How is artist Winona Nelson creating the “amazing” art of Artifice?

In a comment on my webcomic site, Winona responded to a reader asking just that question. I know there are creators and artists who are following Artifice, so I thought I would post up her response here. It gets a little technical, but even for us non-artists, it’s kinda cool to think about all the work that goes into making one of these pages.

(Click to enlarge the images. Then hit the arrow key to cycle them.)

Winona here I’m flattered that you asked (and that it doesn’t look like obvious Photoshoppery!) Here’s the whole process:

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Pencils
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

I did pencil 1/4 page thumbnails of each page, then scanned and blew them up and did digital pencils. I like to do the pencils digitally because at that stage I’m still moving things around a lot and this way if I want to move a figure over an inch it doesn’t mean redrawing the whole page. I also built the sets in 3d using Sketchup, and used the models as reference for the perspective.

I then printed the pencils and taped them to the back of the paper I was going to ink on. I didn’t have a big printer for the first half of the project so I was printing on two pages with the middle overlapping, hehe!

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Inks
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

The inks are Staedtler and Prisma technical pens (and a .25 Pilot Hi-Tec C for tiny details) on Borden and Riley #234 Paris Bleedproof paper for pens. The paper was trial and error. I tried Blueline boards, which are too thick for lightboxing and too rough (and they aren’t archival; they yellow over time), then regular cover stock which was thin enough to lightbox well but was too absorbent, it bled a lot. Then a friend tipped me off about the B&D paper, which is suuuper smooth, really translucent on a lightbox, and the ink doesn’t spread at all, it’s fantastic You have to cut it to size but it really is the best to ink on!

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Inks
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

Then I scan the inks and color in Photoshop. For the spots that look more painterly, like that explosion, what I’m using is a hard round brush with pressure set to opacity and the flow set to 25%. [EDITOR NOTE: For us non-artists, what Winona means here is that she is using a pressure-sensitive Wacom pen which changes the opacity of the colors depending on how hard she presses it against her tablet.] I’ve used that hard round brush forever but changing the flow never occurred to me until fairly recently, and it’s made a big difference. It just makes it feel a bit more intuitive and it’s easier to blend with. Most of the form shading is done with that brush (or a soft-edged brush for big gradients and things I want to be very smooth, like skin). The actual shadow areas are done on a separate layer set to Color Burn, all the same sort of purple-blue (no K).

I’ve been subtly colorizing the inks too, which I do by making a new layer and then adding a layer mask made from the ink layer. The layer mask allows you to paint outside the line as much as you want and none of it shows up, but if you then need to make changes to the inks you can delete the layer mask and make it again from the revised inks and the color will still be there. You can get pretty much the same effect by copying the ink layer and locking the transparency and painting on it, but that method doesn’t make it so easy to make changes since you then have to make the changes in the appropriate color and it takes a bit longer.

One final thought that might be interesting to you is that this is all done in CMYK because we’ve always intended to print the book. That means some colors don’t get quite as bright as RGB, but those colors aren’t printable. It also means I had to be very aware of K values sneaking in, because if you’re not picking every color with the color picker and setting the ink percentages to contain 0% K, you can end up with muddy colors when it prints. K is the only opaque ink and it’s also very slightly thick on the paper so it appears ever so slightly raised; you don’t want it anywhere but the inks and maybe some really dark shadow areas if you can help it.

Hope that made some sense to you! I’ve used Photoshop for so long I can get a bit technical talking about it 0_0

Have any questions? Please ask them here and I’ll forward them on to Winona to answer!

In addition to the webcomic Artifice, I’m also offering some of my other yaoi comics as free PDF downloads for my mailing list subscribers, How do you get them? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you!

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Want to learn more about the process of creating pencils and inks for comics? Then check out Yaoi Art: From Thumbnail Sketches to Final Pencils and Yaoi Art: From Pencils to Inks!
• Interested in creating your own comics? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Curious about why I decided to start a webcomic? Then read Gay Sci-Fi Webcomic Artifice Now Online and Why call Artifice a “gay sci-fi webcomic”?
• Want to read reviews of other yaoi comics? Then please take a look at my in-depth Yaoi Reviews!

