In December, my brother texted me out of the blue during online class.

(My brother is a very interesting human being. I don’t know how his mind spiraled into this— knowing him, he was probably just microwaving food and accidentally pressed the wrong thing, had a mini-breakdown, and funneled his troubles into creating some time-loop-horror-ficlet.)

Nevertheless, this conversation spiraled through my mind for a little bit. For the next few months, I was thinking about it— I found the idea pretty interesting, so I was considering either writing some flash-fiction of it or creating a small art piece.

I did start a draft of something I wanted to do, but it was eventually scrapped. Recently I’ve been testing my art style a lot, because I’ve been thinking about my future in visual arts. I can’t see myself finding references for all my doodles and continuing to create realistic drawings with intricate, accurate shading— so a comic, about some stupid time loop microwave would be a good way to branch out from what I usually do.

In the draft, I particularly didn’t like how the “arms” of the microwave turned out. I figured that the most terrifying part of the microwave time loop was that the microwave is an inanimate, non-human object without life; personifying it with human-like arms, no matter how robotic, completely eradicates that purpose. Additionally, I think the composition looked really odd because the perspective was really not right… the microwave and person are both looking up, but the arms’ shading makes it look like they’re in front of you and upright. Overall, many things just didn’t express the tone of the original horror.

(Also, looking at it more now, I realize that there isn’t enough pure black in the draft. If the paper had been black, or if I had shaded in the background – or maybe had made the red circle black, the mood of looming danger, or some sort of mystery, would’ve been much clearer. In the final comic, this is a lot more apparent; I shaded in a lot of things, especially during the spiral of insanity.)

I started the comic again during February break. I mostly made a comic after studying some of my favorite comic/frame composition artists online (specifically @/herbivorobert on instagram, @/peacchip on instagram, and @/hakunette on instagram), and made a light sketch— I considered using ink, like I did for my draft, but decided against it since it was my first time really considering character/style/frames. I’m a lot more comfortable with graphite— but that’s something I want to change, since color just adds a whole other level of depth and potential.

So after a sketch, I started going in and shading/adding details.

(As you can see, the red added a whole level of shock and pop to it. Pretty incredible, that such a little detail can do so much.)

But yeah! After that, just went in, erased some stray lines, finished up, and scanned it in. (In my opinion, the comic looks a LOT better in-person, but we can’t do anything about that.)

Overall, pretty happy with the experience. I liked the composition I came up with, but I think I really need to get better at drawing people in a specific style – and also get better at drawing hands – before I try something like this again. That’s why i spent most of last night going on Pinterest and studying hands; I’m considering making an acrylic painting of my own hand as well, to tackle color and hands at once.

Also— first “Art Updates” post! This will be the overall format for these types of posts, a little documentary on art I finish. I hope to make many more of these in the future!