Spring in Republic City (WIP Update 1) (Patreon)

I've started in on our final piece for this month, which will wrap up my Seasons in Republic City series with a Spring comic. This is going to be a two page comic and I'd like to post both together, so there'll be another WIP update focused on page 2 a little later on before I post the final comic closer to the end of the month.

This one took me a bit to figure out what I should do. I knew I wanted it to be set in the morning since I noticed that all the others in this series, by pure coincidence, were set at different times of day appropriate to the season (summer at noon, autumn at dusk, winter at night). So not having the spring piece set in the morning would be a missed opportunity 🤣 I also wanted to feature Avatar Korra Park in some way, with spirits following Korra.

It wasn't until we had several weeks of rain here that I realized I haven't drawn a rainy scene in forever, and I suddenly had scenes from Makoto Shinkai's "The Garden of Words" popping into my head that I finally figured it all out.

So this comic is sort of intended to pay homage to Shinaki's film, in a way, and I'm trying to recreate the same vibe as many of the scenes in his film, along with that Studio Ghibli vibe we get whenever we see spirits interact with Korra. This is probably my most challenging piece to date, because nature scenes filled with spirits and critters are NOT my strength. Hopefully I can make the final comic look even half as good as it does in my head 😅