Thank you all for your patience, I truly hope that , and I will satisfy your needs when we come to completion. The very start is filled with much figuring out the path of colouring, but now, I think we have it



Guardians actually started out as a human-story (which I am still writing) that came from dreams I had in my childhood. Before the internet and everything else, I had apocalyptic dreams dealing with elementals.

I think, perhaps, my obsessions with elements stemmed from always watching Captain Planet, Sailor Moon, and obsessing over astrology. But somehow, I think it was vice versa - I was interested in those things *because* I was interested in elementals.

The cat part is easy - Cats have always been my favourite animals (along with killer whales). I identify with their mannerisms, their perfect builds. Cats are majesty. To me, the figure in my dream was a human form of what I put into Kotu - a messiah figure, a prince. Everyone always portrays them as lions, but I thought snow leopard was perfect. A small big cat, the underdog like in the lion and lamb portrayls of messiah-figures, blanketed in white. Who would expect a snow leopard, when the lion or tiger is standing in the way?

When I did find the internet, it was at the forefront of the lion king craze (I was around 9). I had always been a cat-lover, and had spent my time drawing realistic kitties. I very much could not draw cartoon kitties, at all. XD
On the net, I found online role-playing games called "MUCKS", and went about playing on those, excited they loved cats as I did - but dissapointed in the lack of powers and fantasy. XD After a very very short time (maybe a month or two), being the type of person I was, I went about creating my own game.
The game started out with my oldest character, Kotu, a light element (not lightning, but light). There were several other characters, but most did not make it into the current story - a bad-to-the-bone panthress named Seera (air), an angry tiger named Kiiro (who is in form, Baska) (fire), a wolf named Whisp (earth), a cheetress named Storm(air), a white tigress named Najaa (ice), and a golden eagle, Ahlao (time). It has always been fantasy based, and the world has pretty much remained the same since (the map *almost* matches the world I created when I was 8 or 9 perfectly).

I had created the story with cat character even previous to my time on the internet, but now I could share it.

Over the years, using the same premise, the old characters got older ingame (except for kotu, who I would *not* let go of XD), and I began to create new ones. Akeli was created as a persona for myself a year or two later. Gatoai the serval, and Syn the lioness came later after that.

Most of the inspiration for my characters came from a couple of books my grandma bought me when I was little. One was called "Amazing Animals" and contained the clouded leopard picture that inspired me to make Akeli a clouded. The other was a dinosaur one, by the same author, which had the most amazing picture of a smilodon jumping in attack. I have since found the first book (which I have right now, yay!) but I can't find the second. If someone could find it, if only online, for me, I would be eternally grateful!! Another book in the series is Manmade-Wonders.

When I was online, searching for art to put on my muck's webpage (I was going to ask of course!) XD I found the tres talented ~Whisperpntr (check out her art sometime)! I was so amazed and enthralled that someone had happened upon the idea of elemental animals, and cats, at that, the same as I, that I went to her forum and became an active member. Her story was quite different from mine (at the time it was about a spacecraft crashing into a zoo and granting the zoo animals powers - its quite recently developed into a pre-BC tale, which is quite interesting! Check it out!), but even despite that difference we had quite a bit in common! Her stuff, along with the lion king, inspired me to start drawing cartoons - at the forum I met some of my best online artist friends who also inspired me, namely Bagheera - who is still one of my dear friends to date!

After quite awhile, I got sucked into real life and the game of "Guardians of the Sirist" died. When I met Shai (my fiancee), though, I was saddened as I looked back, by the death of my game, and he inspired me to work on this graphic novel as a project to get me creative again.

As a major decision, I decided to go back to my roots and start drawing as I had done before the internet - strictly realistic animals with only a touch of cartoonistic flair. The comic will be mostly realistic with a dash of characterization and expressiveness. I spent a great deal of time looking only at real live animals, and never at art when I drew. It has been at least 5 years since I've drawn with any other persons' influence except that of nature itself (as in, looking at others' art for any extended period of time except in brief spurts when I favourited).

Most of what I draw is drawn while watching live footage of cats (and other animals) in the background. My practice sketches consist of a lot of drawings from photographs. In order to further get the cats down, I also spent time tracing their bodies over and over again on print-outs of my own photos (tracing is great for practice, but don't think I'm condoning tracing and posting the picture as your own!), and doing countless skeleton lay-overs (putting a body to the big cat skeletons.

I have piles and piles of animal anatomy books strewn about my room, and even more Big Cat photo books.



Some of my biggest inspirations for starting Guardians:

Pride of Baghdad - the major inspiration for doing guardians in graphic novel form.
Katurran Odyssey - a brilliant, wonderfully illustrated book about animals.
Shai - Without him, this graphic novel wouldn't exist :3 He helped me write all the missing parts to the Guardians story.
Jesus and Buddha stories - Shai tells them the best way XD Listening to them helped zen my mind when writing.

Zelda - An oldie but goodie! One of my first inspirations. 7 sages, 7 guardians, hahahaha XD

And of course - anime! XD Good anime and manga. Ginga Weed, all of Miazaki, Felidae (euro), Plague Dogs (euro), Trigun, Deathnote, Ranma 1/2, Fushigi Yuugi, Serial Experiments Lain, Sailor Moon, Paranoia Agent, Samurai Champloo....Angel Sanctuary! I try to add a little splash of japanese style to my comics as well

I hope my art and my story inspires something in someone as well

EDIT:I thought I'd add links to peoples' galleries that used to play on my game, because I them all, and for nostalgia's sake. Obviously all of them didn't become artists, but here are those that did (if I'm leaving you out please say something).