Initial designs for the IGM mascot (Microsoft Paint, 2015)

I did a quick illustration on paint and submitted it to my editor at the time. It was well received, so I continued refining the designs. We eventually decided upon two mascots that would represent the magazine: Ignatius, a fire mage, and Isolde, an ice dragon. Though I had a drawing background, digital art was very new to me. But I was full of excitement. After a few hand drawn sketches, I decided to start experimenting with software.

Rough sketches for Ignatius (Pen on paper, 2015)

Character profiles (Texta on paper)

Isolde (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Ignatius & Isolde drawn smoothly (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

My initial attempts were very rough. I kept at it, trying to figure out different techniques and make my illustrations look more polished.

Messy initial attempt to inject colours (Clip Studio Paint, 2015) Experimentation with backgrounds and blur techniques

Practice illustration of Ignatius flying with Isolde (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Ignatius & Isolde (Microsoft Paint, 2015)

My favourite illustration of Ignatius and Isolde (above) was created with Paint. I love Paint. Still, it’s limited. It doen’t have the layer feature so essential to graphics editing software. At one point I superimposed one of the designs onto a t-shirt and really liked the result:

Iggy and Izzy posing (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

T-shirt designs featuring Iggy & Izzy (2015)

Around the same time, I also became interested in creating a comic which featured both Ignatius and Isolde (who quickly gained the nicknames ‘Iggy’ and ‘Izzy’) and began trying my hand at fonts. Teaching myself was a slow process, but things were gradually improving.

‘Ignatius’ attempt 1 (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

‘Ignatius’ attempt 2 (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Iggy & Izzy (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Practice logo (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Expanding the logo, adding shadows (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Finalised logo (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

Now that I’d come up with a suitable logo, I proceeded with the actual comic itself. This was probably the most time consuming (yet highly enjoyable) part. I tried composing my own font using an online program, however the final product (see below) wasn’t the level of dapper I wanted. Plus the spacing between words was far too wide and unnatural looking.

Ignatius, two variations (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

The tale behind the comics (2015)

Issue 1: Pyros in Ruins, pen on paper (2015)

Ignatius in issue 1, pen on paper (2015)

Issue 1, page 1. Colour wash draft with self-composed font (2015)

Issue 1, page 2. Colour wash draft (2015)

I splurged on a more professional looking font from Blambot, and reworked the background of the first panel. It started looking much better. I felt much more pleased with the sky, but still needed to recreate the grasslands more beautifully before moving onto the village.

Issue 1, page 1. Pyros (Clip Studio Paint, 2015)

At the end of the day, this comic wasn’t published. The idea was shelved. Nevertheless, it will always live on as a pleasant memory for me. It also helped me to rediscover my passion for art. Hopefully the future holds many more wonderful discoveries. – K.K.Atlas