MOTHER: Making a 92 page comic in 10 months.

Wowee, that was a big one, wasn't it! By 'it', I mean my new comic, MOTHER, which has just launched as part of the AMAZING offerings in the LDC Online Comics Fair. I always find it fun to look at how other people work, so figured it'd be neat to break down how I approached MOTHER, month by month!

Get your digital copy here (do have a browse of everything, there's loads of great stuff)! The fair runs until 31st July 2025 - After that, you'll need to chase down all of the artists individually!

If you're new to MOTHER, here's the synopsis:

When mould begins to grow on Sylvie’s body, she decides to raise it as her own child. Meanwhile, the mould spores start a cult, and when a jealous feud breaks out between self-proclaimed leader Stachybotrys and chosen one, Mucor, Sylvie spirals from motherhood into something else entirely…

The cover of MOTHER.

From finding out we were accepted as part of the LDC fair, we had about 10 months to produce our final comics. So how did we go from a vague idea to a fully formed, fully coloured, 92-page comic in less than a year?

Month 1:

The basic concept had been stewing in my brain for a while; When I was cleaning the toilet, some bog water flicked up onto my arm, and I imagined what might happen if I kept it there and all of the germs grew into little guys. My first interpretation of this was a far folkier story, both plot-wise and visually, and had a lot more emphasis on the spores as a community, and their confusion between the roles of a god and a parent.

Above: Pencils from an early form of MOTHER.

Above: Pencils from an early form of MOTHER. Not the visual direction I was seeking, but starting to lean in the right direction for Sylvie's inner conflicts in the final version.

As you can see above, I knew from the get-go that I wanted abstract, petri-dish like patterns to play a large role visually. Approaching this was a challenge; I experiemnted with using the patterns acting as a border for the panels, but quickly realised that this was very limiting, leaving very little space for the actual story to happen (especially when text got involved), and immediately blocking off any fun uses of page layout to push the narrative; Far too limiting, all around.

An experiment with colour. In hindsight I think something with this energy would make a sweet gig poster. I also love this colour palette and I'm not 100% sure why it didn't stick to the end!

Introducing colour was a turning point here; I really loved the visual direction these pages were going in, but the patterns in the backgrounds were constraining everything to tight, orderly panels, which is the exact opposite of my storytelling style; I like to break panel boundaries and play with page layouts creatively, and this was limiting my options in a way I was struggling to work around.

My original plot also wasn't working; All of the characters were very nice and lacked real motivation or conflict - I had the feeling that this project needed to become something bigger, stronger, and with far more energy funnelled into the writing if I wanted to pull it off.

Month 2:

Having scrapped the original idea, I spent a lot of time mentally chewing on the changes I wanted to make, and a better plot with stronger characters - Notably, a much crueller, power-hungry Sylvie, and two spores (of many), who would be vying for her attention, while also being at odds with each other. Chewing is a significant part of my early process and I do it everywhere; At work, on the bus, in the gym, the bath - The more distraction the better. Eventually something starts to form - In this case, while doing something boring and spreadsheet-y at my day job.

The earliest evidence of 'writing'(?). Sylvie didn't have her own 'voice' yet.

I don't 'write' comics, per say - They're more notes, and doodles, and weird streams of text that don't really make sense until they're on a page, but that's fine because I'm the only one who has to understand them, here. Writing and character designs often happen in tandem, as seen below. This is where I decided to have seven chapters, switching perspectives between the spores and Sylvie.

Early Mucor, Stachybotrys, and Sylvie designs. I don't know why Mucor looked like.a dog - I think I wanted him to have puppy vibes? Stachybotrys looked too much like Jake the Dog from Adventure time.

The spores originally had more more scientifically 'accurate' designs, but strayed into alien/tamagotchi like characters that presented a bit more flexibility in what I could make them do. The abstraction also helped them stand out from the backgrounds. Looking back on these now, it's a huge difference from where they started.

More initial writing and notes, with Sylvie's character design and personality mostly solidified. Chapter 1 was really beginning to form here, a lot of this made it into the final comic.

