Twin Dragons

I normally keep the newsletter content contained inside the mails that I sent out, but it was pointed out to me that this week’s content was something that should be kept online. To say it with their words, the post should be ‘immortalized’ on my website.

The post talked about inspiration, and more specifically about what inspired me to start making the story of Twin Dragons. The following text comes straight from the newsletter. Enjoy ^^

So I recently had a talk about where my inspiration for Twin Dragons came from. Questions like this make me think and I came to the conclusion that inspiration is such a weird thing.

Back when I was inspired to take up drawing, I knew that I wanted to make comics. I was inspired by webcomics, anime, manga,… to make my own stories and I would draw them! My inspiration back then was a whole lot different than it is now. My first inspiration was Love Hina from Ken Akamatsu. He is still my favourite manga authors to date. Sure, there are manga authors that have better art, better composition, better stories, better characters,… But Ken Kamatsu holds a special place in my heart as the person that got me to draw. Needless to say that a lot of inspiration back then came directly from his works.

Fast forward to now, and I see I took inspiration from a lot more places over the years. Inspiration, in my opinion, comes from something that excites you. You could be playing a game and suddenly get inspired to make a story about it. You could see someone walking across the street and wonder what is in the bag they are holding. Suddenly you have all the inspiration needed to write a story about a serial killer that carries around parts of their victims in bags xD

When I was talking about what inspired Twin Dragons, I went and talked about the very first version of the story, that was vastly different, and how I got to where we are now. As I type this, I realized that wasn’t really the answer to that question. It was the process of going from an initial idea to a fleshed out story.

So, the real answer to what inspired Twin Dragons, would be a very simple one. I got inspired to draw my own dragon character when I discovered the artist RuDragon (Phation on deviantart) and his little pink dragon character named Ru. I loved his artstyle and I loved Ru, so eventually, I drew myself a dragon as well. This first drawing of Kai looked nothing like what Kai looks like now. But through the years, Kai stuck around. He wouldn’t let go, and in turn, I wouldn’t let go. Now the comic has been running for over three years, Kai got a twin sister and some great friends. He’s on an adventure of life right now.

So that’s the real answer to what inspired Twin Dragons. It goes to show that great ideas can be inspired by the simplest of things.