I got an email yesterday from the contact form of my webcomic Artifice. The email itself was actually fairly thoughtful and the writer had more than a couple intriguing suggestions about ways to treat same sex relationships in a sci-fi setting without evoking the concept of a gay identity. But they also had a couple questions and concerns that I wanted to respond to. Artifice has a story that might appeal to some readers who aren’t that familiar with what’s it’s like to be gay and thus might have similar questions.

This was the email (quoted in its entirety with permission from its author):

Subject: Artifice story vs. presentation

I’m sort of offended by the Gay heading in the upper-left corner. If this is to be a story of some sort of same-sex affection, can we simply put it in the context of a future with artificial people? At least this would be a refreshing approach to realize that if you could manufacture people you couldn’t likewise manufacture their personalities.
-Or is the Gay heading supposed to mean that you shouldn’t be reading this comic unless you’re gay?
Frankly, what offends me the most is gays saying that they’re special when all they mean is they have sex differently than heterosexuals (who don’t go around telling people they’re different.) Why should it matter if this character who has been artifically created finds some emotional level he has not been programmed for- except for that emotion itself which is a declaration of uniqueness and identity?

And this was my response:

Hello!

Let’s see if I can answer your question.

I’m sort of offended by the Gay heading in the upper-left corner… is the Gay heading supposed to mean that you shouldn’t be reading this comic unless you’re gay?

No. I’m delighted to have anyone read my comics. And looking at the demographics of my mailing list and Facebook Insights, it seems to break down to about 50% gay and 50% straight readers (mostly straight women, but there are straight guys there too). I work very hard to be inclusive on my blog and elsewhere and I’d like to think the tone of my comics isn’t “inside baseball”—meaning that non-gay readers will understand the references and that I am respectful of people of all orientations.

I use the “gay sci-fi” heading in the title of my pages for search-engine purposes. It’s not to be exclusive in any way; it’s to make it easy for readers who like sci-fi and gay romance to find my comic when they search for it on Google and such. You see, there aren’t a lot of gay male romances set in a sci-fi world and so I think readers searching for that might particularly enjoy Artifice. So, I’m trying to make it easy to find my comic when they search for “gay sci-fi” or “gay webcomic”. That’s the only reason I’m doing that.

Frankly, what offends me the most is gays saying that they’re special when all they mean is they have sex differently than heterosexuals (who don’t go around telling people they’re different.)

Because you wrote me a thoughtful email, I’m going to assume that you’re looking to understand why gay people like myself would tell people they’re different (even announcing to the world that their webcomic is gay!), so I’m going to respond to this as well. (Please forgive me if you were just venting.)

If you’re not gay yourself, I can understand why it can be confusing why gay people would feel the need to “come out” and tell others that, unlike 90% of the population, they don’t fall in love with members of the opposite sex. The truth of the matter is, most of us (including myself!) wish we lived in a world where such distinctions were irrelevant. It certainly is no fun having to say to someone who is assuming you’re straight (and asking what kind of girl you like or making an anti-gay joke) that actually you’re gay and then wondering how they are going to react. Honestly, sometimes, it’s exhausting.

But unfortunately, we live in a world where most people assume everyone is straight. We live in a world where the word “fag” or “queer” is the ultimate put-down in the school yards and the word “gay” can be used to mean anything “sucky” or “weird”. We live in a world where in many places you can be denied work, education and housing simply because you were born to fall in love with members of the same sex. We live in a world where people can marry members of the opposite sex and get tax breaks, hospital visitation rights and lots of family and social support; but if you fall in love and want to marry a member of the same sex, in the vast majority of places you can’t do it. Here in the U.S., if you can actually get married, you won’t get any federal benefits (thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act), and many folks will see you as a threat to family and children for even wanting to get married. And this isn’t even getting into the parts of the world where if people found out you were gay, you could expect to be attacked, arrested and even executed (such as in Iran and Saudi Arabia). These are things many straight people never have to think about if they want to start dating someone. They can just do it because it’s considered “normal”.

