About me, my drawings, the creating of comics and stories

Hello fans of art, comics and drawings, furrys and more 😀

If you like the pictures and are now wondering who is behind it all, you can find out more here. This is about the art itself, not about a private life 🙂

Name of the illustrator:

• Before 2004: MS
• 2004 – 2005: Ice
• 2005 – 2012: Iceman
• 2014 – 2016: Shanks
• Since August 2016: Tira Shanks

What is Iceman-Studios? This brand was created at the end of 2005 with the project “Lost Within” and was more like a gimmick because of my new pseudonym at the time, Iceman. It has manifested itself to this day as my own brand (alongside Tira since 2014) and is the foundation of my projects and also the namesake of this homepage.

-Prologue:

First of all… if I hadn’t become aware of the Furry scene by chance in 1996 – first through various cartoon series, movies and then later through the Internet, it would probably never have come this far. In January 2005, I found my feet and started attending regular Furry get-togethers.
New acquaintances and paths developed there that were to accompany me on my way to drawing and still have an influence on me today… in a positive sense, of course.
I looked at lots of pictures on various furry art sites, downloaded tens of thousands of them and at some point came up with the idea: “Hey, I can do what those artists can do, can’t I?”
Drawing hadn’t really been a strong point of mine until then.
At school, I was in the upper average, but I couldn’t draw figures (aantomie) or anything similar.
My average grade was an even 3. The only things I was reasonably good at and enjoyed were technical and vanishing point drawing,
was something I was reasonably good at and enjoyed.

-The beginning:

I started drawing exactly on January 31, 2004, at a time when I was unemployed after my apprenticeship and didn’t know what to do with myself out of sheer boredom (except gamble, gamble and gamble).
It was four months that decided whether I would turn the idea into something or whether it was doomed to failure.
After four months, I came to the decision to give it a try, as the first “spasmodic” attempts were quite promising.
It was important for me to develop my own style. The styles quickly had special code names for me.
So I started Project A in January 2004. I can adopt a style very quickly.
But I was not satisfied with Project A. Project B started at the beginning of 2004.
The style that was the most realistic to date. The effort was greater, the details more.
Professional tools were now also needed in terms of equipment. Between 2004 and mid-2005, the style changed massively.
I no longer produced pictures as sketches, but instead produced pictures in advance (sketches) and finished them later in an elaborate way. That’s still more or less how I do it today. Sometimes unfinished pictures lie in the “to do” drawer for a very long time until I finish them, depending on how I feel like finishing them.
I was no longer happy with Project B at the end of 2005. I realized that the character design had drifted too much from my ideas (characters
(some of the characters were too small and the eyes too pointed and long). So in September 2005 I started Project C. I’ve kept the style to this day, but have developed it further on a regular basis. My characters were more toony and anthropomorphic, with occasional allusions to anime/manga. However, the anatomy is very human. I pay attention to correct, not exaggerated curves and to different sizes of the characters. Hands are equipped with four fingers, as in cartoons, and the feet have three thick toes, which look quite similar to an animal foot (but animals have four toes).

From September 2005 to November 2007, I created my biggest project to date, “Lost Within”.
A story of 320 pages (the plan was no more than 150 pages).
I won’t be starting the sequel “Lost Within – The dark Dimension” before the end of 2024, as it’s supposed to be a 400-page project and needs to be well planned. A third part is not out of the question. Before that, however, an even more important project should be realized.
In the period from 2005 to 2007, I continued to develop my character design, as the story and the 320 drawn, sometimes very detailed pages gave me an enormous amount of drawing practice.

-The zenith:

In the years 2004 to 2007, I created more pictures and comics than in any other subsequent year.
The amount of work increased from year to year. Pictures were given depth and were based on themes. I found that fantasy and science fiction themes were ideal and served as a specialty for me. I also liked to use games in my pictures. Most of the time I would poke fun at the games sarcastically, or simply create fan art. This was usually expressed with things or situations that I had actually experienced in various games. But sometimes I also exaggerated a bit. I also drew short comics about games, such as the short comic series “Giga Resurrection” from 2009 to 2014.
Conterstrike and the GTA series have always been my favorites. World of Warcraft was also included in 2010.

