From The Start Unfinished Animation

The forever unfinished full animation I was planning prior to the start of the comic! This is very very hard for me to look at now waaah lmao. Song is Good Kid’s cover of “From the Start” by Laufey, I started this I think early 2024? And worked on it for a few months until benching it. I initially made it for fun but as I got more serious about actually making WH I began going more in the direction of a promo vid. During the sort-of “post-production” phase of the comic I thought the best way for it to get exposure was to create a fully colored animation, I had placed all these rules for myself like “okay I’ll get the animation done first then start work on the comic and post them at the same time” blah blah blah, obviously it did not turn out like I planned! Life stuff got in the way, and it got to a point where I was just really tired of stalling on making the proper comic. A big reason it never got finished though is just that I hate coloring animations so, so much!! In Photoshop especially it’s just the most tedious thing ever and it doesn’t help that Leo’s highlights are an extra thing I have to keep track of consistency-wise. But omggg I literally cannot believe how big I used to draw their hair not even that long ago. I love how I draw hair but it’s like wayyy too big LOL like looking at it now it’s so ridiculous to me 😭 I don’t even think the anatomy’s actually too bad here but the hair is just ENGULFING them especially Hazel’s it’s so silly. That’s another reason why I just cannot look at the early WH chapters it causes me psychic damage 💀

But yeah it sucks I never got to show off my hard work on this rip, so I am glad to be able to show it here even if it makes me cringe a bit. I just had to get over my fear of showing old artwork first! I know it’s a little ridiculous to be so scared about it but whoever said perfectionism was rational? I also didn’t end up finishing it because it’s like, slightly noncanon. Basically in some of my initial outlines there was more of a jealousy plot? Like specifically Hazel liked someone else (NOT REN LOL) and it hasn’t been like, scrapped but it’s just very very different now. The Hazel-Leo sickeningly cute romance stuff was actually not a main focus of the story at all for a really long time! Basically Leo still had a crush on her but it was gonna be a lot more subtle, and Hazel wasn’t going to have any noticeable feelings towards Leo at all for a good bit of the story. But as I actually began writing the script I kind of just naturally realized how much they loved each-other. And it was a lot more fun writing them that way! Maybe this is a tiny bit spoilers but not reallyy so what the heck, in the canon story Hazel does have feelings for Leo but she kinda doesn’t realize she does. And she has this sort-of mental block where she just cannot believe Leo, or anyone, would have a crush on her, so it’s just not something she thinks about much. But the way she treats him and how touchy she is with him gives it away to pretty much everyone. Of course Leo has his own self-doubts so he doesn’t assume this means she loves him back, he’s just happy she likes him at all and doesn’t want to jeopardize that by confessing. Make no mistake tho they are very much made for each-other ❗❗

I’ll probably compile some more old art for you guys to see soon, I know I have soooo much on my old laptop but that thing needs life support to turn on and I lost its charger forever ago waghh. it's hard to justify buying a new one just for that but maybe I will one day! In the meantime I still got stuff on this current computer and some high school sketchbooks :]