About

How this did start?

Way back in November 2020, I had a sudden idea for a webcomic. After nearly a year of planning and making extremely slow progress, I decided to try out creating online accountability by blogging about my webcomic production adventures.

—Which unfortunately, never really happened! Said adventures just dragged on and on without much significant progress, and each post was filled with "I will hopefully get more work done next update". It turns out accountability doesn't really work when no one actually cares about what you're doing; I was just spending a lot of time and effort posting to a wall, and that awareness made me less and less eager to make updates.

But I still wanted to get that comic out there. I might not have an audience now, but if I actually get things done and show off what I've made, that could change! So I returned with renewed vigour, planning my production schedule ahead, drawing out detailed reference sheets for characters and locations for assistants that I would then hire to make the dream a reality, etc.

And then a layoff wave hit the tech industry.

I'm a software engineer by trade, and being employed in that industry was what was giving me the time and financial backing to be drawing comics and thinking of paying for assistants out of my own wallet. But then I suddenly lost that backing—and for reasons completely unrelated to me as an individual contributor, at that. At the time of writing, it had been a good 8 months since I had been unemployed, and completely unable to find a new job in the absurdly ridiculous market.

So I basically had to just switch industries!

I had always wanted to eventually switch to art as my career; to have the freedom to work when and where I want, and to be working on what really matters to me. While this definitely isn't the way or reason I had wanted to go into it with—I had always planned on publishing my comic, creating a fanbase from that, and then making merch of it, having patreons, etc.—if I'm going to start, I might as well start now!

Why that name and logo?

The name came from the very first time I entered a manga contenst; I am horrible at coming up with names, but my submission (and most of the stories I wrote back then) was about the downward spiral of depression, so I thought I'd take something from this theme and turn it into a name. Adding an extra "L" to the word basically solved the problem.

The next part—and arguably, the important part—is that those stories always had salvation at the end. Even if it wasn't the most qualified pair of helping hands, and even if it wasn't the end-all-be-all to all the problems that had surfaced; the point is, it was there. And there, I had the inspiration for my logo: the two Ls at the end of my name, depicted as a pair of arms pulling someone out from the center of the spiral. A logo that not only was more than a symbol, but also perfectly encapsulated my genre, and the text it would be placed beside as well.

And then I realized that it looked like chopsticks stirring up some ramen. So now it's just the spiral lol. Whoopes?

What products will you have in the future?

I will be mostly selling cute and innovative merch based off fanworks! Because I don't currently have a fanbase for my original works (as they aren't published yet), I'm starting off with fanworks for the next indefinite while. But they are works of shows that I genuinely enjoy; no matter what happens financially, I will only make products that I genuinely think would be great to receive myself.

The fandoms I plan to create for are Spy x Family, Frieren, and Eminence in Shadow.
I do watch and enjoy other shows or games as well, so this list could be updated!

Examples of some things I have planned are:

• Serial keychains: Where multiple characters hang off each other in interesting and funny ways;
• Candy charm: Ex. different family expressions combined into a super cute little candy-wrapped charm
• Washi tape: Honestly I just want a duck-themed washi tape for myself
• Pencil cases: Bright and colourful designs to make your school day that much better! (Or badass designs, if there is demand for that)

Also, if I manage to get in: I'm planning on selling art prints at my first ever artist alley! I'll be updating this section once I know my application results.

Why build this site when you have the blog?

Despite my very slow and low amount of actual comic progress throughout the literal years that had passed, I had added more and more things to the blog; tools, a portfolio, a commissions page, etc.—until it eventually became a central hub for all the things I had on offer, rather than for the creational journey of my specific webcomic.

But! The front page stayed as the blog. It was primarily still a blog site, after all. So When it came time to create business cards and really advertise myself as a brand, I realized:

Wouldn't it be really weird for my website to be totally irrelevant to the rest of my identity??

All of my social links and other accounts are set up with the name ‘Spirall’. So for a website I'll be linking on my business card to not only have a complete different name, but to not even be about the brand at all, would make absolutely no sense.

So I built this site in two days. Did reuse the general layout and pages from my blog since I had sent out my first products early and thus had to get this completed ASAP. If you're reading this now from a business card visit—I hope you've found this entertaining!

Why does your blog's header go so hard?

I started the blog as a standalone thing; zero branding or really any association with 'me' as a person, meant to be read as its own thing, for its own very specific purpose of logging my webcomic production adventures.

One of the hardest things to think about when starting any website is how the front page would look like. I'd already had this image ready, as it was used in the actual comic as an in-universe poster, so the trick was just how to display it. How can I make this header stand out as much as possible? At that time, it was the only outlet for my online prescence, so it had to be great. It had to be epic.

And thus I came up with the most deliberately extra header possible. ✨

It was only after giving myself a walkthrough of the visitor experience several times that I realized; this animation might be kind of annoying to have to sit through all the time lol, even if it is only a few seconds long. So I added a little toggler to skip the animation with, and now you can choose to when you want bask in the epicness, or just jump right to the contents.

What's with the cheese on the background of the page headers?

Read the comic when it comes out to find out! Due to starting this business and focusing on more general projects now, I'm not quite sure when that would be, but I definitely haven't given up on it and am still excited to share it in the (possibly near!) future.

If all goes well, I will be uploading the first chapter in a few months!

Who's the character on your thank-you card?