Over 12 years ago I drew a cover for a little story that I’d organized a comic vote for on YouTube. Through this comic I was able to meet a bunch of friends and experience a rough form of collaborative storytelling. That story, and by extension the “Fateclans” group and its follow-up “Warriors-of-the-tide” played key roles in shaping my early artistic journey. For this anniversary I wanted to pay homage to the drawing that started it all, and see how much I’ve improved since my last redraw attempt at it 5 years ago. It’s nice to look back on the past and see how much my style of cats has changed over time. :D

For this redraw I took inspiration from both covers. I found my 5-year remake to be too dark coloring/shading but hit a much more urgent mood. I really liked the idea of the fallen tree bursting into flames and wanted to incorporate it somehow into my new piece. While the original had a basic MS Paint color palette, I wanted to connect back to them more clearly this time. Overall, I feel like was able to achieve a nice balance of the two with my paper mâché maquette backgrounds!