2013 Draft vs. 2015 Draft (Patreon)

I can’t believe we’re hitting page 150 next week! Honestly, it’s surreal to be headed into the third act. 

I thought I’d share some more about how the story came to be, plus some side-by-sides of the original 2013 version and the one you’ve been reading!

I started working on Oren’s Forge late in 2013 out of sheer desperation. I was going through a very difficult and ugly end to a long relationship and the career I’d spent the last eight years building. 

My normal work routine was gone and I was driving myself (literally) crazy with nothing to focus on. The story for Oren’s Forge was rattling around in my head already and seemed like something to do. At the time, the story was pretty straightforward and felt “manageable” at 60 pages or so. (The original ending was a lot different than where we're going.)

I poured all my manic and negative energy into the first draft of Oren’s Forge, sketching out 40+ pages and fully finishing 17 in a matter of weeks. It developed a dark, desperate theme early on, a lot of what was going on inside me. Only a handful of people ever saw those pages because honestly, I was just doing it to stay sane and out of trouble, and the art was...well, not my highest caliber. (This was also before I got a Cintiq, which upped my digital art game a ton.)

Life kept getting rockier and I ultimately burned out— not just with the comic, but everything. There was about a year I simply couldn’t draw or write (or get out of bed). I was depressed, bitter and aimless for most of 2014. My instinct then was to disappear.

Three things changed: my partner, who I love more than anything, helped me recenter my life both with compassion and by not putting up with my self pity bullshit. Second, I got renewed access to bipolar medication and much needed anti-depressants through the ACA (this, quite frankly, saved my life—support Universal Health Care). Lastly, I got a new aforementioned Cintiq tablet. 

I took inventory of what I wanted from life. Comics and writing were the still only things that screamed THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING.

In early 2015, I made a list of various projects I had left unfinished or on standby. Some, like Nordguard or the Dog’s Days of Summer sequel I had written were a little too painful to tackle (and riddled with minefields). There was a short-lived noir comic I knocked out a handful of pages for with a 40 page story, but it had first-act problems and overall wasn’t sparking much creative inspiration.

It was ultra-grim with a lot of crooked cops and people getting boiled alive.

Plus this thing was set in a fictional 1940's NYC and like... why did I decide to do that to myself.

Then, after not having looked at it for nearly a year, I found the Oren’s Forge draft while going through old Scrivner files. I pulled up the comic pages I had finished and thought: these layouts aren’t bad… this story is interesting… I can update the art now that I have the tools…

That’s how I picked it up again in 2015. This is when it went from a 60-page “easy” project to something that inspired me creatively and brought me back to art and writing. This was a new world I wanted to explore and develop, free from obligation or long shadows from the past. It was creatively refreshing with dark themes where I could vent, all while chasing an elusive “happy” ending.

I’ve shared a couple of the original pages before, over the years, but not many. Here’s all 17 of the finished pages from 2013, side-by-side with the 2015 versions.

(Here you can see a major change as the story developed-- wolves were no longer "tool users". They never had to evolve the need to think "outside the box"-- they have teeth, claws and fur that gets the job of surviving done.)

Here is where the layouts started to deviate from the original 2013 version. In the original, Quanaq fell to his death almost immediately. I thought the rock would land with more emotional punch if he had chance to explain himself and add some exposition.

(I vividly remember how mind-numbingly tedious it was drawing all the rain splatters in that first panel.)

The story deviated and expanded a fair bit after this point, though some scenes stayed in and almost unchanged (like the wolf chase). I also took individual panels I liked from the first draft and reworked them into new layouts.

Eventually I reached the point in the 2013 material where I had only done rough layouts, so it became easy to pick and choose the panels I liked, then re-work them into new pages.

(Originally, I was going to have Blackfoot the wolf pee on the tree before they ran off. I wish I'd kept it in, honestly-- I think it was the perfect blend of real-wolf behavior and Blackfoot just being an asshole.)

I still struggle with intense burnout. Some days (a lot of days) I just don’t want to draw. I do, though (most days), because wrestling burnout is second nature now.  I won't lie-- it's exhausting. The story is what keeps me going and the fact that you guys are reading it. I really want you to see the end, to have closure, to know these characters... just as much as I want to know what story comes next after this tale is done.

Thank you for reading Oren’s Forge, sharing it, and supporting it where you can! 

To my Patreons, thank you from the bottom of my heart— the emotional journey and catharsis of making the comic aside— I simply could not afford to have put this story to paper without you. I wouldn’t have been able to make page 70, let alone page 150. 

Stay safe everyone!