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1
VOID Characters and Comics / It's Todd Time
« on: Feb 22, 2022, 05:19 PM »
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 Origins
Badger 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.

Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/06llUoF9B4cMZklfSFHpyV?si=c211218a467d4d59

First concept by me, April 2020


Further development by Badger



------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Tournament
We 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 Battles
Round 1 (2nd comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7250
Round 2 (1st comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7280
Round 3 (2nd comic): https://entervoid.com/comic/7302

Overall Notes
Before 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 1
Imo 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 concepts


Badger's Strigoi sketches and thumbs



Evolution of Strigoi's death scene


My MSPaint sigil vs Badger's sigils



Round 2
Getting 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 comparison




Badger's Abby sketches and thumbs



Evolution of final page


My MS Paint idea 2 electric boogaloo vs Badger concepts



Final Round
Fighting 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 concept


R3 ~vibe~ and scene concepts by me





Badger’s Maddy and Clyde sketches, plus thumbs



Evolution of scenes ft. Big Demon's appearance and Clyde breaking in



Badger's sigil concepts


------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Unused Concepts
Unfortunately, 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 concepts




My monster concepts


------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Memes
We were gonna say something cool about Todd's future on Void, but instead we're gonna shred this man's dignity. Enjoy :)




2
spit spat, time to chat / Goodbye Letter to Void
« on: Oct 27, 2021, 06:48 PM »
Hi all. I debated whether to post this here or on the forums, because on the one hand people barely read the forums, but on the other, anything I say will get lost quickly in a Discord chat, so here we are.

This is my goodbye to enterVOID. I rejoined the server to see how Bark vs Bite was doing, but I’ve had it on mute and I think I’ll be leaving for good soon. I’ll still be around on enterVOID the website; I’m down for battles, I have some outstanding collabs, and if you want a comment or just to chat, feel free to hit me up on Discord. But I’ll be barely active. And as somebody who used to be extremely active, I thought I’d explain why.

The long and short of it is that Void has become a very negative place for me. It’s extremely draining to have many people react with apathy towards my comics and characters, or even hostility towards me. Not to mention the hypocrisy and clique mentality rampant in the community. Why bother giving so much effort to a community who overall doesn’t appreciate or reciprocate it, especially now that I’ve found others that do?

I don’t think Void is a bad place, or that all Voiders are like this. The people here have helped me tremendously with not just comics, but art as a whole. I’m still genuinely surprised at the massive difference in ability Void has fostered. I’ve also met some great people here, who I anticipate I’ll be friends with for a good while. I have felt like this for some time, but hung on and kept coming back because I wanted to stay for them, not to mention FOMO. But I was eventually forced to accept the cons now outweigh the pros for me personally.

I’ll end this with a message to anyone it concerns: Void is a community, and a tiny one at that. Please give something back to it. Don’t use this as a place to dump your comics and get instant validation. Don’t stay in an uncritical echo chamber with the same few people. Read comics by people you wouldn’t normally read, take crits as a learning opportunity, comment on anything you see up when you visit the site. Everybody knows each other here, and every one of you is already a significant part of the community who can change things for the better. Thank you. 

3
THE INCUBATOR / Re: Juxta’s Incubator waaa waaa
« on: Sep 23, 2021, 07:26 PM »
Get him in! Get him in! Get him in!

4
snager, you missed the point hard. I don't think there's a problem with comparing people, because you're right, being a competition site people are fundamentally being compared to each other and scored accordingly. I don't think you should be dishonest in comments so as to not hurt people's feelings either. I'm certainly not known for gentle critique. I've been roasted several times for criticising people's lack of time management and/or self control, which to me are the only invalid reasons for incomplete comics or defaults (like Snowy said, life can get in the way sometimes and you can't fault people for that).

But that isn't what you did. You didn't identify the reason for incompletion or suggest a solution. You've felt the need to bring up the fact that people are doing what you consider "poor work", repeatedly, on at least 3 major events now. You didn't even direct this comment at the artists in question, but in a backhanded compliment buried under a spoiler crit for a different artist. How is that helpful to anyone?

"so many poor showings this past year from so many artists" is not a critique. It is rubbing salt in the wound.

6
spit spat, time to chat / Re: DIOV CITY Tournament
« on: Aug 10, 2021, 05:34 AM »
Interest? 👀

7
Art Jams / Re: Banners for VOID 5.99
« on: Jul 23, 2021, 04:49 PM »
Some Todd banners by Badger and I! Option 1 for both please :)



8
Reviews / Re: The Bibliopossum's Library
« on: Jun 04, 2021, 05:36 AM »
This is such a great idea!! I’m already Looking at some of these suggestions. If I read any of them I’ll be sure to comment again.

Btw, can we also share comic recommendations?

9
THE INCUBATOR / Re: Uncle Cucky's Character Incubator!
« on: May 24, 2021, 07:42 PM »
Staff have the final say of course, but this is an A++ ref to me! Loads of detail and shots of :D from different angles. The main requirement of a ref here is to show two views of the character and showcase their abilities, so you’ve gone above and beyond!

