A Heist in little odessa
romance ✧ drama ✧ comedy ✧ action ✧ 🔞A crooked accountant and a high-profile thief team up. What could possibly go wrong?[This page is a WIP! I hope to eventually add character profiles over time.]
AHILO is a passion project of mine that's been in the works for roundabout a year and a half or so. The story follows Mikhail and Naomi as their relationship evolves from co-workers to friends to lovers as criminals in NYC.This comic will take a long time for me to make. I have a full-time job, and so have to juggle my free time as best I can. I would desperately love to just work on the various things I want to do for this project, which include introductory pages for characters and such. Unfortunately, as I've gotten older, it's become harder and harder for me to consistently draw like I did as a teen. I'm not particularly fast. If you think you're impatient, try being the one with all the stuff in your head that you can't apply to paper fast enough. It sucks, and it's frustrating. But I've learned from experience that forcing myself on a deadline actually makes my production worse, to the point I avoid doing it. If it feels like a requirement, I lose the desire to work on it. So this will be at my pace, which I also hate, but this project has been a piece of freedom and happiness among current events for me. So I'll stick with doing it that way for that sake.That being said – I make sure to work on it at least every monday. Maybe in the future I can convince myself to work on it on other days, and even stream, but for now that's the goal I've set myself. (I can and have continued to work on it even after Monday, I just don't make it a strict rule.)I am untrained in this area. I ended up not going to college, and I don't regret that decision, but I do wish I had the time and energy to take the education and learn more about art. In this timeline I just have to make do. I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm going purely off vibes lol. So I'm completely open to any resources given to me! I'm not looking for a lot of critique though, since I'm doing this for myself and not with the intention of making it some big thing. If it takes off, great! But I just wanna do this for myself. I will ask for critique where I want it though.AHILO is aimed at an adult audience. While a lot of it pretty light-hearted and funny, the characters are all high profile criminals, and the story ended up being more of a drama than I originally intended. Violence, drug use, some nudity probably, even death will eventually be present. I also intend to have NSFW scenes, but these will be structured in a way that the “main” comic will “fade to black” and the events following will have a separate posting. While I think that they will be more towards the “intimacy and vulnerability” side (I personally am not a fan of extremely graphic stuff), some of it is smut, and I know some people prefer to not read all that. I may also end up chickening out on this prospect, who knows!With that in mind, I would appreciate minors not attempting to read these parts at the very least. I know I have very little control over that, but I believe I would not be able to put them behind a paywall and I lack the following to bother anyway. So. If I find out a minor has tried to do so, I will block them permanently (even after they turn 18) for breaching this.While the main two are white, a lot of the other characters are of different races and creeds, and Mikhail himself is an Eastern Orthodox Christian. I've tried my best to do research and respectfully portray these aspects, so if something is said or done that could be misconstrued or is in some way disrespectful or bigoted I would Very Much Like To Know so I can correct it. I'd just like to ask that you bear in mind this is in a criminal setting, so characters are going to do objectively bad things. I'm being mindful of what those things are so as not to paint a caricature, but otherwise there will be. Yknow. Not Upstanding Citizen Activities for sure.Honestly the only other thing is that I hope people don't try to ship the main pair with other characters, though I acknowledge that this is also beyond my control. The rest of the cast though, I say go ham! I love multishipping for the most part, so most of my ocs don't even have a canon partner. However Mikhail and Naomi are deeply more personal to me and my own spouse, and that's what makes them different. And after all, the whole point of this thing is smooshing them together!
Me, making a thank you page as if this is some renowned story instead of a silly little project to keep my spirits up? More likely than you think.I want to thank my husband (RedZedd), who's co-writing this with me, and has been nothing but helpful and encouraging. He's literally the reason any of this exists, and I'm so glad he's not only humored me but willingly adds more for me to work on. With his help I intend to do this for as long as possible! You're the best, I love you sooo much!!Thanks to Des (mintykaorti) for a handful of character designs present in the story. I'll credit them as they are introduced, but it means a lot that my friend made me these designs so I could focus more on how to apply them to the story and not fuss on designs as I am wont to do. If you want excellent character designs please hit her up here!!Thank you to BARKZIM on toyhou.se for designing my first two logos. I desperately needed the help (I am no graphic designer!) and they did a PERFECT job capturing the ideas I gave. I intend to try and design my own for future chapters, but these are so cute and special to me. If you need a logo design I HIGHLY recommend commissioning them!!At all my friends who have continued to encourage this endeavor: I figure you don't all wanna be name dropped, but your support nonetheless has been appreciated and helped me keep pursuing it despite the days depression kicks my ass instead. Y’all are the best. I hope everyone has friends like you.An extra thank you to @bifurious69 on tumblr for Jaelin's design. It was originally that of a fantroll, so I have made alterations for his human design, but he was originally created by this user and I have come to love him dearly.
Our "Heroes"
"STOLI" || MIKHAIL KARLOV
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"FUSE" || NAOMI WILSON
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BEE