Making of Taifau Cafe CH1 (Patreon)

More so than an actual recap of the making of this chapter, this will feel more like a behind the scenes sort of! Not a looot changed besides the structure, addition or removal of some scenes from the original sketchbook draft, which I can finally show in better quality than I had shared before!

I want to talk about a lot of particular choices I made, not for being particularly clever or anything of the sorts, but they were just things that had been planned out for as long as I first started out sketching out the original ideas for this world!

Let's go in chronological order. I always envisioned the story to start out from an outsider's perspective, the original scene would've played out the exact same as it did in the Webtoons comic. Everytime I tried to draft out a comic it started out the same lol, even though the Webtoons started in 2020, there are rough sketches of said scene from 2019....

2019, 2020 and 2023 respectively.

Moving on, on the next scene of the Vondrova people, this is when things started to feel more like a "celebration" or reunion of sorts, this are characters I had made way back in highschool! It was nice to finally draw them speaking and being themselves.

2017

I thought killing that other guy was a bit rough, not because death itself has weight, but more so because I thought his design was really cool for him to only show up for a few couple of pages and never again lol, so I decided to give him a brother! That's who's at his side in the wanted poster, it also just naturally lead to some future conflict so while spontaneous it was a welcome change.

Speaking of the reunion feeling I had while making all of this, the whole graduation scene was filled the most with that! I wonder if anyone noticed that the treasure hunters from the intro of the Webtoons comic noticed that they were there in the crowd..... Same as the Vondrova people, the old lady was also a character from highschool!

2020

2017

While digging through my old files to show all these old sketches, I happened to find a draft of the original version of this story! I had completely forgotten about it, but all the beats of this section are there.... Krea banging on Ram's door, him being late, Milo scolding them, the old lady congratulating them. Everything! It is quite shocking to have found this.... it's from 2020! 

The format was sketched out in a closer way to how a Webtoons comic would look like, which makes sense given I had worked on that the same year. I guess making one comic gave me the drive to start out working on this....

I also wonder if aaaanyone who had been following my work since the very beginning remembered the Doko scooter thing, I had been drawing it since 2016.... all these nods and references were for me, just being self indulgent and proud of everything I had made leading up to this point, but I also hoped a bit that anyone would notice these things lol.

2016

Joe was the second guest character to show up, the first one being Buisy's, who unfortunately got the short end of the stick, sorry! I needed  more designs to fill up the wanted poster lol. 

Devi

Joe

I've always found the Robot Master design contests that Capcom did way back for Mega Man to be very endearing, what a cool way to involve the people who support you! So I wanted to do my own spin on it as a way to thank you all for your support, I wouldn't be able to work on this without your help, so I want you to be a part of it too!

The following scene of Ram and Milo finding the core was also one of the very first foundational sketches of Taifau Cafe! I might've shared this before... I don't remember, but it never hurts to see it again.

2016

I ask my girlfriend to proofread the "script" (once I put text on all the bubbles lol) since she's better at writing than me and for general feedback. She was the one who had suggested the page of the robot attacking Ram and Milo, originally there was nothing there, but I think it was a very welcome change!

And finally fast forward to the final part at the cafe, my favorite!

Long ago when I was not familiar with comics at all I tried to instead do a series of drawings accompanied by text, I guess not too far off from a children's book? Just like some previous examples, this was also drawn years ago and made the transition to the final version pretty seamlessly!

2019

Krea is a lot of fun to write and draw! To the surprise of noone.... I know generally I portray her in a very cute and cheerful way in most drawings, but in reality I wanted her to be almost unlikeable lol, in a "she's annoying but I like her" sort of way. People's reaction usually being "wait she was a bitch all this time?" is always funny. She's cute but proooooobably not someone you would like to be friends with! Unless you have infinite ammounts of patience.

And I think that's about all I have to say I think.... I thought I would write more, but again there is not a lot of changes or thought put into the original draft! I just imagine and sketch out what I see in my head. I wish my process was a bit more elaborate so I could give some further insight lol....

The only scrapped page was the first one form part 2, I just wasn't happy with how it was coming at all so I redid it from the ground up.

Overall I'm very happy to finally be done with this, splitting it up into 2 parts was a bit of a mistake in hindsight! At least for me. I'm glad that you all enjoyed what you read in the first one, but it just screamed incomplete to me. So many moments I wanted to show you but I had to wait until the later half to finally do so!

I had taken a month off after the first part due to my dissatisfaction with it, at points I thought I straight up didn't like it! But the more I pushed on with the next part and started looking back to the first I was like perhaps I was being too tough on myself.... this isn't bad! And now that I can see everything as a whole I can say yeah, it is cool!

I will try to not make any more compromises like that in the future. While yes, I do want to show you guys what's next as soon as possible, I also want you guys to see my work at its best without any drawbacks. The next chapters should be much shorter, so hopefully I won't run into any more issues like that!

Thank you for reading and for your support! I am excited to finally committing to this story, it's been clearly in the back of my head for a loooooooong time, so I hope you look forward to more!