SHARON: Okay so super important first question!!
Where did the idea for A D6 Story come from?
DINO: So A D6 Story is the birthchild of a ton of different ideas, but in order to get to the product we have today, I'll give a small history lesson.
So back in 2019, I had 2 ideas for webcomics. One was what would eventually become The LAMB and The RAM, where Jesus works to convince a dragon to go to heaven. But the other was a story that would have been called FIRESPOKEN, a story about a familiar red head cop woman that would collaborate with a man who had the ability to breathe fire to take down a mega corporation from unleashing things known as 'KHATA's upon the city of Folia.
At the time, I had to choose between which of these two stories I wanted to tell first, and after much leading and praying I decided The LAMB and The RAM would be my first choice. So I told it! And it was a success for what I had set out to do, to turn my testimony and walk with God into a tale that was gritty and bloody, but real and rooted in faith. It was a testament to the people in this world that felt out of place in the christian community, given their interest in things with a bit more grit than most. It showed them they were not alone, despite anything they may have gone through, and I was blessed to tell that story.
But once the time had come, and The Lamb and The Ram had been told, it was time to come back to FIRESPOKEN. But at this point, a year and a half later, I felt unsatisfied with the idea. Sure, I loved the gritty early 2000s NYC vibe, and the semi futuristic set pieces and monster mash tropes. But something was off, and it took me quite awhile to realize. If I wanted to tell this story, I needed to be honest with myself. This fire breather male lead, wasn't the character I had grown up creating as a upcoming artist. I needed to bring back an old friend, a character by the name of D6.
In a community I've long since moved on from, I had created this Venom/Hulk type character named D6 (abbreviation for Dominic and 6). This character had everything I loved about fiction, and I can go more in depth about him in future questions - but I loved everything I put him in, and I loved getting to draw him fight other people's characters!
Then and there, I knew what I had to do, I had to bring him back. It was like meeting an old friend again, getting to draw D6 and put him in his own stand alone story, seeing him grow as a design. The socially awkward loser with a heart of gold, infused with the psycho murderous lizard monster and his powers, what more could I want?
I did some leg work with the others characters, details such as the development of Ruth Cain that I go into later on, but after months of concept work, scripting, and world building, I knew I had made something that, above all, I myself would love to read. A D6 Story, The Tale of The UnKing.
SHARON: Do you mean to tell me that Ruth Cain used to have black and blue hair??
DINO: Oh no that's someone else's character.
SHARON: Ah oops! (Laughs)
And FIRESPOKEN, that’s such a “fire” name if you’ll forgive me—did anything happen with that story, or did it evolve into what is now D6, but simply replacing the main guy with Dominic?
And by the way, the lamb and the ram is beautiful, I need to finish it. Reminds me a bit of what I delve into with The Angel Professor, which is sometimes hard to show other people due to it being too different or something, or me depicting Satan as a very over-the-top evil villain.
Also, was Ruth Cain always a part of the story, or did she come later on? How much has she (and Dominic) changed since you started D6 again?
DINO: Thank you! I intend to go back and remake The Lamb and The Ram once I'm closer to being done with A D6 Story, so it'll be cool to see how much I've been able to improve between then and there! From one artist to another, I think we need to always tell our stories exactly as we ourselves need to, or want to, hear them, despite how different they may be to everyone else! Because above all, we need to be our own biggest fans!
(In regards to the pun) Haha! You're all good! In regards to that first question, in some ways, absolutely! I think the main human trio has stayed pretty similar design wise, the lean and taller male MC, the shorter petite red head co-lead, and the old man with the white beard villain. But personality wise, all these characters have changed drastically.
The fire breathing character of FIRESPOKEN, a character named Cain Fero, was your typical edgy protagonist with the awesome powers and 5 o'clock shadow. He was gritty and cool and capable of facing the conflict of the narrative. Dominic of A D6 Story, as we all know him, is none of those things. Funnily enough, Dominic has never been any of those things for as long as he's been a character. He's always been the loser of every scenario, struggling to keep his humanity while being haunted by the monster, 6.
So when I decided to take the dark and gritty world that was Folia City, which was originally written for a character like Cain Fero, and simply replaced that cool character with someone like Dominic - I think that's where the subversion of A D6 Story's hero archetype really shines.