Month 3:

With a fleshed out plot begnning to form, I still needed to start nailing down some of the visuals. This comic is split into seven chapters, and I had a good grasp on 1-4 at this stage. I wasn't sure at all how I felt about the rest, so I decided to press on and split my working time in two; Half barelling forwards with the solid chapters, and half on more visual development.

These visul experiments helped me realise that by taking the patterns out of panels, I could really play with swinging between sparse, spacious pages, and total overwhelm at the flip of a switch. That gives me a lot of control narratviely, and worked in my favour to really emphasise scale, and mirror Slyvie's messy life with the spores' community. The patterns could be whatever I needed them to be; A crowd, a landscape, a flood, the floor, or indivudual characters, when the plot demanded.

An initial colour test/concept image that was more finished. I wanted to see how the colours carried into print, not just digitally.

Another fairly early experimental piece in a variant colour pallete. This is where I nailed how I wanted the patterns to look and how I wanted them to play and intersect with the page/plot.

Lots of my dialogue-heavy scenes start like this, so I can get a grasp on how the character might look, feel and talk. It also lets me know how much text I'll be working with on a page. In the bottom left you can see thumbnails for the start of Chapter 4. This is generally the most polished they'll look until pencils, as I'm just looking at pacing and layouts here.

Month 4:

Still unsure of how Chapters 5, 6, and 7 would play out, I made a relatively bold choice to go ahead and pencil/ink chapters 1-4, colouring some of the pages I really liked to get a feel for how they'd look done, and make sure I was happy with everything. I ended up fully colouring chapter 1 (this would come back to bite me later).

Pencils, inks, and then colours for a page from Chapter 3. Looks neat all together! If you look closely, you can see the thumbnail under the pencils.

The cover was also due somewhere around this point (can't recall exactly when, so I'll mention it here). Throughout this process, I referenced a lot of vintage tween fashion magazines from 1960s/early 70s Japan (mostly found in eBay listings, and then some early 2010s fashion history blogs). I also looked at a lot of 1960s advertisements, petri dish images and diagrams from science textbooks, websites for mould identification, and a few subreddits dedicated to mouldy food and household cleaing. For the fashion magazines in particualr, I really liked how patterns and abstract shapes intersected with the subjects of the image.

The cover with some visual inspiration.

I did a lot of figuring out and referencing of locations here too - I find backgrounds difficult to draw, so often use real places for inspiration because I can go to them and see everything. Sylvie's sink and toilet are the ones in my flat, and I spent a lot of time sat on the floor drawing them.

Month 5:

I really needed to get on with writing the last chapters, so spent some time focusing on that in month 5. It was busy at work so lots of this planing was done during lunch breaks, in whatever book I had handy. I decided I wanted Mucor to have a cool cape and eyepatch so had to write that into the plot, which largely contributed to how the comic ends. I got all of the remaining writing/thumbnails done in this month.

Thumbnails in my sketchbook for the end of Chapter 4, and beginning of 5. Thumbnails ended up being in whatever book was closer to me at the time. My favourite doodle of Mucor underneath.

Some writing/notes/doodles that became Chapter 5 and 6.

Figuring some stuff out for Chapter 6, Mucor's boss baby arc.

Month 6:

Life was still very busy, so mostly planning here. At this stage, with the entire comic finally written and thumbnailed, I realised everything was completed to totally different stages, and it was getting difficult to keep track of mentally - I was also aware of the looming deadline and really needed to get a grasp on what was left to do. The rest of my life is carefully managed in my Hobonichi journal, so I made a chart to help track my progress.

The checklist to track which pages needed to be inked and coloured, along with some other tasks like final file prep, back cover, and inner covers. I usually do this right at the start of a project, so typically this would include thumbnail and pencil stages too.

