WIP - Seth & Leigh (Patreon)

You asked for more works in progress, so here we go. 😊

It feels really good to get back to work on my project Phantasma. This might also be my favourite sketch I‘ve ever done! The characters are Seth and Leigh. The owl still needs a name though. Do you know any good owl names?

I thought I‘d also take the chance and talk a little bit more about the way I came up with the project. It actually started out pretty slowly, with little pieces of inspiration here and there. If I had to trace it back to a particular moment it would be a walk back from school, years ago. On the sidewalk, I saw a piece of broken concrete. The roots of a nearby tree were growing out of it. And that image has stuck with me ever since, of nature finding it’s way back through that thick layer of concrete. After that, I started collecting images of overgrown ruins and cities because I find them incredibly beautiful.

I‘ve also loved those scenes in X - The Movie by CLAMP where the earth dragon lady (forgot her name) is showing her vision of the future and how Tokyo is flooded and overgrown. And when we throw in a little bit of Princess Mononoke and The Walking Dead, you get a good picture what I have in mind for Phantasma.

The characters came together very organically as well. A few years ago, I was drawing in my sketchbook a lot (sadly, not so much anymore) and I drew all these characters with tribal-ish designs and at some point realised that they fit perfectly into this world that I had been imagining. That’s when it clicked and when I started coming up with names and little story fragments. And now it’s all about bringing them together.

This illustration in particular is set in an abandoned train, an image that I‘ve had in mind for a very long time. As I said in my last post, I‘m just going to keep exploring the world and story visually and see where it leads me.

I hope you like the illustration so far!

Thank you for everything. 💛

Djamila