Ruth was written as a character specifically for the story of FIRESPOKEN, so she's a fairly recent original character. But once I figured out her character, she's kinda just stuck and, honestly, completes the D6 character. She's the right balance to referee between Dominic and 6, tough and hard to crack against 6 with just the right amount of humanity that she can be a support to Dominic in his times of need. For being my first lady character I've spent this much time writing, I'm proud of what this angry redhead has become.
Interestingly enough, in early development of FIRESPOKEN, Ruth Cain (then named Ruth Elpida) was actually much more akin to Dominic personality wise, she would have been insecure, uncertain, and far less in control of what went on around her as opposed to how she is now.
In a twist of fate however, in recycling FIRESPOKEN into D6, the character of Cain Fero would be absorbed into the character of Ruth Elpida, and thus Ruth Cain was finally realized. Her position in the story was, more or less, the same, but now she had the personality and grit that would have belong to Cain Fero. Once I worked her out, it became clear to me how well she would work as a aid/foil for the likes of D6, being one of the only characters that would stand up for Dominic against 6, the monster that plagued him.
Originally, Ruth and Seraph were never meant to be related, Ruth's animosity toward TELOS INC was originally meant to be passed to her through a father that was someone completely different from Seraph, but once I realized how much stronger of a motivation I could give Ruth to help drive the plot of A D6 Story, I was quick to rework the Cain family.
Seraph Cain, lastly, has honestly kinda remained the same all throughout the reworks and rewrites. The only two biggest things that were changed were …
1: The fact that he was now Ruth Cain's father, which made his villainy all that more personal.
And 2: That at one point, Seraph could turn into a monster made of snakes? I don't know what I was on about back then haha!
But TELOS INC and everything around that has been relatively the same: Shady corporation that heralds itself as Folia City's biggest superpower, praised and loved by all, etc etc. The only things that I added were Iniquigen (which will have FAR more story significances as we continue the tale) and the Anecdotes (which you can figure out what those are if look carefully at The Lamb and The Ram haha!).
SHARON: That’s encouraging! Sometimes I don’t know the balance between making something personal enough I care about making it the best I can, and not making something too self-absorbed or with a narrow perspective. I feel like there’s a lot of criticism towards self-inserts. I understand that can be a problem when the story comes across as selfish and shallow, but we all have to write from our own experience primarily because that’s what we know. I think we just need to be open to other perspectives.
I suspected Cain Fero’s traits transferred over to Ruth! I did something similar with Margaret in my story. Initially Yakob was a young, optimistic guardian trying to keep Margaret from falling. But once the genre changed all the characters became older and cynical, so I transferred the youthful optimism to Margaret instead.
Ruth might be my favourite character in D6, she balances the line of not being too mean and is just so focused and angry that you kind of have to respect her because how else is she gonna keep going against someone so powerful?
And it definitely sounds more personal to make Ruth Cain’s daughter, though I wonder how she turned out so different from him—I’m guessing it had to do with her real mother and not this Jezel bitch…
The snake idea could have been super cool but maybe it’s a bit over the top for our evil corporate boss man haha.
DINO: Of course! I only say that because if we get caught up in the semantics of pleasing everyone, we lose the reason why we started making our stories in the first place, I feel - I always appreciate my audience and all the input and feedback they give! They breathe life into the story as much as I, the creator, do and often times their input on the stories has some kind of influence over the writing, whether they come to recognize it or not!
(Regarding Yakob and Margaret) Oh that's cool! It always seems like every story needs those characters who exude that sort of un-circumstancial positivity in the face of unrelenting angst haha! It's hard to imagine Yakob as anyone other than who he turned out to be now!
(In regards to Jezel) I like seeing how universal the distaste is for all the villain characters so far! Jezel has had only one on screen appearance and she's already the bane of people's existences, not just Ruth's! I'm excited to explore her character and all the other villains once this boss gauntlet of a story really kicks into high gear!
SHARON: I’d have to think about how much audience actually influences us in the writing process, but I know they definitely keep me in check and make it all such a joy.
