I just realized I never posted an article about my Inktober 2019 drawings. With Inktober 2020 coming next month, I figured I should probably get those posted.

Inktober is an online art project where you get a drawing prompt every day all October long. 2019 was my third year participating, and to be honest it was probably my worst effort haha!

The first year I was trying to practice backgrounds and scenery, the second year I was playing around with heavy inking and character designs, and the third year seems to be a mix of character designs, freeform ideas, and general laziness. Some of the drawings were really cool (already used some of the characters!) and some of them were just trash.

It is nice having these little personal catalogues of ideas and techniques to look back at.

-Love Nick.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t exactly fan art so much as it’s a birthday card, but since it’s still super awesome and because I’m still extremely flattered, we’ll call it fan art!

I got this fantastic birthday card from my good buddy Jeremy McMullen @Spocksevilclone  last year, which officially makes him the first repeat offender for Life fan art! Love me a good chainsaw!!

-Love Nick

So why did I change Life’s hairstyle? Because I forgot Life was a rip off of the Metabaron. Kind of… 

In 2011, I participated in a local group art project, where someone drew a three panel comic strip and then handed off only the last panel to the next artist, and they had to come up with the next three panels based only on that last panel they were given, and then so on to the next artist.

At the time, I was really getting into Moebius, and I wanted to draw my contribution to the project based on Moebius’ style. In the above picture, the first panel is a character named the Metabaron from Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Incal. The second panel is the last panel from my strip for the art project from December 2011 where I created the Life character. The third panel is from my first actual Life The Necropolis comic from September 2015, and the fourth panel is from May 2020. 

Life is actually a composite of some of my favourite ideas from various comic characters and designs (more on that another time) and the head is obviously taken from the Metabaron, with stubble hair instead of a totally smooth head. I’ve always loved this hair cut since my angry teenage punk rock days, but it also meant I didn’t have to draw hair, which was a plus. 

So Life was always meant to be an intentionally obvious tribute to Moebius. I also thought it was really funny that this was the panel that was going to get handed off to the next artist. Deliberate jerk move on my part. 

I ended up working on other things, but I kept thinking of ideas for this Life character, and I eventually decided to do my own comic four years later in 2015. Problem was during that time I actually just forgot the head was based on the Metabaron. I was so busy thinking of a story, it just slipped my mind and I forgot to change it.

Then, in 2016, they started publishing new Metabaron comics in English and I thought “Oh right. Crap!” I played around with the design; Life wore his bandana as a headband for awhile, but I thought maybe I was just worrying about nothing. I mean those Metabaron comics are REALLY good, and I can barely draw elbows.

At some point, someone commented on one of my Reddit posts that Life reminded them of the Metabaron and I realized I did need to change it. So for a year Life had white bandages over his eye, and then I did the Problem storyline to create a reason for the change in hairstyle.

So yeah, I forgot it was a rip off.

Also, I started shaving my head again, and I think it’s weird when people draw themselves. 

-Love Nick

Oh my stars, it’s non-Life Life fan art!!

These awesome drawings of Lale and little Zhro were drawn by my former co-worker, Sarah!! She did a way better job drawing Lale than I ever did, and had the unenviable task of trying to interpret the hair style I gave her. Thank you so much!!

Please check her out on Twitter @star_skunk and Instagram at star.skunk, and check out her commissions!!

-Love Nick

I recently noticed that after almost five years of making Life The Necropolis, I just passed 200 page Likes on Facebook. I had a good laugh about it. Not exactly setting the world on fire. 

That’s pretty typical of all my social media though; somewhere around 200 followers. I think my Tumblr has the most blatantly-spam-account followers.

I understand that social media is a pay-to-play model. I used to pay to promote my Facebook posts, but that wasn’t getting me anywhere so I stopped. I also understand that the cream rises to the top, so I’m not blaming the platforms. If you want more attention, make better stuff.

I do have an overall plan— I’ve been quietly but consistently meeting personal goals, just trying to get better before I spend a lot of time and effort on promotion. 

I just thought it was funny it took so long to get to only 200 page Likes.

-Love Nick.