When I was growing up, there were those who would argue that gay people didn’t need explicit protection under the law for things like work, education and housing. That asking for that protection was asking for “special rights”. But it’s not a “special right” if everyone else gets to do something without a second thought and you can’t. I would argue it’s an “equal right” if you get to do the same thing as everyone else. Straight people can apply for a job and don’t have to hide that they date people of the opposite sex. Same for applying for an apartment or even just talking about how they spent their Saturday night. In many places in the world and the U.S., that’s not true for those who are attracted to the same sex. And in most of those places (including most of the states in the U.S.), it’s perfectly legal to deny gay people that apartment or that job, just because they are gay.

Now, if you live in the U.S, you probably have noticed this is changing. Twenty states now have anti-discrimination laws that forbid denying people work or housing because of sexual orientation. Five states even give equal access to marriage. The U.S. military has just been ordered to change its policy of firing soldiers because of their sexual orientation. This is good news—both for gay people and, I’d argue, for all citizens of the U.S. And none of it would have happened if gay people had kept their mouths shut and just let everyone assume they were straight.

I’m going to end this with one of my favorite quotes from Pastor Martin Niemöller, but before I do, I just want to point out that while I’ve framed this response mostly in terms of equal protection under the law and personal safety issues, that there is one other very real reason why gay folks tell others that they are gay. It’s because falling in love is a huge part of the human experience and it feels wrong to lie or be evasive to the people in my life who care about me about such an important thing. Telling someone I’m gay isn’t just saying I “have sex differently than heterosexuals”. While others may define you by it, speaking as a gay man, I can tell you that sex is actually a very small part of the experience of being gay. It’s really about who you want to spend the rest of your life with.

I wasn’t always “out” and so I can tell you, to not be able to talk to my friends and family about those romantic hopes, dreams (and yes, failures and even successes) is like being buried alive in concrete and it created a wall between myself and those who cared about me. You see, people talk all the time about love and romance. If you’re straight, you don’t have to make any special declarations to answer those questions or start conversations of your own. I’m sure you’ve had conversations with friends and co-workers about dating. Imagine if it were a very real possibility that those around you would be “offended” if you were simply being honest in those conversations—that they might actually seek to hurt you for joining into that conversation as an equal—and then you might be able to begin to understand why it is important for many gay people to try to create a world where you don’t have to lie about or hide who you fall in love with. And that world can only happen if you’re willing to “go around and tell people you are different.”

I want to thank you for taking the time to write me your email. You could have just kept your thoughts to yourself but instead you reached out to me to share them. I don’t imagine you expected to get this lengthy reply back. But the truth of the matter is that I do care about all my readers, both straight and gay. You took time to reach out and write me. And so I wanted to give your words a thoughtful response.

Alex

The quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller (shared with me originally by a straight friend after I came out):

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

We live in a world where bad things quite often happen to good people. And it’s important to remember that sometimes the only way to stop it is by speaking up. Even when we don’t “have to”.

So that was my response and I’m happy to share here that it was well-received and that, in their reply back, the author of the email went out their way to say very nice things about Artifice. For both gay and straight people, it can be easy to jump to conclusions about how open someone is going to be to understanding another person’s view. But I have to say one of the most gratifying experience of starting this blog is the happy discovery that the vast majority of people out there are cool and thoughtful, if only you’re willing to engage in a real conversation. I’m glad this person wrote to me and proved, yet again, that I have the absolute coolest readers in the world.

In addition to the webcomic Artifice I’m also offering some of my other yaoi comics as free PDF downloads for my mailing list subscribers, How do you get them? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you!