(In regards to positive characters) I gravitate toward those characters, sometimes hearing someone say that things are somehow gonna be okay and not to give up = the strength you need for that moment.
And I’m so excited to explore your villains more too! Next question:
What kind of stories did you like the most when you were a kid, and how has that influenced your current works like D6?
DINO: A strange answer, but I used to LOVE watching those old stickman fights you'd watch on youtube - they were grizzly and violent, with different stickmen that had all kinds of crazy cool powers! Some could run super fast, slow down time, others had swords with jet propulsion; even stuff as crazy as a weaponized umbrella, a stretchy sword with golden armor, or characters who had flames that could either speed up or slow down the things they burned!
I loved them so much as a kid, I'd binge them and learned all kinds of cinematic nuisances just by being a fan! So you can imagine my surprise as teen when the people making these cool animations were no different than me! They were just teens and young adults, with the growing embers of passion and talent, just making awesome stuff of these characters they loved to come up with and make clash! From that point on, I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to be a part of this world.
I joined a community called Hyun's Dojo as a teenager, and got right to work making my own character. When I was young, I played games like PROTOTYPE and loved comic characters like Venom and The Incredible; so, with a dash of Urban Sci-Fi from things like The SCP Foundation, the character D6 was born!
I met a ton of awesome artists in that community, and it's opened the door for me to continuing meeting awesome artists! All had amazing feedback to bring when it came to my work, and having the privilege to clash them in battles was always a dream come true! I still look back at those times fondly!
SHARON: I’m so happy you found that community! It sounds like what the Comic Fury and Ontenterhook community has been to me. Your stories being influenced by stockmen is totally valid! Those fights are awesome, and one of the earliest inspirations for Sunstrike was from a Jim Henson’s Muppets comic book. So you’re not alone in the strange category! (laughs).
The final question is Do you have a favourite character or scene in D6? (Without massive spoilers of course)
DINO: Haha my favourite character would absolutely have to be Dominic's monster, 6, and in correspondence my favourite scene (that everyone that's read is pretty familiar with now at this point) would be the bathroom scene towards the end of Chapter 4.
Given the massive role 6 will have in the later story beats of the narrative, and everything he represents, I'm so excited to start having scenes with him in it, even if those scenes are absolutely bathed in thick coats of blood and viscera.
6 represents everything I love in media - vicious monsters with sharp teeth, grungy sci-fi horror, unrestrained violence, the list goes on. Something I wanted to try and usurp in my story was the common trope of 'Badass Decay', IE, when a character of immense power and influence is slowly dwindled down for the sake of them having a character arc. You can find examples all throughout media of really cool characters falling victim to this. Badass Decay isn't necessarily a bad thing, don't get me wrong, but it's personally not always my cup of tea. With 6, I sought to try and create a character that, by nature, defied that trope. Over 7 years later, 6 has remained the same overly murderous parasitic monster he's always been, and has no intention of changing. That is, unless Dom and Ruth can discover some way to defy the odds of this beast? Who knows!
The Bathroom scene of CH4 is honestly still one of my best directed scenes of the comic, to date even after just recently completely CH6. It holds everything dear that I love about D6. That overwhelming dread, the body horror of crumpled human parts being fixed unbeknownst to even the person being healed, the banger one liners that 6 puts out.
Honestly, one of my favorite additions to the character 6 was to make him more ghost like, with the whirlwind of green scales and pollution that overtake every screen he's present on. Before, in his earliest renditions, any appearance of 6 through Dom's vision was just simply the monster in it's full form; but to have concealed him in a cloak of chaotic visual noise, it makes him feel unpredictable and dangerous. Similar to how you'd use darkness to conceal something scary - only this time there's no lack thereof the monster, but rather, too much to make any conventional sense. It was such a creative turn that, without spoiling, plays into some of the thematics of D6 and I'm so excited to really dive into the nitty gritty of this chaotic story we have going!
SHARON: I’ll have to look into that badass decay trope, and I love that you’re doing your own thing with your story which will make it more unique!
And I also just wanna say that your visual work is incredible, and I’m so excited to see more of it!! Thank you for your patience with me for this long-distance interview, I really appreciate it.
DINO: No worries!
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