Once I did this, I had a good idea of what was left; Chapters 5-7 still needed inking, and around 68 pages still needed to be coloured. Quite a lot of work with not long left - Especially when balancing it with a full time job, commission work, and general life stuff. I picked a date 3 weeks before the actual submission deadline to get all of the artwork done, to give me a cushion and time to do all of the other stuff. I have a fairly predictable schedule and a good grasp on my normal inking/colouring speed, so divided all of the pages that needed work up across my 'available' days, and popped them into my daily checklists. This ended up being about 4 pages of colouring a day, 4 days a week (giving me some flexibility aorund work and social activities). Maths, baby! 🤓

Each day in my planner had assigned pages to complete: Colour 'CH7 1, 2, 3, 4' means 'Chapter 7, pages 1-4'. This was very helpful to keep track of what I needed to do.

Month 7:

Thankfully, I'm quick at inking, so was able to get all the outstanding pencils done, plus ink everything that still needed doing too. That was about it, really! Lots of work but little variety this month. I caught really bad con-cold and that 'cushion' of extra time meant I didn't fall behind.

One issue I came across during inking was that it was getting difficult to tell which characters were speaking, especially when panels were 'zoomed out' from the spores and you couldn't see the characters individually; It became really important to make sure each character had a distinct 'voice', and I also colour-coded the speech bubbles to help.

Stachybotrys' speech balloons are green, Mucor's pink, and Sylvie's are white. The spores as a collective speak in emojis when Sylvie is present, and have a white text balloon when she isn't. Narration is in yellow - There was a fourth character playing the narrator early on, but they were scrapped.

Month 8:

Really got the ball rolling on colouring in month 9 and got through a third of the checklist - I started asking some friends who do writing/comics for feedback on small sections (and made my poor partner read the whole thing about 100 times while I did funny voices for the spores).

And oh! A bite? On my ass? Chapter 1 came back to haunt me...

• The way I'd drawn Sylvie's head changed massively as I settled into inking. It looked really different between chapters 1 and 7, so that had to be changed.

• The first few pages sucked because I rushed into them - But I didn't want to draw all of the original backgrounds again. Narratively, it also made more sense for some of the events here to be set in a bathroom rather than a kitchen , so I needed to re-write and draw pages 1-4 entirely.

• Some text needed to be edited because of things I wrote in later on (and other bits just needed editorial changes to be better).

Lots of the changes made to Chapter 1 are present here - Sylvie's head, the change in setting from kitchen to bathroom, changes in the narration text. I wanted to emphasise how exposed Syvlie is in Chapter 7, so covered her up some more here so there would be more impact later on.

Making these changes would have been way easier if I'd had done all of the writing & thumbnailing at the start of the project. I wouldn't recommend the sort of process I've taken here.

Month 9:

Nothing too exciting here - This was crunch month. I was getting sick of coming home from work and immediately needing to colour a ton of pages, so took a week of annual leave so I could simultaneously smash everything out and chill while eating lots of fancy bread and fruit as a treat (which was amazing and I wish it was my real life). I finished colouring the final spread at around 3:30am on the last Saturday of the month, listening to Tubthumping on the PCZF playlist.

I saved this spread until last - Colouring the big patterned areas was super chill.

Month 10:

All of those pesky 'last bits' happened here.

• Multiple proof reads to weed out any spelling errors, mistakes in the art, etc.

• Prepping the files in Affinity Publisher (trying to get it to a reasonable file size was an effort and a half)!

• Back cover design - I also did a separate one, plus endpages for the eventual print version, even though that won't release until November).

Some of the chapter break pages.

In the proof reads, I realised the jumps from one chapter to the next were quite abrupt, messing with the pacing when read as a whole. I was chatting about the 'eyecatchers' in anime (the screens with character art on each side of ad breaks) with a friend and got inspired - I had loads of 'concept' art from my experiments in month 3, so ended up utilising a bunch of them for a similar purpose, breaking up the chapters.

And then it was done! After a few more obsessive re-reads, I submitted the final file to the LDC Comics Fair, and then played Pokemon for a week straight.

If you've managed to get this far, thanks! If you liked what you've seen and want to read MOTHER yourself, you can do so here until 31st July.

After 31st July 2025, it'll be in my shop (above).

My own picks + mini reviews from the LDC Online Comics Fair will be in my July Round-Up post. See you then!✌️