In 2007 everything developed further, the pictures and comics became more elaborate and my first longer comic “Buzzin Hornets” was created in March 2007 (the comic is represented under the Comics tab).
Since 2008 I set a new standard for the production of my pictures and since then I needed up to 40 hours per picture, depending on the effort, before they went from sketch to finished picture. As a rule, the pictures were complete pencil drawings, with different
different pencil thicknesses and degrees of hardness.
Over time, I developed my own production techniques in order to apply shading and tinting across the entire surface of the paper.
onto the paper. From time to time, pictures are also completely colored. In this case, I only use wooden colored pencils.
Both branded and no-name products are used. Often only one or two elements in the picture are colored. This style has been my standard for the last few years, up to and including today (2024).
It gives the picture a very special style.

2009 was a time when I experimented a lot with character design. This gave rise to the idea of creating several versions of a character,
to create several versions. The classic style and the manga/anime style. Depending on the theme of the picture
image was about, one or the other version of the character was chosen. However, this has not been practiced since the end of 2018. The exception is different ages of the characters.
Furthermore, I changed some characters more or less, reworked them, as they sometimes looked quite similar and you couldn’t assign their animal species, as 95% of my characters are based on real animals. This was a problem, especially in the monochrome area, where little color is used anyway.
The characters went through this process from time to time.
Since 2018, old characters have returned to the squad from time to time, some of which have not been drawn for ten years or more. These have been visually modernized and made even more unique (with certain colors and features).

New comic concepts were created in 2009. “Giga Resurrection” was one of them, which was based on the TV show Giga Games, as this show was discontinued in May 2009 and I wanted to immortalize the concept in my own way.
The sarcastic joke was omnipresent here too. However, I discontinued the concept in 2014 due to a lack of interest on my part. After all, it had been enough for four short comics.

In 2010, some new characters were created and some “old” ones were reactivated. Since 2018, as mentioned above, more and more of the old characters have come back in revised form. New characters are “tested” and introduced from time to time, but can also disappear again. This is also a matter of your own interest in the respective characters.
I differentiate between two groups of characters:
The pioneers and the next-gen chars.
The first group are characters that I had in mind from the beginning, partly already with project A.
Only the names and small details have been changed. Originally, my characters had real first names, but surnames of the animal species they belonged to. I didn’t like that anymore and I also gradually had more than one character of the same species.

The second group consists of modern chars with the aforementioned manga/anime style. So there were some characters from both groups, other characters only from one or the other group. With the cat Cleo I also created a four-legged character in 2009.
four-legged character. More will follow.
I also draw fan art from time to time. Disney, Warner and other greats are then used.
From mid-2010, I stopped drawing for time reasons. From then until the end of 2012, not even a dozen new pictures were created. Only many sketches exist from that time, or existed, as I have often used them since 2014 between current pictures to finish them after I had slightly adapted them. In the meantime, there are hardly any unfinished pictures from that time.

As already described, not much was created in 2011. Only two pictures were completed that year.

In 2012 there should be more again. Lots of new ideas and the drive to create a lot.
So the year started promisingly. There were a few comics. Including the series “Rico – something is always…”
which I have been continuing on and off since 2006. Technically, I perfected the level of detail in the pictures and the characters. The eyes became more dynamic and realistic. The shading was also improved, as were the wrinkles in the clothes and the effects. In mid-2012, however, everything changed…

-The (first) end:

In August 2012, I decided to take a longer break. Listlessness and the desire to play World of Warcraft simply took over.
The plan was to take a break until the end of the same year. I also withdrew further and further from the furry scene. At the regulars’ table
I hadn’t been to the regulars’ table for almost four years at that point.
At that point, it wasn’t clear whether I would ever want to draw again, as I always felt like drawing from time to time, but there was just no push to really try again. At the end of 2013, I decided to stop drawing completely.