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• I’ve had other interesting and provocative reader questions. Want to read another response? Then check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• In my day job, I got the chance to edit a video made for gay teens at risk for suicide also talking about coming out and what it’s like to be gay. Find it at It Gets Better: Google Employees!
• Want to learn more about why I decided to start a webcomic? Then read Gay Sci-Fi Webcomic Artifice Now Online!
• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not offend you? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own comics? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but my sci-fi yaoi graphic novel Artifice is finally ready for you to read. If you’ve been following my work for a while, then you know my original plan was to release Artifice as a for-pay PDF that you would download at our store. But after following the excellent work of Hamlet Machine with Starfighter, EMIRAIN with Teahouse (both webcomic links NSFW, BTW) and Cheera and Muun with sfeertheory, I’ve been inspired to try something different. I’ve decided to post Artifice up, for free, one page a week, as a webcomic.

What’s Artifice about?

It was supposed to be a routine “clean-up” mission on the isolated colony Da Vinci Four, but Deacon, a prototype android soldier, has failed spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Maven will find out exactly what happened between the android and this boy—and she will use her terrible power to make sure Deacon never fails the Corporation ever again.

Check it out for yourself!

I wrote Artifice and all the art from pencils through colors is being created by the totally awesome Winona Nelson. And to give you a good feel for what’s to come, I’ve posted up the first five pages on the webcomic site. (Starting next Saturday, I’ll post up a page a week until the story is complete.) Please take a look!

Read Artifice right now

(Be sure to click the Next button under each page to keep reading! )

Why a webcomic?

Well, like sending out the pin-ups to my mailing list subscribers, this is another experiment. My current method of publishing my comics is to wait for each one to be fully completed before sending them out to my readers as PDFs. This means that when they are released, it’s a lot of fun. (I have over 14,000 subscribers of my mailing list and all my readers are awesome sweethearts, so I get a bunch of great comments and feedback when each comic comes out.) But then, several months pass before the next comic is ready and that explosion of momentum and energy—which frankly is so useful for morale for me and my artists—naturally falls off quite a bit. And, I also think quite naturally, in those intervening months, a lot of readers wind up forgetting all about me and my comics, even if they really enjoyed reading them. I have a busy life myself, I know how it is.

This has been on my mind for a while now. And so, when I went to YaoiCon last October and I saw how much buzz was around the (awesome) webcomics Starfighter and Teahouse, it got me thinking. What if I were to have a comic that was released on a more consistent basis like once a week—like, well, a webcomic! And so after talking with a bunch of folks about that idea (including Starfighter’s awesome Hamlet Machine who was very helpful), I’ve decided to give this a try to see if it helps keep readers engaged with my work. Now, I’m not expecting the kind of success of Starfighter and Teahouse, but just having something to share with my readers every week, just having a consistent way to connect with my readers every week, well, that just sounds like a lot of fun.

I’m very, very proud of the work Winona and I are doing on Artifice. The truth is, I think it has some of the the best writing I’ve done out of all my comics. And, frankly, if I put it out as a $4.99 e-book, there are only so many people who would choose to pay for it. I’ll still try publishing a for-pay e-book at some point (maybe with the 18+ Chapter 4 of Tough), but I think by putting Artifice out as a free webcomic, a lot more people are going to be able to enjoy it. And that’s something I really want.

Please let me know what you think

So, I’d love to know what you think of what I’m doing. Good idea? Bad idea? Cool? Not cool? And what do you think of the pages I posted up? Please let me know by commenting on this blog post or on the pages of the webcomic itself.

I really hope you enjoy reading the webcomic pages I’ve put up so far and that you’ll come back to find out what happens next!




And, of course, my other full-color yaoi comics are still available as free PDF downloads for subscribers of my mailing list. Want to get your hands on those download links? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you in the Welcome Email! You’ll get the first two completed chapters of Tough sent to you right now! That’s 70 full-color pages of yaoi goodness. Score!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Please note: I’m now posting up the finished, full-color pages of Artifice as a webcomic! If you don’t want any spoilers, you should stop reading here and go start reading it over at my webcomic site. See you there!

