Before making Eternal Mist, I started getting ideas about a much bigger story using inspiration from various titles.
Some examples are Naruto, Final Fantasy, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you're interested in that story you can follow my blog when I release more info about it in the future.
That whole story idea was too big to comprehend at the time.
My story-writing skills were nonexistent, so I thought of a much shorter story to hone them.
At first, I wanted to make a children's book. This way I could invest in my other passion which is drawing. I loved animals since I first laid my eyes on one. It was a no-brainer to make a short story around animals.
For days I struggled to come up with my main character as it was hard to decide which animal to pick.
While I was going home from work, I found a little chicken figurine lost in the parking lot. Ideas started to plummet around that event. It's funny how we can get inspiration from almost anything.
Chicken as a main character seemed brilliant!
How many stories have you seen where chicken is the main character? It's always cats, dogs, bears...
At first, the idea for the story was closely related to the original. Where chicken is lost in the shopping mall. Then, the more I thought about the story the more it became completely different.
In the beginning, the name of the story was "Chico and the Mysterious Town".
Funny enough the name of the mall he was in was named Chippo, which is now his original name we know to this day.
When I was making my first cover idea I renamed it “Chippo and Zuzu Mysterious Town”.
From the cover above, you can see that Chippo’s design changed.
As I practiced my skills I got better ideas, how he could look cuter and so on…
This is the Chippo we know today:
The more I thought about the story it was becoming bigger, and it couldn't work as a children's book anymore. So I decided to make it into a comic. I never wanted to make a comic really as it's very time-consuming and takes a while to make, but the story wouldn't work as a novel. Now that I already had an idea for it I couldn't just bail it out as it is unique and nobody has done a story like Eternal Mist.
It has a cute art style while hiding dark themes. Even though there are some dark themes involved the comic is dedicated to children and adults alike.
Children would find it cute and funny at times, while adults will enjoy its story and deeper meaning. Take My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic as an example; which served me as inspiration for the comic art style and a bit of storyline.
Now the comic is 3 years in the making and I assume it will take me another year to finish it.
The comic is available to read for free on the Tapas comic hosting website