can be inspired by the simplest of things.
Happy New Year! Can you believe I’ve been going with this comic for one and a half year already? On to a great 2017 for all you wonderful people and for Kai and Kaya 😀