Hoping to see more guys in their underwear from Yaoi 911â„¢? Then wait no longer! The pencils for the second comic — the 90-page sci-fi action-romance “Artifice” from our upcoming book Yaoi 911â„¢: Firsts — are finally complete. So we can now give everyone a taste of what’s to come — something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time!

(Oh, and I should say that one of these preview pages is even without the underwear — so read no further unless you are over 18, please!)

First off, a description of what this comic is about:

It was supposed to be a routine search-and-kill mission but Deacon, a prototype android assassin, has failed spectacularly — not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

Of course, it’s a yaoi story so perhaps you can guess at least one potential reason he let the boy live. But there is much more than meets the eye in this corporate-ruled dystopian future where every motive is suspect and everyone has dark secrets. With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Dr. Maven will not rest until she has all the answers — and has made sure that this malfunctioning robot will never fail the Corporation ever again!

A Work In Progress

So, there are several stages in making a full-color comic: character designs, thumbnails, pencils, inks, coloring and then, finally, lettering. But it’s at the pencils stage that you can really begin to get a feel for what the final comic will look like — and, in my humble opinion, artist Winona Nelson has done an amazing job with the pencils for “Artifice”.

They’ll, of course, be refined a great deal before the linework is finished, but by sharing a few right now, I can begin to give you an idea of what to expect from the final, full-color and super-sized comic.

On the surface, the story is about solving a mystery — what exactly happened on the renegade colony of Da Vinci 4 that caused this corporate killing machine to disobey orders and turn against his masters? But finding out the answer to that question is far from simple: because Deacon is so advanced, they can’t simply download the information from his CPU — subtler tools are required. Thus, they have brought in the brilliant Dr. Maven, a psychologist specializing in artificial intelligence, to probe the defiant android’s subconscious and, ideally, convince him to come clean so they can fix him.

(Click on the image for a larger, clearer preview. You can then scroll through the images using your arrow keys. Hit ESC to quit.)

Dr. Maven begins with a simple debriefing:

Robopsychologist Dr. Clarice Maven begins debriefing Deacon

But, of course, even the subtle tool of psychotherapy can occasionally get a little intense:

Of course, even the subtle tool of psychotherapy can occasionally get a little intense...

And sometimes even very intense!

...and sometimes even *very* intense!

Now, one of the big questions she needs to answer is why, out of the over one hundred colonists on Da Vinci 4 he did kill, did Deacon choose to let this particular boy live?

She knows, at first, he was working to complete his mission on budget and on schedule:

Dr. Maven knows that, at first, Deacon was working to complete his mission on budget and on schedule...

But somehow this boy got to him, made him change his mind:

...but somehow this boy got to him...

...made him change his mind...

And soon Deacon was acting well outside the parameters of his programming:

...and soon Deacon was acting well outside the parameters of his programming.

...

...

...

Of course there’s a lot more to this story than just answering that question.

More action…

More action...

…and a lot more romance:

...and more romance.

But I don’t want to give away the whole store…

I do hope this gives you a sense of the fun that’s in store once this comic is complete — it’s going to be a good one, I promise. And as always, please leave your feedback in the comments below — we’d love to hear what you think!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ emailed right to you!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished for this book (and that we’re giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Jeff, an inconvenient orphan...

UPDATE: The pencils for this comic can now be see at Yaoi Art: “Artifice Pencils” and there the underwear comes off!

Hey, everyone! The first book of the Yaoi 911™ action-yaoi series (which I’m pretty sure I’m going to call “Firsts”) is well under way. And the first story in the book — “A Shot in the Dark,” which you’ve been watching us create on this blog — is finally completely colored and lettered and you can now download the entire comic for free. But there are, of course, more stories in this graphic novel and I’d like to begin previewing them here as well, starting with “Artifice,” a comic with art created from start to finish by “A Shot in the Dark” inker and colorist Winona Nelson.

