Today is Todd's first birthday on Void! It’s wild that this time last year, we were terrified and not expecting to get that far, and now we’re tourney winners. So we thought it’d be fun to share some concepts, practice sketches, and more from behind the scenes to mark the occasion
The OriginsBadger and I actually came up with Todd the year before, because the lovechild jam is fun and slaps hard. Apart from the inherent coolness of combining necromancy with shapeshifting, Gold and Talon are very different in some ways and very similar in others. It was fun to mash their personalities together and discuss how this person would act. The crux of it was, in Badger's words: combine Talon's determination with Gold's self-destructive tendencies and bada bing bada boom! Recipe for disaster.
Where Talon was determined, Todd was obsessed. Where Gold sought out unhealthy relationships, Todd injected them directly into his head. Even though neither "parent" would kill somebody for self-gain, Todd is Just That Messed Up that he would, while crying because he does have some decency in him. The monsters in the basement and head demons have also been present since Todd's inception – twisted signs of his good intentions and loneliness respectively.
Playlisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/06llUoF9B4cMZklfSFHpyV?si=c211218a467d4d59First concept by me, April 2020Further development by Badger------------------------------------------------------------------------
The TournamentWe lost our minds when the tournament was announced, and of course had to join. Working with Badger was honestly one of the best things I've experienced. They're an incredible artist and all-round cool person, and it was so cool to watch our contributions increasingly sync up. They also introduced the concept of actually planning before doing a comic, beyond the necessary scripts and thumbs. As someone who doesn't even warm up before drawing, this was an eye-opener for me and has helped me a tonne with future comics.
Another thing was that this was well and truly a collaboration! I've collabed with people before, but each person's role was pretty cut and dry. One person does this stage, another does the next one. With Badger, we talked every day, and tweaked each other's work until both of us were happy. It's a great feeling, and I think helped us do the best we could.
Lovechild BattlesRound 1 (2nd comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7250Round 2 (1st comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7280 Round 3 (2nd comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7302 Overall NotesBefore the first round even began, we decided that during the tourney Todd's curse would not be cured, and the overarching storyline would be a descent into darkness. Badger summed it up post-tourney very well:
"His whole arc pretty much builds to him building the nerve to commit to curing his curse, only to realize he can't and regret all of his actions so far. The entire story is about a descent into awfulness and he doesn't get a happy ending for killing 2 children."
We wanted him to have increasing agency in the deaths, culminating in completely unprovoked, first-degree murder in the final round. The first round was accidental - since Strigoi was pretty bestial, we used the agent as the "main" death that carried the emotional weight. Todd didn't kill him, but he indirectly caused the death. The second round was self-defence - arguably Todd had reason to kill Abby, but at the same time, he pushed onwards when she asked for mercy. And we all know what happened in the final round.
Visually, we linked them together with sigils as a kind of title card for each round. Badger was able to take my shitty MS paint ideas and make them look amazing.
Round 1: A stylised hand falling into a mouth - the handler's hand and strigoi's maw.
Round 2: Abby's heart with a lightning crack through it, representing her death and the literal lightning scar on her face.
Round 3: The two points are Maddie’s ears, the jagged line below representing the dagger.
Round 1Imo our first round was the weakest technically. We weren't confident in getting far, so we focussed on making the comic work as a standalone and left out story hooks, like the head demons. I didn’t know how to handle the colours at all either. It was immensely fun to draw violence though! We had always planned for Todd's monsters to not be too out there - just sad, twisted creatures - but with Strigoi's power we had the idea of her body going mad trying to process both Todd's DNA and the curse.
A few people have commented on why she was killed when she wasn't a real strigoi, and I've been dying to explain why. Generally when dealing with (European) demons, as well as fey, names are extremely important and powerful. Give them your real name, and they have power over you. But the meaning of your true name has power as well. I was very inspired by a book called "13 Curses", which follows humans trapped in the fey realm and is heavily based on English folklore. At one point, a witch dies when trying to steal another character's identity, because her name is Rowan - a plant poisonous to fey. Rowan's name gave her properties of the real thing she was named for, and it saved her. So why couldn't the reverse happen?
Todd works with demons all the time, and has to play by their rules. Even though Strigoi is more of the sci-fi genre than fantasy, in Todd's little branch of Void, demons and fantastical elements take precedent. Basically, in being called Strigoi, she gained the weaknesses of a real strigoi - like a blessed wooden stake.
My monster conceptsBadger's Strigoi sketches and thumbsEvolution of Strigoi's death sceneMy MSPaint sigil vs Badger's sigilsRound 2Getting to fight an actual demon was a blessing from the RNG gods. It made connecting the characters pretty easy, and was a great way to show the head demons were in fact, demons, and not hallucinations. Since she is described as a powerful demon, we originally wanted to have Abby's parents actually feature and interact with Todd's curse somehow. Ultimately they only got a passing mention though, because it would have been a lot to juggle with the time limit.
Although it hasn't come up explicitly in Todd's storyline, we decided pretty early on that Todd should have a mix of Eastern and Western philosophy, for Gold and Talon respectively. In the second image below of Todd's unseen attic bedroom, there is a bagua poster on his "wall"; those familiar with trigrams may have recognised that he has the one for "fire" tattooed on his arms. The sigils formed the barrier, but the tattoos were responsible for the raging inferno Abby was caught in!
My house concepts, and trigram comparisonBadger's Abby sketches and thumbsEvolution of final pageMy MS Paint idea 2 electric boogaloo vs Badger concepts Final RoundFighting Maddie in the finals was tricky since we wanted to keep her relationship with Clyde (for Drama TM), but didn't want to change our worldbuilding to match, especially in the final round. Void has historically had anti-toon sentiment, so we just went with vague attackers to separate them and build urgency. We also worried that we didn't showcase Clyde's pain enough, but left the ending open in case Kozi and Schneider wanted to build off Maddie's death themselves, should we win.
Some details we wanted to point out: the fog at the beginning represented Todd's clouded mind, the branches changed to hands, and daisies marked the direction Maddie had gone in (check out the pavement on pages 2, 7 and 11).
Badger's Big Demon conceptR3 ~vibe~ and scene concepts by meBadger’s Maddy and Clyde sketches, plus thumbsEvolution of scenes ft. Big Demon's appearance and Clyde breaking inBadger's sigil concepts------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Unused ConceptsUnfortunately, not all concepts get to see the light of day. We had some very different ideas for how the bad ending would actually happen, for example todd's demons taking full control of him, or turning into a demon himself. A lot of monster designs were also not developed, as we opted to keep them mostly in shadow for dramatic effect.
Badger's Todd conceptsMy monster concepts------------------------------------------------------------------------
The MemesWe were gonna say something cool about Todd's future on Void, but instead we're gonna shred this man's dignity. Enjoy
Spilt Milk
King vs. Morrigan
@ 10:14 PM May 12th