//The Absolute State of San Canes
Hey, how are y'all doing? I'm doing... fine?
Like, I finally got off of my meds after 10 long months of recovering from my neck issues and near-daily anxiety attacks (it's been a big while since I had one!). I'm redesigning a bunch of characters of mine for a thing I'm excited about later this year (I don't wanna jinx it, so be patient!). And I'm doing fine on commissions again (if you're a client, I'll be quickening up the pace, sorry for the wait!)
However, I had a... sad realization these past weeks. One that I actually had on the back of my mind for a long, long while, and I didn't have the gut to accept it.
So, San Canes. If you've been a long-time follower of my art, you might know it as that project of mine with the detective dogs. I've done lots of work related to it. Minicomics, fake screenshots, short stories, doodles, memes, etc.
You might think: "Damn, this guy takes his work seriously! I wonder if they'll work on a comic or something with these characters." And for a while, that was the plan.
However, things ended up being very, very different.
The Story Element.
San Canes was always meant to be either a long-running comic, or an indie animated show. "Three twenty-something anthropomorphic dogs solving crimes in their ill-fated city to pay the bills" sounds like a fun plot; but for a while, I couldn't sit down and write anything for them. Not a single finished story thread or story arc, just funny scenarios in my head, or scenes from other shows I could yuxtapose my characters over for some laughs.
For whatever reason, I couldn't ever sit down to write a story for the project, even if I tried my hardest for it to work. Perhaps I wasn't feeling the plot anymore, perhaps the concept was too childish for my taste, perhaps I felt like it wouldn't go anywhere with the elements I chose to stick with.
I mainly struggled with the genre. San Canes, despite being intended as an action-comedy, was meant to be a mystery that the characters would solve throughout the arc. However, I have very few referents of that genre. I liked the idea of a mystery, but I haven't read enough of them for me to know the tropes or even be too excited about it.
One of the main reasons of why San Canes featured anthropomorphic animals, is because I thought the story wouldn't be eyecatching or novel enough with humans. No, that didn't set a bad precedent for me then, but it should've.
And for some reason, I thought that if I changed it to a story about furries living normal uneventful lives, it wouldn't be interesting either. Crazy how my mind works.
The sad thing is that I couldn't just had my OCs floating around in cute outfits or mindless drawings either, and that's because...
The Visual Element.
I chose a particular visual style for the characters. Bold shape language, strong silouhettes, a unique visual identity. I wanted each and every character to feel less like a typical furry character, and more like something you would see on a real animated show or movie. This isn't a diss on any furry artist reading this, by the way. You're probably more talented than I am.
Nonetheless, it was hard for me to put that in practice, since I hit a lot of roadblocks. Creating such a unique style for the project meant that any advice I got wouldn't work. I didn't want the designs to look flat, but I also didn't want them to have fully 3D muzzles. I didn't want them to look disproportional, but I also didn't want them to look realistic. My vision was so... unique, even I couldn't comprehend how to fix what didn't work.
That is to say, I'm very proud of Felipe and Maggie's designs, because I still believe they work great. They express an idea clearly and they feel grounded, which helps to the tone I was going for. They're simple, yet they're effective.
And then there was Viktor, the main guy. You guys probably don't know it, since I don't talk about it on public much, but I HATE Viktor's design with a passion. In paper, his concept is great: a punky siberian husky with icy blue eyes and a unique red leather jacket. Someone who went through a lot, so he had scars, he was very thin and frail, he had a permanent frown and a dark look in his eyes. There are some design elements that I still love about him, I'm proud of his concept, still. However, his design had lots of flaws I wanted to correct, but I couldn't. In my head, I thought that if i changed them, "the character wouldn't feel like himself anymore". He looked too detailed in comparison to Felipe or Maggie, but if I simplified his design, "he wouldn't feel like Viktor anymore". He had a very weird head shape and fur pattern, "but if I changed it, he wouldn't feel like Viktor anymore". I wanted to change his stupid red leather jacket that made him look ridiculous, but again, "if I changed it, he wouldn't feel like Viktor anymore". His design didn't work at all, and my excuse was that he wouldn't feel special if I fixed it.
And why would that be bad? Isn't there a well-known, very useful advice for creatives known as "kill your darlings"? Well...
The Emotional Value Element.
