After some bouncing around and showing images to people I finally came to the name of No Tie Zone.

So where did it come from? Well I have a very deeprooted dislike for ties. So by extention so do most of the characters in my comic. It also kinda sets the tone of what sort of company it’s going to be.

Already some changes have been made in who owns the company and who fulfils what function. Added to that the comic will also feature jokes and things that are not entirely IT related.

Currently still working on ending THOM but this ending is coming closer and closer.

Now as I stated earlier, Limitations aren’t a bad thing. But a name such as this will cause some serious limitations. As such I’ve decided that I’m going to look for a new name for the comic. One that better embodies the idea of the comic. The setting and characters are going to remain the same, though I’ve already planned some changes.

Of course the problem now is that thinking up a good and catchy name is quite challenging. So that’s something to I’ll be thinking on.

And I’m open to suggestions if you have them.

At the Stripdagen in Haarlem I picked up this gem and it’s sequel. One of the reasons I was there was to look for inspiration for a longform comic I am planning.

In this case the artwork really caught my eye. The author, Christophe Arleston, apparently have various different comic series in his name. This being a more recent one where the art is being done by Alberto Varanda. I totally dig the stylized way of drawing Varanda has.

But on top of great artwork the writing and story are surprisingly entertaining. Elixirs tells of a fantasy world that is constantly on the brink of decay. Through the use of elixirs produced by mages this decay can be countered. The story starts with a princess attending the school of magic which is situated in a neutral city. Though a portal under the city monsters invade it and start ransacking it. With the help of a not so succesful magic student, who spends most of his time chasing girls, the princess and her bodyguard manage to make their escape.

They soon find their way through strange temples and snowy mountains fighting for their survival. Big things are happening in their world and it would seem they are the ones chosen to save it.

On the one hand the story is kinda standard in terms of a group saving the world. But the characters are quite endearing and it’s rather interesting to see something other than orcs and elves these days.

The second book continues the story as they try to find their way. The secret of the Glupion (a small furry animal) that accompanies them is revealed, as are other facts about their adventure.

I’m looking forward to reading book three once it’s released and translated to Dutch. If you get a chance to pick it up I can certainly recommend it. I’m not aware of any official English translations, which is a shame.

This is kinda the same reasoning I used when deciding to stop THOM and moving on to another comic. THOM has no ‘rules’ or ‘boundaries’. Everything goes from sci-fi to fantasy. But this lack of limitations makes it very hard to write good stories. With the exception of Shazram none of the characters have had a chance to develop or grow. Too much weird stuff going on for that.

This is why I wanted to create the IT comic and deliberately set it in a real world. Though I’m still unsure about the inclusion of something fantastic. A lot of IT webcomics tend to have either an animal, artificial intelligence or other non-real thing in it. Often these are included for the toyetic nature of them. Which isn’t bad, I’m just not sure if I will include something like that.

Most likely if I were to do anything like that I’ll probably use something like dreams or such. Why? Because I want to deliberately limit myself to a real world setting. With people that ‘could’ be real. Just to challenge myself in my writing and create actual compelling characters.

One of the most important factors is drawing my characters as often as I can in all sorts of positions. So this is what I did with Jay on this page. Without using reference (which is not a recommendation) I drew Jay in as many poses as possible. Apparently there was something of interest to the left, which is why they’re all looking that way.

One thing I love about Jay is how expressive he can get with those big eyebrows. Expression being a very key feature for characters in comics.

Also the Cthulhu in the top right is just a random bonus drawing. Felt like drawing him.

Not related to the comic I’m working on, but a random doodle I made at work. An intern is in a band called Striking Justice, a punk hardcore band. Ideal music for annoying the crap out of your parents and neighbors. Not my cup of tea in terms of music, but I couldn’t help myself to make fun of name.

It was also an excersize in making a horrible pun at the expense of their name.

It’s kind of fun to draw this stuff, so maybe I’ll make more.

Threw in the mandatory woman and another flaky character based on yet another friend. All in all with the exception of Maron, everyone in the comic was based on someone in real life. Maron was just an amalgamation of how I saw women.

The jokes and adventures were mainly a riff on movie and game tropes.

So all in a pretty standard and perhaps somewhat unoriginal webcomic. This is not to say I didn’t have a blast making this comic.

However without properly worked out characters I quickly ran myself into walls. Even when I rebooted the comic it was still pretty hard to do stories right.

As the comic progressed Shazram moved more to the forground as being the main character. Which I honestly didn’t mind. At some I even regretted having a character named after my online nickname in it. I hated it, but I couldn’t very well remove him suddenly. He was part of the dynamic between the characters.

The comic did of course grow and evolve and somewhere along the line I dropped in Chessa. She was going to be the outsider to our culture, but I never really managed to get that going or work that out properly.

Eventually the great freedom that the comic has was also it’s problem. Too much was possible and the characters weren’t really going anywhere, thus I decided to slowly end the comic.

I do not regret ever starting the comic, and it has been a blast to make. Seeing it grow was a joy and it certainly taught me a great many things about drawing and writing.

Besides, we’re not out of the woods yet. Things are only going to get more maddening.

These drawings were all made using reference. I wanted to create typical poses for them to be in so I could become comfortable with drawing them in various ways.

Like each and every character for this comic, Rain started as just a doodle of a cross between Neil from the Young Ones and cousin It from the Addams Family. A friend pegged him as a the code guru and I liked that.

The name Rain McKnight came from the fact that it sounds cool. Originally his parents, or one of his parents, as going to be a latent hippy which explains his name. But recently whe deciding colors, I opted for an Asian tint for him. This immediately creates an interesting background, his last name obvious comes from his father who’s from Great Britain and his mother was most likely Asian which explains his name. However this does not explain his preference for coding.

Which is why his father is a traveling business man and his mother was dead. Without a lot of friends or attention he turned to computers. Resulting in an overly developed ability to code.

Personality wise I want him to be the most calm character in the comic. Where Jay is relaxed, Rain will always remain calm no matter what happens. This is partially caused by the fact that he has no facial expression. He can’t convey emotion and thus will always come across as very robotic. But that works, those guys exist, I’ve met them.

How Rain will further develop we’ll have to see.

At the time I was toying with a two page story about two punks that generally sit around doing nothing. But a decent story never really formed so I tossed the idea and Jay got a solo adventure. Though he wasn’t named Jay at the time.

Interestingly this is part of the history of the development of the character. The current version doesn’t smoke, but it’s not beyond the realm of possible that he did at one point before starting his job.

As said, nothing is set in stone.