zine talk + my old zines + projects
I don’t think I have made a real “zine” in a long time, but thought I would revisit my old zines and chat about them here. I went on a posting spree (borderline rant/rave) on Bsky about my zine works a year ago but deleted those posts HAHAHA.
My comic/zine friend & mentors are forever Love Love Hill’s comic collective. Meeting them online was sooooo cool and opened my eyes to being able to just self publish whatever I wanted. I also have an inclination to make staplebound/saddlestitch type of zines because of them. I also just need to link you Dirchansky’s behind the scenes posts about B&W Bitmapping for print and experiments with drafting in Krita.
Also the Love Love Hill tumblr still has lots of great resources and also this great stapling tutorial by Wai.
I think the folding zines are cute too but those feel more like the punk/indie zine sphere.
Newer Zines
I outsourced printing/stapling these to Mixam since there are many options to do short run booklets these days. All from 2023.
Klance Zine - My most controversial/talked about item at conventions/markets, because this fandom has a really bad reputation among the most vocal of fans LOL. People either talk about how it’s traumatized ™ them for life or they are still huge fans and buy it right away (it’s hilarious to witness either way). I have a compilation of my Klance works with a couple pages dedicated to my baseball AU of them.
OC (Soren & Co) Sketchlog Zine - Just a compilation of Soren & Co sketchworks that I liked so that I could have an original IP zine on my table. I appreciate people that get it. I feel like with original characters zines you need to add in content for people to understand the whole vibe. The first couple of pages feature my OC’s profiles (even though I put the wrong bday for one of them HAHA).
Lost Heir Zine - Compilation of my Lost Heir sketches which is a fantasy BL that is a self contained universe/story. In an alternate timeline I imagined this would mainly be a novel series with illustrations and not a comic/webtoon, because I really love the tension that you can build in novels/fanfics/etc.
Older Zines
I learned how to DIY print/staple from LLH which is what I did for these zines because printing services were more rare. As a bonus these were SUPER low cost to produce but filled my heart sooooo well. Screenshots from my IG archives since Idk where all the photos are and I like my timestamped commentary.
Pics or it didn’t happen - I still have this on display at cons sometimes but it’s SOOO old. An OC Social Media zine. It was really fun to have magazine style interviews and fake social media profiles. As a character exercise I just like thinking about how each of my OCs would approach social media…
A Shift in Time (2017) - My most self-indulgent zine that I could only produce by printing copy paper, because WHO WANTS THIS (me). The digital version lives on my site. Please excuse bad art and bad writing. I like that I include Coffee Shop AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega AU, Soulmate Marks, and Case!Fic with lots of tl;dr.
Yoohoo, Woohoo, What’s New? (OCxSims Zine) - Digital version here. This was just really fun hehe.
Cold Nose Bean Toes (Pet Zine) - Collab with my friend BBlux and we desperately need to make a Cold Nose Bean Toes 2 (2 Cold 2 Bean?) because she and I both have completely diff pets.
Inktober 2016 Zine - TBH I’m just so amazed I scanned my inktobers, converted to B&W for bitmap printing, and did the stapling myself?? I will never make a landscape zine like this again.
Also this smaller quarter size zine (fun for like little freebie ones).
Future Projects
M1525 Zine (working title) - HOPEFULLY some kind of compilation of these characters/story tidbits/etc. I came across a bunch of notes that I wrote 15-ish years ago and revived these characters that I forgot about. Ideally I’d love to include some short comics and also lots of free talk (imo the best part of a zine) so it would be like A Shift in Time
More Soren & Co stuff so that I can feel like I’ve canonized something.
I desperately want to make some kind of Prince of Tennis futureverse zine for myself for it to exist!! LOL what if it was called futureVERSE by Hero X (a parody of the anime opening theme).
Cooking/Food/Cooking for 1 zine - this one I could be more of a Riso type of thing.
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Anyways, create zines from your heart.