I am going to kick off the personal art section with something I've never uploaded here before...

This is an old mock poster/cover art for Through Death & Love, the original title of the story I created when I was 14 years old, which would go on to become (several iterations later) The Leopard Sun.

This is the oldest surviving artwork I did for the story, dating back to October 1999.

The story was first conceptualized in 1998, after my viewing of Discovery Channel's The Leopard Son and National Geographics' Beauty & The Beasts. These two documentaries shattered my long-held belief that I knew everything about animals just because I read a lot about them; that their behaviors can all be generalized and fitted into a tidy little box of text. It was the first time I realized that while romanticisation of animals can be a varying degree of unhealthy, many animal species are far more intelligent - and more "human" - than we commonly believe them to be. That like us, they exhibit complex and distinct personalities, and are capable of the extraordinary.

The basic premise was that a leopard mother, after losing one of her cubs to a lion attack, chose to adopt an orphaned lion cub as her own (inspired by events in Beauty & The Beasts). The mother leopard's mate - having lost his mother to lions several years prior (indicating that he is the leopard from The Leopard Son), and now his favored daughter - chose a path of revenge, and recruited allies to wage a war on the lions.

I was, however, at an age when The Lion King was amongst my many obsessions, and I thought... what better way to introduce the story to the mass market than to sneak it in as a sequel to the madly-popular film? Perhaps people would find the dark twist to the tale enjoyable? Being young and stupid, I did exactly that - so the first iteration of the story was connected to the universe of The Lion King (which is also why the art style takes after it).

This was before Simba's Pride was announced, so my lengthy Internet search on finding a way to pitch the story idea to Disney eventually led me to The Lion King Fan Art Archive, which at the time maintained a lively discussion forum. On that site, I would make my first "Internet" friends, and participate in my first role-plays (which actually helped me a lot in learning English; I had just moved to the U.S. in the summer of 1996).

Of all the friends and people who came and went, I managed to hold on to one... her name is autumnsunrise, and to this day I continue to consider her someone very dear to me. She, more than anyone else, grew up with me through my youthful years. And it brings me a lot of joy and comfort to think that she will still be here when The Leopard Sun is made.