This post is an archive of a few twitter posts. They have been slightly altered to fit the format of the text archive

Thread 1 // Thread 2

For some context; This started as a separate post about Io & how I didn’t expect them to make it past a few artworks. I made a second thread later about a canned project Io's original design was based off, 'Magia Mechanica'

Io's Old Design

Before I revamped them/made them public, Io was supposed to be a one-off self insert design for a scrapped world building project. (they wouldn’t have appeared in the story if I finished it).

Now they’re my main OC

Demonic Io bumping into reploid Io drawing

Never posted it because Io at that point was a private OC, but here’s Io’s first design!

the world they were from was basically “magical-girl-esque robots fighting giant monsters,” but it got scrapped bc it got too personal + I wasn’t attached to the premise

Magia Io

The Canned Project

To be honest I still think about that “magical girl-esqe monster-fighting robots” project. But I think it’s because of the reason I canned it vs the actual story itself.

For context, I made it in mid 2020 when I wasn’t in the greatest place. And it was also after I watched Evangelion and Madoka Magica for the first time...

yeah it turned into a “really edgy story that was used to process serious stuff”

The full premise was a group of people got offered the chance to become superpowered robots to defend humanity from giant mutated animals coming from the east coast. But it went sour as the government started neglecting them as people / only saw them as weapons

I don’t think the premise is bad, it just became too heavy for me. A lot of the shorts & worldbuilding I did became too personal (like my-eyes-only personal). And with it dealing w/trauma, real issues, etc. it became sadder & harder to work on So I opted to scrap it for now

For a lighter note, I also wasn’t attached to the inspirations. The main things I wanted to pull from was - Magical girl-esqe themes - Kaiju & other “monster media” - Mecha / fighting robots (think megaman)

but for starters, I didn’t grow up with magical girl shows & couldn’t get into them when I was trying the genre more (just not my thing ig). So no elements of that showed up in the drafts. On monster media & mecha my exposure was also pretty low. And even so i’m more of a monster hunting and “megaman-esque” robot fan than a kaiju and mecha fan

what I’m getting at is I was trying to write something based on things I didn’t consume or know much about.

I think it’s fine to write outside your/my regular things, but there needs to be some interest & respect for the media for it to work imo.

there were a few things that did go public. Io is one character, but there’s also Rocket (top) and Cordlass (bottom). Both of them would’ve been the main characters;

Rocket early design Cordlass early design

Rocket was the inexperienced and anxious newbie, Cordlass was more experienced and calmer

For something bigger, Rocket’s first Mission was a proof of concept & a test to see how good my comic skills were at the time. (I’ve really come a long way, damn)

I stuck to the monster-fighting part here though

RFM thumbnail

You can read it onsite! (link)

I guess my main take away & advice on this: - If you’re not ready to do a heavy project/it’s really weighing on you, it’s fine to step back from it. Especially if it’s processing your own experiences you are not obligated to deal with them ASAP. Take as long as you need dude

and on insp: - if it’s a genre you’re very unfamiliar with, research into it, explore it’s history a bit. So even if it’s not a main interest of yours you can keep that element alive / respectful to the source material.

to be honest, i guess this was a ‘good’ failed project for me. I still keep the few ocs I made (just in different stories), I got a comic out of it.

And even if it got too personal & heavy, i guess it helped me cope with some things at the time <3

Misc. Notes

Things that weren’t mentioned initially, but I think is also fun trivia relating to this canned project