Personal Comic Project
Kimia's Hands-On Guide to Magic
This comic is a passion project I've been doing on-and-off work on since mid-2025. The comic is a coming-of-age fantasy adventure story that follows a young rogue witch as she tries to find family, purpose, and a place she belongs. The story is meant to be pretty casual and personal, and is named after the protagonist's handsy powers. Haha, get it?
Below, you'll find my process notes, some drafts and ideations, and whatever else I've decided to throw in here. As I finish more chapters and pages, I'll throw them on this site, but it's kind of a pain to update so don't expect super regular upkeep. Peace.
Hello
Timeline/Where it started
I began creating ideas for a comic about a small elf witch in mid-2024. During that time, I still had no idea what exactly I was doing. The plan at the time was just a big series of drawings following this little witch and her mishaps, but it evolved into something bigger. Below, you'll see how this evolution happened.
01 - Mid 2024
Kimia sheet
The first character sheet I made for Kimia, the protagonist. Actually, probably one of the first character sheets I've ever made. I tried developing an interesting character, but probably fell into a lot of the common pitfalls of self-insert like characters back then. I also hadn't really figured out my style yet, so I struggled to draw her consistently.
02 - Mid 2024
Polished Sheet
The only reason I actually created this sheet was because I wanted a proper look for Kimia during Art fight. Regardless, I took this opportunity to experiment with and develop my rendering style, as well as figure out exactly what kind of magic Kimia wields. She was definitely more of a kawaii, young adult-ish character back then. Funny in hindsight, honestly.
03 - Mid 2024
Aspen Sheet
I added Aspen because I wanted to draw a cat girl. Yeah. That's literally it. Her character wasn't very thought through and the only feature from her past was that she worked in a stall or something. A very far cry from her grittier past and personality nowadays. Regardless, with Aspen's introduction, the crew began coming together.
04 - Mid 2024
Caspian "Sheet"
At this point, I had some inklings of an idea about a team of ragtag misfits travelling the country and going on adventures together. When I drew Caspian, I had figured that he and Aspen were a criminal duo before meeting with Kimia. Caspian's character is probably the most unchanged, though his appearance underwent major development to distance him from the Rito. Please don't sure me.
05 - Mid 2024
Volgoth Sheet
Visually, Volgoth is the most unchanged character, and also probably the best design I came up with in this batch of artworks. Volgoth was also my most interesting character. His past was a mystery. His abilities were unexplained, but that was by intention. I'm still not sure what role he was meant to serve in the story back then, other than being the tall, strong and gentle figure of the party.
06 - Late 2024
Tree
This was among the earliest environment works I made exploring Kimia's adventure and the world she inhabits. This was my favorite piece for a very long time, and exhibits my proclivity towards creating warm, sunset-lit pieces. I eventually remastered this for a comic page in the future.
07 - Late 2024
View
Another environment exploration piece. I think this one's self explanatory, but still, I was very happy with how it turned out. Also remastered in the future.
08 - Late 2024
Sky
Third of my environmental Kimia pieces. This one took ages to produce, and the result was a piece I liked enough to use as my iPad's background for about a year. While I never directly remastered this one, I certainly drew inspiration for the comet page in Chapter 3.
09 - Late 2024
Fist
This was probably the first piece where I establish Kimia's abilities and try to figure out how her handy magic would function visually. The idea was already floating around; by manipulating mana with great precision, Kimia could imitate the magical "circuits" running through her body to create tangible fascimiles of her limbs. Here, she's probably using it to squash a bug or something.
10 - Mid 2025
Design Update and Big Pivot
After about half a year of waiting around and doing nothing, in 2025, I finally decided to screw it and just get to drawing the comic. By this point, my art style had changed to the point where I could no longer take Kimia's old design seriously, so I commenced a complete redesign of every character to better fit my updated vision. For Kimia, given her already existing scheme, red felt like a better color to use. Since she lived in the forests, school uniform-like attire also no longer felt appropriate, so I gave her ragtag, too-small clothes instead. Finally, I made her smaller, more ragged, and more "scrunkly" to fit the feeling of a tiny witch in a big, strange world.
11 - Mid 2025
Caspian and Gale Redesign
Since Kimia was now adapted to a grittier, less kawaii tone, the rest of the main cast naturally followed. Gale (Aspen's pseudonym) was made more muscular to fit her role as a criminal, given tattoos, a more cat-like build, and a darker past. Caspian, though largely unchanged in terms of story, was now outfitted with trinkets, was associated with a distinct species of bird, and had a much stronger visual identity (beyond just being some bird adventurer).
12 - Mid 2025
Enemy Concepts
Following the crew's redesign, it felt appropriate to also go ahead and make some enemies for them. Realistically, these were probably drawn before the crew's redesign, but it wouldn't make much sense for the site. Anyways, these characters are just floating around now and won't actually appear in the story until another 50 chapters or so. Knowing my pace, it'll be years before we get there, at which point these guys will get another redesign.