-The “first” comeback:

August 2014: Once you’ve done something you enjoy, you just can’t stop.
And so it came over me and I found myself in front of the drawing board again, as I really wanted to draw again.
It was only a short phase in which I completed six pictures, but it was a start.
After two years, I found it a bit difficult to really get going again. And the fact that I was now doing a few WoW raids (up to six days a week) quickly brought me back down to earth.
Leaving everything there is also not the fine English way, as I was also out and about with friends, so I decided to stay in WoW for the time being and gradually create a compromise so that I could be happy with both. Gaming and drawing.
But in November 2014, everything changed again. WoW was no longer fun and I almost lost my desire to swing my pencil. I was able to leave the compromise behind for the time being and, as in my best times, I was unstoppable and often spent 8 – 12 hours a day drawing.
First I started to finish other older pictures to get in. It didn’t take long before I was also designing new
pictures. During this time, I developed my personal avatar “Tira Shanks” from one of my 2006/2007 characters, after an appropriate adaptation. Before that I had no fixed avatars or alteregos, or as it is called in “modern”: Sona and/or OC.
I also found my way back into the furry scene and in December 2014, after more than five years of abstinence, I barged into the furry regulars’ table. I immediately felt at home again.
At the same time, I came up with the idea of setting up a homepage. As you can see, the idea became a reality. It took a while, but over time it became a second home for large parts of my pictures, comics and more.
I already had a homepage in 2005, but it quickly became too risky for me as it was new territory for me as an illustrator.
Attempts two and three failed. In 2016, the time had finally come and I was finally able to share my pictures on the www.

-2015 to 2018:

2015 was the year of big ideas. Many planned projects, some of which have now been completed.
Part 2 of my “Buzz’in Hornets” comic “Riot Act” was finished on 29.12.2016.
I was also planning a mega-project entitled “End of Silence”, which takes place in an alternative world in a cyberpunk setting. Not only furrys, but also humans were to be included. The epilogue was to go online between May and July 2018. The whole thing was to be realized as a webcomic that tells the story from different character perspectives and brings all the strands together at the end.
It was a joint project with Talyana and began in mid-2017, but the project was put on hold after three years of planning. It is still unclear if and when it will be resumed (as of 2024).

I had found a compromise between gaming and drawing… more or less. It worked out to be able to do both every day
(if the time was available). If there was less time in the day, drawing always came first. At that time I was a bit more active in WoW again, but I didn’t belong to any raids. I didn’t play much and focused on one WoW character. Other games were played more often, but still in such a way that creativity was not neglected.

Where did the inspiration for my pictures come from…? Well, I’ve always been very influenced by music. 95% of the time it’s heavy metal (Iron Maiden, Sabaton, Powerwolf, Volbeat etc.). Symphonic metal, gothic metal, power metal and other metal genres. Quite often, a beautiful melody or some lyrics were enough to conjure up images in my head that had to be put down on paper or written down. I always had my “soul forge”, as I call my notebook, with me. However, there were always situations in which I developed spontaneous ideas. This is now actually only the case.
In November 2015, I had to take a short break from drawing. I had gotten so involved in creativity that it became too much, combined with my small part-time job where I had a lot to do, and I got a slight form of burnout.
In the period between Nov. 2015 and Feb. 2016, everything planned had to be stopped. A few months later, I was back to a normal level and worked through some of the lost time. I now also knew my limits. Drawing too much is not good either, especially as you still have a job and other commitments.

2017 started as well as 2016 ended. For the first time, a year had a creative motto – change. This simply meant that I didn’t draw the same characters and categories over and over again. On the contrary: I drew old characters more actively again and I also moved into new categories thanks to the commissions. I actively offered commissions myself. I had also set up a new category for this on the homepage.

I also wanted to reach a quota again this year. Just to get a complete folder full again, as I last managed to do from 2004 to 2009. I wasn’t able to do that in the years after that. 2010 – 2012 are in one folder. There were no works at all in 2013. 2014 and 2015 are also together in one folder. 2016 is a separate folder again, which is also full, but only because the comic “Buzz’in Hornets 2” takes up a lot of space with its 44 pages and was still partly finished in 2015. Now I had an additional goal for 2017.

