Somethings I would like to add about Found Notes:

This was 100% a passion project based entirely on what I like. I absolutely fucking love stories shown through journal entries, redacted text, sci-fi horror type experiments (The Resurrectionist, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, etc), monotone except for one color, worsening mental stability through the story, morally grey protagonist, and a big bang at the end! This story is all the things I've wanted to do! If I had more time, I would have most definitely made Heinz's spiraling both grander and more intense.

I actually took a fair while to make the anatomy of the test rats correct! There's the obvious dissection panel on page one, but the bones and regrowing muscles on the second page were also redone several times to make it look more accurate. My favorite pages to draw/overall are definitely page 7 and 8, they just turned out so well in my opinion. I refuse to look up any reference pictures on google images because I just know I'll see some actually real shit, so I pulled out some comics and watched the scene where those nazi's melt in Indiana Jones.

Not a single panel ever uses the color of pure white! To add texture, the "base" of the comic was done with a black watercolor brush at 50% opacity. I used four different brushes over the course of making the comic, for the layout it was a mechanical pencil brush, for line art it was a sketchy pen brush, colors were done with my beloved watercolor brush (lots and lots of layering), and finally, I used a charcoal brush to add the deeper colored blood that you'll see on page 8 and 9. Text was in italic rockwell font.

I had a pretty good idea what each of the characters were going too look like, especially our main man Heinz. The main thing with him that changed was the method for obscuring his face! Originally it was pixelated, then it was a black box covering his face (I enjoyed the spooky look, but it didn't show enough emotion), and I at the end settled on only the eyes being redacted.

The characters do have un-redacted names! Heinz's written name was Dr. Heinz Ludwig (As a reference to Emesis Blue where the main character is Fritz Ludwig), the male scientist with the goggles was Dr. Robert, and the female scientist was Dr. Francis. (I believe that Francis and Robert are early 30's while Heinz is mid 40's) For the date 19XX  ,it was not written with a specific date in mind, but actually as 19xX.

Heinz's final note on page 6 and 9 (haha, nice) was written by my dad, and was supposed to show Heinz's worsening mental state, and was inspired by the deterioration of writing in dementia patients. Although our guy does not have dementia, I though the shaky and messy lettering would be a good fit. It actually reads as: "January 22nd, 19XX  Tonight. I will take it all down. Not a single patient left, not an ounce of that machine salvageable."

The story was completely written out and planned from an omniscient perspective, and only later adopted into Heinz's point of view. This was mostly so I could avoid making Heinz an exposition bomb, and make him genuinely not know whats going on, along with being able to drop hints of the actual stuff that is going on. Heinz was also originally supposed to seem more hopeless and fatigued, but I changed him to being more active and angry as I thought that was much more realistic, especially for a middle? aged man like Heinz is. (Its hard to draw a buncha adult scientists when you've mostly only drawn younger characters and non human characters.) I tried really hard to make sure that they didn't just look like teens with wrinkles on their faces, and I think I succeeded!

The main music I listened to for writing/drawing each thing:

Beyond Repair: Some Shinsei Kamattechan and lots of Nine Inch Nails.

Found Notes: Actress by Iyowa, and so much Nashimoto Ui.

Descending: Almost exclusively あなぐらぐらし by Kikuo.

Frail: Morphine, Lead Zepplin, and I think the song виртуальная любовь?

Blindfold: DONUT HOLE by Hatchi.

(I tend to listen to non english songs so that the words don't distract me.)

Main Inspirations:

Emesis Blue

TF2

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudspeth 

僕の戦争 Music Video

Inscryption

Face melting scene from Indiana Jones