Hey I haven’t posted art in a while, is this anything?

The current berrytube challenge is a free weeklong mega challenge. The fanfic I’m attempting to illustrate is “for want of dawn”, I linked it earlier. I sincerely doubt I’ll get it all done by the deadline on monday, but I might as well try,. I’ve wanted to do comics for almost a decade but was never confident enough to try. lookit me now!! :D

breakdown after cut, mainly to help outline whats going on to myself >///<

First off, I chose this fic because I read it semi recently and it spoke volumes to me. *spoilers* the fics AU were the mane 6 didn’t make it to the castle of 2sis in time, and so NMM returned and there was a war. before the fic starts NMM and big C managed to off each other, but not before masses of damage has been caused. The sun and moon are locked in place and the world is slowly freezing.

flutters is the main an/protagonist, and consistently grieves the lack of kindness in the world now, how everythings so desperate to survive, to be kind is to invite death. nevertheless she is still consistently kind. I relate strongly. Pinkie shows up later and keeps saying “tomorrow will be sunshine and rainbows!” and flutters remarks how thats an easy promise to make when the dawn never comes.

Which hit really close to home.

In the very end, with the help from her friends, flutters gains the ability to raise the sun. Which is an INCREDIBLE metaphor for depression, which I didn’t see until just now. I remarked how people trying to help cure depression sound an awful lot like pinkie pie, how it sounds so easy when you assume the sun will come up. But then at the end of your character arc, with the help of friends, (and either medication or ancient artefacts) you can learn how to raise your own damn sun.

.... so thats why I’m doing this. Onto the comic!

I like comics with pictographs instead of words, because you can convey more information succinctly and it wont need translating. It does add a bit of challenge though.. and I might struggle on dialogue heavy scenes, and metaphorical concepts. “theres no more kindness in the world” now how am I going to pictograph that??

The first page is the one with the aforementioned animal death, which is unfortunate. Its meant to read a wounded deer 1.wandering, 2.hearing flutters, 3. backing away from scary flutters, 4. uhhh happy funtimes had by all, with a pop-out fluttershy singing to it to try and calm it down. 

I like the pop-out fluttershy, but I think it can be done better, and theres some issues with the drawing anyway (not that I can pinpoint them >_>). I also like the two deer I put effort into, they came out really well considering I havent drawn deer before and didnt use a reference LOL. I want to redraw it but I should just continue the sketching. (I like using the pop-outs music notes as a panel separator.)

The second page flutters returns to her cottage to get something to carry the carcass back to base. story says she uses a litter (??) I’ll depict her using an oversized bindle thing. The first panel has some pictograms thats meant to be read “meat return home ? ...need to visit cottage...”, I don’t like the image repeat at her cottage. was considering having that panel be a thought bubble, but then theres too much disconnect between page one and two (already considerable) which would be fixed if I redrew page one but I don’t know how to do that better ;n; ANYWAY the second panel is meant to show flutters coming across her ruined cottage with the ex-city of canterlot in the background, with the eclipse coming from behind the mountains. Thats a hard concept and I don’t think I pulled it off. the next two small panels are flutters finding the quilt in a secret compartment under the floorboards, and hearing a noise outside (signalled by !! coming from the window). Flutters tentatively looking down the stairs at the empty door, before making a break for it and encountering a wild soldier of the dawn!! gasp!!

I’m currently redrawing this page, (getting rid of a conceptually cool sword but its impossible to draw.) and I’ve already redrawn rarity and she looks AMAZING. easily the best drawing I’ve done ever.

The mane six got split neatly in half, with flutters & AJ joining NMM (flutters for hunger, AJ because big C razed everything), and twi, rars and RD joining big C. ponka joins AJ after the war, after saving a bunch of kiddies. Flutters is supposed to be a thestral, with bat wings, pointy ears, bat cm (not drawn) and fangs (forgot). Twi got promoted to general and rars is a scout under her, hence twis CM on her armour.

They’re still enemies, and rars thinks flutters is a big nasty monster stealing stuff from her old friends house. So rars tries to kill flutters ;n; You’ll find out what happens next when I draw it.