Rare Spawn

by on November 1, 2011 at 6:21 am
Chapter:

I’m not especially good at keeping secrets. So the fact that you are only seeing this, now, after over a month of loving work is nothing short of a miracle. The idea of doing a webcomic wasn’t a new one for Rades and I – we’d talked about it before, sometime last year – but the time wasn’t right. We were on different pages about what a comic should be (I was thinking epic story, he was thinking gag) and so we just shelved it. I’ve always thought it would be really fun to collaborate on a project like this with a writer I respect and get along with. It’s not that I couldn’t have written a comic “all by myself,” I probably could have. But there’s a creative energy that comes from having someone to bounce ideas off of, to brainstorm, to edit and formulate.

Sometimes this can be a bad thing, in the case of one perfectionist and one impatient artist. It took us weeks to make this happen! Long, arduous weeks of painting (but not being able to tell anyone or show what I was painting), talking (but not being able to spill the beans to anyone I knew). It wasn’t just the site, nor the art, nor the comics. (We have comic ideas flying around every which way, there’s no shortage of those.) It was the name. It had to be fun, but descriptive, WoW-related, easy to remember, not too long, not too short, not too boring. I’ll admit, I probably would have “settled” for a name a lot sooner than we did. It was our mutual friend Narci who eventually came up with this name, for which we are eternally grateful. Or at least I’m grateful. Because my head may have exploded if I’d had to wait any longer to share all these hours of work with you. Rades assured me that my patience would pay off, even going so far as to link me to this video:

The premise of the experiment is simple: Give a marshmallow to a kid and tell him he can eat it right away, or he can wait twenty minutes and will receive another marshmallow in addition to the first. Rades explained this to me, at length, including asking me how I would have fared in the actual delayed gratification experiment. The truth is, I probably would have waited. But I would have been one of the children with the looks of agony on their faces as they stare at the marshmallow, lovingly caress it, smell its sugary sweetness – and unconsciously have their hand creep towards it when they are doing their best to look away. It’s been a lot longer than twenty minutes, but finally I’m getting that second marshmallow, and let me tell you, there is going to be shrapnel. I am excited.

From Draenor With Love is a comic about two irreverent, unlikely friends. Who said an orc and a draenei can’t get along? You can visit our top menu bar pages to read a bit about Vid and Rades (the characters) as well as the creators (aka partners-in-crime).

The comic itself is a way for me to push myself artistically, and I’ve been having a blast with it. Don’t think this is a fleeting fancy, either! We’ve got more comics and will be updating every Wednesday. I hope you enjoy it! If you’d like an easy way to keep track of updates, there’s an RSS feed conveniently located up by the header, and ways to comment on both comics and blog entries. We’d love to hear your feedback.

The site is as complete as we could make it but may still be a work in progress as we get to know things. We’d like to thank Narci, Liala, Walks and Vosskah for all their help as we got set up. Design, names and other feedback were much appreciated, and Voss provided technical support as well as “motivational speaking” in the form of “I’ve never seen two people take so long to name something in their lives! How do you choose socks in the morning? You will publish your first comic in a YEAR if this goes on! Morons!” (He gets frustrated, but is still very loving. At one point he threatened to drive me to Rades’ town so he could knock our heads together…)

But fortunately we both survived unscathed, we’ve published our first comic, and you’re reading it! Thanks for stopping by!

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