Fred commented there wasn’t a blog for this page. So here it is. Hi Fred!
Next Song of Asteria update will be Dec. 5th. =)
Lukina Aleksasha Petrora was originally created to be a drop-in non-player character in the storyline of Knights of Kowloon. My reasoning for this was that I had college coursework and other commitments between my family and work so I wasn’t sure if I could commit the time to writing her. Over the course of several weeks, I found a balance and was writing more Lukina material than any of my other characters. People seemed to really like interacting with her. I had envisioned her as silent, stoic and over the course of roleplaying her, she opened up. Her history was originally only a few short paragraphs but some of her life and the memories, even her mother, was explored in segments. It was after 3 months of writing her that I was reminded that Lukina was a player character.
I try to add depth to all of my characters and it seems that when it comes to NPCs, people get attached to mine so they become main storyline narrative characters. I definitely didn’t think that a year ago Lukina would be the main focus of a comic. The idea of making a comic with these characters was a bit of an idea. I was resistant because adaptation of written narrative into comic format is time consuming. What works for a book doesn’t always work in comic format. And we have a lot of source material. This script reads slightly differently to how we originally wrote it last year but, the changes make sense and are for the better visually!
I am guilty in many of my earlier comics for being too verbose. I have learned the value of showing and not telling. This was a bit of a compromise in the narrative since we are introducing the setting in this comic. She’s naming places and things but there is no reference point for a new reader. So – we have a long series of short flashbacks to give a taste of things being hectic. The events that made Lukina to be who she is are still vague. Her relationship with her mother is obviously strained but it’ll be something touched on at another point.
If you are enjoying the comic please let us know on our Discord! If you’d like us to return to weekly updates, please consider donating! There is a cost to making these since Mike and I are not drawing them. Nicoy is an amazing artist and we’re also supporting her work by hiring her. <3
Just a quick note, Sintija’s outfit was designed by ธชาพิมพ์ ชัชวาลธิติวัฒน์ otherwise known as Popza10cm on Deviant Art. When we reimagined Sintija and Malik for a more science fantasy setting, I looked to the Final Fantasy series worlds for inspirations of light technology and magic living in a type of harmony.
I had a hard time picturing the outfit she would be wearing on Jord so I started looking through Outfit adoptables on Deviantart for inspiration. I found this particular outfit and thought it would be perfect for Sintija. =) So much so that I bought the commercial rights to it. I’m not used to using pre-made artwork for my characters but, it helps to look outside the box. The outfit adoptable community on Deviantart is particularly talented with fashion design so I found it was best to leave this to the professionals.
~ Kim
This comic has been a year in the making. Last year about this time, we were entertaining the idea of making a comic based from what were were writing for our forum roleplay. We liked the idea of seeing out characters drawn but we were concerned about a lot of different things. The roleplay that surrounds these characters is years in the making, though Lukina’s story only started last year. Bhelith and Voss are years in the making but they looked much different than they do now. It’s been an interesting experience adapting roleplay into a comic script and then changing dialogue and paneling for story flow. This was originally called “The Knight of the Twilight” but we settled for a different title, though just as fantasy dramatic. This chapter with Lukina is “A Song of Hope”. It’s about 14-16 pages long, so I look forward to writing more! Some issues will be new material while others will be edited roleplay logs. =) ~ Kim