San Canes was born as a concept back in my high school days. I wasn't doing okay then. My grades were terrible; I was very insecure and didn't know who I was anymore; I had no friends other than some college-aged weirdo I befriended who then managed to traumatize me in ways I don't wanna get into; etc, etc.
But if there was something that kept me going, it was ripping any blank paper sheet from my folders and draw to my heart's content. I used to fill those bitches up, then dispose of them before I got home so my mom didn't know I wasted precious school time and supplies drawing instead of paying attention on class.
During that time, I remember discovering an old Jim Henson cartoon named Dog City, about a dog detective named Ace Hart. I was fascinated with the concept, so I drew a sort of redesign of him, or a character heavily inspired by him. That ended up being Felipe. Then, not wanting to redesign other characters from the show, I started adding my own.
My Ace design became Felipe, his grumpy partner became Viktor, and their geeky secretary became Maggie. They used to be cops at one point (just to be clear, they weren't cops for long, we're anti-cop in this house). The plot used to be more of a sitcom-type of thing, until I changed it to an overarching story. They used to be from the States, but then they became Argentinians. A lot of things changed, but the core concept of it was precious to me. This was MY thing, the concept I created, and it gave me so much hope and joy during some of the hardest periods of my life. That's why whenever something wasn't working, it took me months to change it. Change always meant the loss of comfort and normalcy for me.
Now, a lot of it also has to do with my relationship with my work. Despite the emotional connection I had with my own concept, everything I did HAD to end up with professional-grade quality. I couldn't mess up, think of all those arms-crossed commentary youtubers that would make fun of me! Think of all the people I could be letting down writing a story that ends up being bad! Think of those hypothetical hate comments I wouldn't be able to shake off!
So, for a good while, San Canes didn't go anywhere, because it wasn't ready. It wasn't perfect. It had to be! Making a mistake in the internet was the worst thing you could ever do...! Right?
For many years, I would write a script for the first chapter/episode, then scrap it for a better one. Then I would change the whole concept. Then I made Viktor the protagonist instead of Felipe. Then I changed Maggie's whole personality and design. Then, I changed the secondary cast completely, even though I rarely did anything with them nor did they have any relevance to the plot. Then, I set it in the early 2000s, because I was very into Y2K at the time (still am, but I wasn't doing anything that cool with it).
I couldn't decide on anything, which led me to believe that if I decided to publish the damn comic, I would regret it forever.
So, the comic never came out. I was too worried that the start wasn't good enough, and I hadn't even written the middle of the story, much less the end.
Hell, I didn't even know if I had a plot for said story. There was a vague synopsis, but I didn't even had an antagonist. My mystery show didn't have an antagonist, how crazy is that?
In the last couple of years, I went through a lot of stuff in my personal life. Depression, health problems, realizing I've been in a situation I shouldn't have been in as a teen, recovering from the loss of a parent, that kind of fun stuff. San Canes was becoming less of a safe haven, and more of a chore, so I decided to cut myself loose. If ideas came to me, I would write them down, but I wouldn't be so focused on making San Canes work as a story yet. For the last year or two, I thought of the characters more like mascots, OCs I would draw in cool outfits, or saying funny quotes. However, the lingering thought of "this has to be my magnum opus" still existed in my brain.
Up until this month.
Doing this thing with my other characters made me realize how fun I was having. I was starting anew with them, having fun with much more recent concepts, stuff I wouldn't feel bad about changing if it stopped working. They are characters that are fun for me to draw over and over again, in different angles, in different scenarios, interacting together, etc.
Hell, these characters don't have dead set stories, yet they're not blank slates either. I'm having so much fun with what I'm doing right now, that I realized: San Canes as a concept isn't fun for me anymore. These characters don't bring me joy the same way they used to years ago. I don't have anything I can add to make it better.
With a heavy heart, I had to come to terms that San Canes was over, or at least in its current state. If I want to draw the characters again, I will. If I want to start over and rework the whole story and concept down the line, I might. However, I don't feel good working on this project anymore, so I'm putting an indefinite hiatus on it for good.
I'll be writing stories, creating characters, and joining other ventures. After all, art is my passion, my hobby, my job, my whole life. I think I just needed to kill my darlings to proceed.
So, if you're interested in other stuff of mine, I'll still be here, creating like I've always had, and if I work on something new, y'all will know.
If you read this far, thank you for supporting the project for all of these years. Y'all are awesome, and much, much more comprehensive and cool than what my anxiety tells me. Have a nice weekend!