10
VOID Characters and Comics / Re: Backstage Pass
« on: May 06, 2021, 08:58 PM »
Hi all! My sincerest apologies for the huge gap between episodes; I forgot to do the title card, and then between Lovechild and Batty’s house hunting, time sort of slipped away from us. We will be on hiatus for a little while longer, so please bear with us! As always, if anyone is interested in being a guest, feel free to contact us as we’re hunting for future eps ;)


EPISODE 2: HOMAGE TO A HELL RAISER

STARRING

FEATURED CHARACTERS

HOSTED BY


Transcript coming soon!

11
Art Jams / Re: Banners for VOID 5.99
« on: Feb 19, 2021, 08:30 PM »
Non-repeating, option 2 (black) please!


12
VOID Characters and Comics / Re: Backstage Pass
« on: Jan 24, 2021, 08:16 PM »

EPISODE 1: THE PIRATES AND THE PONTIFEX

STARRING

FEATURED CHARACTERS

HOSTED BY


Transcript coming soon!

13
News & Events / Re: BEST OF VOID 2020
« on: Jan 20, 2021, 08:21 PM »
Oh jeez everyone’s giving speeches I guess I should too.

I think we can all agree 2020 has been shitty not just for the world, but for each of us individually. I’ve had a rough time with my health, both mentally and physically, and Void has basically been giving me motivation to keep going. It’s really great to be a part of a community that spurs you to DO things, I can’t remember the last time I was this productive or improved so much in such a short amount of time. I’m so happy that my work has paid off! Sean really started me off on that path and I can’t thank him enough for the help he gave me during mentor roulette and continues to give me now. Heathen and Don have been super helpful on both writing and art fronts. Also want to thank Heavenbat, Flytee, Badger, Kozispoon and Hella for additional help and moral support, there are honestly so many others who have helped me too but I can hardly list them all. Thank you guys <3

14
News & Events / Re: BEST OF VOID 2020
« on: Jan 20, 2021, 07:15 PM »
BIG EYES EMOJI I love these wreaths! Congrats to all the winners! Really great showing this year :D

15
GO FOR BROKE! / Re: Flytee tries to get good
« on: Jan 03, 2021, 10:19 PM »
Hell yeah! Excited to see your progress :)

16
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 28, 2020, 09:13 PM »
Hey guys, sorry for the radio silence! I gave myself Christmas off, but unfortunately my hand started acting up shortly after :( I thought I'd wait a few days, but it's still hurting and I don't want to push myself. Though I was originally going to do all 31 days, I think this was a very convenient place to stop anyway, as most advent calendars typically end on Christmas Eve!

Hope you all enjoyed it, and thanks to everyone who supported and encouraged this! If I'm able to do this next year, I'll definitely prioritise those I was forced to miss out on this year :) and I encourage anyone else who wants to try this out too! Happy holidays everyone!

17
VOID Characters and Comics / Backstage Pass
« on: Dec 27, 2020, 01:28 AM »

What is Backstage Pass?
Backstage Pass is a podcast focused on characters and overarching stories within Void, as well as the process of making the comics of EnterVoid. The initial idea for this podcast was born from the realisation that a lot of planning and effort behind each character, story, and individual comic goes unseen, and we wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look at these processes through an interview-style setup. Rather than crit comics, we want to have conversations with artists.

How can I be featured?
Just ask! We won’t necessarily be looking at recent comics, and will often look at several at a time if we want to talk about things like character arcs and storylines. Episodes are based on specific artists, not specific comics. For shyer folk, don’t worry - episodes are pre-recorded and will only feature you and the hosts.

Isn't this just Junkcast?
Yes and no! We're going for a bit more of a traditional podcast setup, and also something that's almost the reverse of Junkcast; rather than put the spotlight on the comic itself and our reactions and takeaway from it, we want to hold a microphone out to the artist to let them spill their secrets. Junkcast is a comic review podcast, Backstage Pass is an interview.

----------------------------------------------------

Our pilot episode features Flytee as our guest star. This episode was mostly just proof of concept, and to try to iron out any wrinkles there might be. It's a little messy and a little informal, but we weren't worrying too much on the quality this time! Future episodes will be a bit more polished now that we know a little on what will work and what won't.

STARRING

FEATURED COMICS

HOSTED BY



18
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 23, 2020, 05:50 PM »
Day 24 is go for Cro!


19
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 23, 2020, 07:19 AM »
I'm glad ya like!! <3

I almost forgot to post this RIP, day 23 for Petrichor!


20
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 21, 2020, 06:42 PM »
Aw, thanks Fluff! Keeps it from being boring for me too XD

Day 22 goes to Buggy!


21
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 21, 2020, 04:20 AM »
Apologies for missing a day! Here's a double post to make up for it - Pita and Camel!




22
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 18, 2020, 08:24 PM »
Day 19 is Jade day!


23
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 18, 2020, 01:16 AM »
Day 18, CandycornRhino!


24
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 16, 2020, 11:12 PM »
<3 <3 <3 And all I can say is uh, no comment XD

Day 17's for Underwood!


25
Art Jams / Re: Voidmas Advent Calendar
« on: Dec 15, 2020, 04:10 PM »
Day 16's for Kozi!


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