(hej: What a great thread idea lmao, tbh it crossed my mind too but I was too lazy to make it so I'm glad you did! c: )
Windows98 : Your character are super fun and most follow a specific aesthetic (I don't remember how it's called specifically I'm sorry lmao) -- I was wondering, since when do you design your characters this way? If it's pretty recent, are your characters newly created, or did you redesign them in order to make them fit this aesthetic?
(Also, what's your favourite operating system? Your username makes me curious haha)
@wanco-alien Thanks for the question! I don't consider it too personal, don't worry haha! Life rambling warning lmao, also idk if the themes I'll talk about or if the way I'll write can make people uncomfortable, so I'll put a spoiler just in case (there's nothing NSFW, just religion and belief-related stuff)
How did you develop an interest on theology?
So I guess all of this kinda started because I wanted to "protect" myself from my father's side of the family (my parents are separated and I've always lived with my mother)... I'm an atheist and they're super religious, but I didn't have much a "religious" education growing up. Still, they were forcing me to go to church when I was going to their place, it was making me super uncomfortable and I wanted to "come out" to them, but I was super afraid to because I didn't know shit about Christianity and stuff at that time... So I finally decided to look up stuff on the Internet in secret, so at first it more "arguments against the existence of God" stuff than anything? I was following tons of militant atheist stuff and this was basically my "religion sucks" phrase haha - I still enjoy it but I also kinda grown out of it hopefully lmao
But finally some time passed and I found a new interest in the stuff I was learning about for practically reasons only? I found some religious stories and characters kinda cool, a bit like you can grow an interest for mythology... And me having Asperger Syndrome, when I have an interest for something, I usually want to know all about it. Kinda the opposite of my initial situation lmaooo
So theology is one of my special interest since 3 or 4 years now, that's why it's literally everywhere in my works. Guess you can thank my closed-minded family lol
TL;DR: My atheism VS my religious family, feat. autism
How did you have an idea for your current projects?
The Paradoxal Collection started around the end of phase I was talking about, if I recall well. As stated in the folder description, all of this started as a private joke between my middle school friends and I. We were all militant atheists and this was the school year when we had to study WWII in history class... So there's the result. Also it was the year of the Charlie Hebdo shooting and I was so fucking pissed about it for obvious reasons, not only as a human being, not only as an artist, but also as an artist who specifically does satirical works based on religion.
Le Club des Treize started a few months later, actually! It was the time were I was still growing out of said phase and I started to get specifically interested in the stories of the New Testament. At first I just wanted to do a illustration of Jesus and his apostles as modern children (I don't remember how I got this idea tho, I just wanted to draw cute stuff based on my interest I guess), but I finally liked the designs and concepts so much I wanted to keep the characters and make it a full comic!
Flying Popcorn is way older: it started when I started to get into the phase... I knew less stuff about religion, so that's why the cast is kinda religion-inspired without being literal rewritings of already existing religious figures. Even during my childhood, I've always had an interest for stories about angels and demons for some reason, and I think that FP is my fourth one or something... But now I think that angels have way more interesting if you keep their link to religion, otherwise they're not angels, just humanoids with wings? (And yes I'm aware of the non-humanoid angel stuff ofc but it's not really my thing to work on) Originally it featured humans, angels and demons only, I got the idea of aliens a bit later and they were supposed to appear in a chapter only. Lmao.
TL;DR: Still atheism and autism, feat. French culture I guess