Winds of Hoenn - FULL ZINE ILLUSTRATION (Patreon)

HEY GUYS!

I am FINALLY allowed to show the FULL Illustration I did for the Charity Zine "Winds of Hoenn" :DD I'll be sharing it next week online as well and as all paid orders have been shipped out, us contributors will now receive a printed copy of the Zine as well :D My package is already on its way and I am SUPER excited for it!!!

Aaaand given that this was my first Zine I was a part of, some may ask me: Will I work on more Zines in the future from now on? Aaaand the answers IS: No. ABSOLUTELY not. As enriching as the experience was and as happy as I am to have been able to contribute to such an ambitious project, with the team being able to donate A HUGE chunk of money to ocean conservation (WHICH IS FANTASTIC!!!) - I actually don't find myself to be a huge fan of these modern super tightly planned and thoroughly structured Zine projects.
Don't get me wrong - I LOVE what we were able to accomplish here, the Winds of Hoenn-Mod team did an INCREDIBLE job organising everything and keeping the team motivated and on schedule! I do not intend to speak ill of anyone of them, as they did absolutely nothing wrong, it's not that I have a problem with THIS Zine in particular.

But its the fact that this kind of enormous business-type-Zine has become the NORM, and I thought Zines were supposed to be just a fun fan project! Winds of Hoenn of course was a charity project and I was fully aware of that - but the more I looked around as I was diving into the Zine-community, the more I noticed that ALL Zines are as overly ambitious with TONS of merch, high prices and ESPECIALLY: VERY strict planning on who is going to draw what with little freedom for the artist. It's no longer just a fun community project of fans drawing whatever they want to a specific topic, some of the Zines I've seen and heard about are just UNPAID COMMISSIONS at this point.

Again - this does NOT apply to the Winds of Hoenn Zine, they weren't as tight with their assignments as other Zines I've seen. I was assigned a specific route, had some pointers of do's and dont's for the illustration, but it was up to me to choose a format and how to present the route and which character/Pokemon. But I'm still a bit sad I didn't get to draw any of the many illustration ideas I had in mind before I signed up, which I would have LOVED to contribute to the Zine as well or instead!

A dear friend of mine had asked me if I'd like to host an Alola-Zine with her one day, but in OLD-SCHOOL-style. No physical print, no tight application process, just a bunch of artists coming together to draw fanart freely and put it together as a free to download Zine-PDF for all. And I really love that thought but - not now. I'm not sure if I'll actually do it or not...but after the Dub I definitely need a break from organising anything for a while. Maybe I'll get motivated for such a project another day in the future! But if someone else decides to revive the olden days of Zines before us, that's fine too. I'd be happy to see it either way! 

So yeah, that was a LONG rant about the Zine community and some had already heard my thoughts on it before on Discord, but I needed to let it out again for this upload :'D Again, I do NOT regret to have been a part of Winds of Hoenn, I am thankful for the experience, I'm happy I was able to contribute for a GOOD CAUSE and I don't have anything against it or its wonderful team, just to make that clear again! :'D

This is just an obversation of the general creation of Zines nowadays and that I think we should return to some lighthearted fun again, instead of Zines ALWAYS turning into big marketing projects