“Artifice” is a scif-fi story featuring an android assassin, Deacon, who fails to eliminate his target, a 19-year-old human refugee named Jeff, on a routine search-and-kill mission. Robopsychologist Clarice Maven is brought in by the Corporation that owns Deacon to determine why. This being a yaoi story, I’m pretty sure you can guess at least one potential reason he let the boy live , but there is much more than meets the eye in this corporate-ruled dystopian future where everyone has dark secrets and their own agenda. And the brilliant and formidable Dr. Maven will not rest until she has all the answers — and has made sure that Deacon will never fail the Corporation ever again!

But onto the making of this comic! I haven’t discussed this yet, but the very first stage of creating the art for a comic, before even the thumbnail pages, are the character designs. I’ll talk briefly about that process and then show you what the heroes of our story look like, both with and without their pants.

The Ultimate Casting Couch

When working with an artist on a new story, I’ll send her the script and a short document of Character Descriptions which contains notes about the characters as well as a number of supplementary pictures I hope will inspire her to create the look that’s needed. (For example, for Cornelius, the old mage in “A Shot in the Dark,” I wanted a cross between Gandalf and Dumbledore and included representative pictures of both characters from various movies in my Notes.)

While finding the right images is a lot of work (it’s not unusual for me to search through three or four thousand, yes thousand, pictures online before I find the 2 or 3 that really work), it’s also a lot of fun. It’s my chance to “cast” anyone I’d like in the roles of my characters, from famous actors from the past to random people from the street. The goal isn’t, of course, to recreate an exact likeness of any one person — they should all be new characters with their own look, both for artistic and legal reasons — but the ability to capture the essence of a certain character by finding the right pics is very exciting. It’s like having an unlimited casting budget coupled with a time machine at my ready disposal.

Now, I hope you’ll forgive me for being a little coy about which examples I chose for specific characters in “Artifice” — as I’ve said, I want you to think of them as new characters in their own right — but suffice it to say that Winona captured exactly what I was looking for.

So, without further ado, here are the main characters of “Artifice”!

DEACON

Our protagonist, a resourceful and sensitive android soldier, living in a world that views him as nothing more than a tool. Formerly a contented member of a Corporation Kill Team, he failed to complete his last mission and even attacked the Corporate Officers sent to retrieve him.

Why did he bite the hand that created him and what is to be done with a killer robot that won’t follow orders?

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

JEFF

Jeff is the only surviving member of a group of scientific colonists who were killed for knowing too much. Ironic and bitter, having endured numerous hardships throughout his short life, he faced certain death at the hands of a relentless killing machine. Yet Deacon spared his life — why?

DR. MAVEN

Brilliant, insightful and very skilled at what she does, she now faces her biggest challenge — an android with the strategic intelligence of a hundred military commanders who wants to keep the truth about what happened on Da Vinci Four from her at all costs.

Will she outsmart this synthetic killer and learn why things went so wrong on that barren world or has she finally met her match?

SECURITY

Deacon has the strength of ten men and someone has to get him under control if he chooses not to toe the Corporate line. Here are a few members of the Corporate Security Forces who will try to do just that:

But Is It Yaoi?

As you can see, the art style we chose for this comic is more realistic European-style than anything else, but it definitely fits the tone and style of the piece. And as I’ve said all along, my goal is to create stories that will appeal to those who love yaoi for the same reasons I do, not to slavishly follow any particular artistic or thematic convention.

Will there be folks who will cry “It’s not yaoi!”? Maybe. But perhaps there will be others who will be open to shaking up their assumptions a little bit. In these yaoi stories, I’m promising cute guys kissing (and more… ) in character-based romances that’ll be a lot of fun for both women and men. And hopefully, there are at least a few of you out there wouldn’t mind seeing characters looking like Deacon and Jeff getting naked for your reading pleasure.

Let me know what you think!

I hope that you enjoyed this small sample of the art from the second comic in our book. If you do like what you see or find the story content intriguing, please let me know in the comments!

Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it delivered right to you hot off the press!

Psst! Want a free yaoi full-color yaoi comic? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Would you like to see the character designs for our next yaoi book, Tough? Take a look at Yaoi Art: “Tough” Character Designs!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Then click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!