I wanted to do a writeup talking about what went into Shattered World--the ideas, how things started, and the process. Not because I think I do these things well, but because the internet likes to focus on product and end result, not on what it took to get to where we are. Creating is a process, not a result, and personally I find creators talking about that process at-length is what helps me realize that, hey, maybe I can do that too.I started what would become Shattered World back in about June last year (2019). I’d been playing a lot of Beat Saber at the time, and the Imagine Dragons pack had just recently been released. I’d not really been into Imagine Dragons before that and some of the songs were exactly the kind of mood music I needed. In particular, the song Radioactive gave me a spark of inspiration.The concept was pretty bare, just the idea of snowpoff!ahkaskar wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of spare parts and old world tech. Pockets of society in safe zones would rely on those parts but venturing out would mean cutting one’s life dramatically due to intense radiation. Ahk would be unique in that they could survive the radiation through extreme adaptation, and it meant they could heal quickly, or change their form in response to environmental danger.The idea struck a chord with me though because it was a story about a lonesome journey and I felt it would be a great solo project. So I started to lay out the foundation with a few specific goals:• Create a project that’s all my own where I wouldn’t have to worry about my enthusiasm being too much for anyone else. A playground without consequence.
• Tell a story--one of the things I’ve wanted to do with my art ever since I started.
• Expand my art skills through dedication and focus.
• Learn to move on from art when it’s “finished”.
• Prove to myself that I could finish a large scale project with a defined end--something bigger than anything I’ve done before.I still needed to flesh out “what” the project was though. After a dream about an impossibly huge monolith that cast a solid dark shadow, I started collecting concept art and screenshots from things, such as games with post-apocalyptic or eldritch plots and settings.The world eventually became one where, at least a hundred years since an unknown cataclysm, nature had taken back much of the wreckage. But there would still be visible reminders of that lost society; their indescribable technology and what it cost them. The towers are the source of a deadly quantum radiation with unpredictable effects. The radiation divides the world, cutting cities and towns off from each other, and threatens to swallow the rest.Ahk would be a creature out of place with no past, and the strange ability to come back from death, over and over again. They’d take it upon themselves to go where no one else could survive and see if they could stop the radiation’s spread.The prologue would be my means for accomplishing the goals I’d laid out. I’d expand my skills by working hard on the areas I felt I needed the most time: drawing confidently, and coloring. By doing all the lineart, then all the coloring, I’d push myself into better habits and better solutions just with sheer repetition.And now that the prologue is finished and posted, I’m able to look back and say it accomplished just what I was hoping. Over the months, my lineart started coming out faster and faster, with more detail and more confidence in shape. When I started initially, it took me a week or two to finish the lineart for a single panel, and by December I had one week where I cranked out three. Coloring was initially very difficult and tedious, but forcing myself to do it meant finding better ways to accomplish the visual I wanted, until coloring felt like a very natural part of the process.I feel like the final panel, number 13, is proof enough for me. It’s the visual I wanted to capture from the start and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without all the panels before it. In this way, the prologue itself is a journey for myself. Even if it’s a short one, it goes from small to immense, opening up a broader sense of potential.Thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to the mysteries still to come in Shattered World.