In August 2016, I created an account on Patreon under the pseudonym Tira Shanks. I had now discovered the crowdfunding site, which many artists use to earn money, for myself too and hoped to find willing supporters in the future. Sometimes I would finance my drawing tablet with the proceeds. Anyone who wanted to support me could leave a small donation. I also always made an effort with further developments and the constant supply of new pictures. However, I ended the Patreon project just one year later.
It’s also worth mentioning that I was active on tumblr for about a year. However, the site became more and more unattractive, which is why I withdrew from it.
In 2016, my little comic series about Rico turned 10 years old. For this reason, I decided to redesign a comic from the last ten years. A six-page special comic with Rico was added in 2017 to mark the tenth anniversary. The last comic featuring Rico to date was created at the end of 2018.

-The future (from the perspective of 2017):

The plans were big, time was short as always. But a lot was realized in the following years.
I also wanted to create a detailed character register in the near future.
This would include all characters drawn at least once to date, including character concepts, to give me and others an overview of which and how many characters I had designed so far. As of 2021, however, only a few characters have been realized in this way, some of which are already outdated again (which still hasn’t changed by 2024. But at least it has been noted down again). It would also have been too much work to really combine all the characters into one register. This plan has therefore been canceled.
Short comics and proper comics continued to be produced. However, the mainstream was still on the pictures, of which
of which I had realized a lot.
The future was digital: For a long time, I resisted producing my pictures digitally. But “move with the times” is a
saying and after more than 13 years, I wanted to take the step like so many other illustrators. Slowly but surely.
I had already bought the software. The hardware was still missing. Digital images were to follow in 2017. I’m also not averse to streaming (but more so in 2021) (even more so in 2024!). But first I wanted to learn the skill of digital drawing.
However, traditional drawing continued (unconditionally). In this case, I wanted to go two-pronged in 2017. I also wanted to add more color to my pictures. I wasn’t so happy with the wood colors anymore. It was time to try something new.
So I bought some watercolors. Relatively easy to learn, they make it possible to color quickly and their uneven distribution give them their very own coloration characteristics. I’m also thinking about using copics. But I took my time with that. The prices were and are quite high.

As a rule, I always drew what I felt like drawing. It was not unusual for me to start something, but then only finish it after
years later. Long-term projects in particular had to endure this, but it worked out.
I didn’t yet know where the path of creativity would take me. I never really wanted to do drawing professionally.
It was, is and will remain a hobby. I took on jobs and commissions from time to time. As mentioned, a special section was set up on the homepage for this purpose.

Project Tira – the project I launched in 2014 specifically for Tira – was continued without a break. This meant that Tira was constantly being developed further, piece by piece. The project is endless because I was always able to change and improve little things. New avatar images and badges are constantly being created with her.

-The period from 2017 – 2021:

A lot had developed technically during these years. While I was still working almost exclusively with my fine technique in 2017 and 2018, I added the hatching technique at the end of 2018. I was much faster with this technique than with the fine technique. Initially, I produced works in under four hours. But the aim was to optimize the hatching technique. By 2020, I had managed to do this to such an extent that some works looked better than works made using the fine technique up to 2016/2017. However, due to the more sophisticated hatching, production had slowed down and today’s works in hatching sometimes take up to 30 hours. While I only used hatching 90% of the time in 2020, both techniques have been in fairly balanced use again since 2021. I also continued to develop my fine technique and my shadows on the characters in particular benefited from this. Over the last four years, I’ve also created a few pictures in coloration again. However, full coloring remained a marginal phenomenon.

Larger comic projects were often planned, but I didn’t realize them, such as “End of Silence” and the second part of “Lost Within”, because I was supposed to be much busier drawing pictures. Of course, the projects have not been abandoned. But I will have to wait for a start on the productions for the foreseeable future. After all, I have completed small comics (1 – 9 pages).

The development of the characters has probably made the biggest leap in the last four years. I “modernized” a few of my older characters (like Alica, Conny and Mia), who are now clearly distinguishable with distinct features. I had recognized the problem that my characters could not or hardly be distinguished and I worked on the implementation that I just described. Vanilla (actually Nicki) was also added. What was actually just a character prototype in 2017 quickly became a project in its own right at the end of 2018. Vanilla probably became my most popular character to date. Ok, but I also pushed her in such a way that it had to happen^^

Vanilla has become an independent project, so to speak. The same should happen with Conny and Cleo (Anthro Cat & Feral Cat). In 2018 Conny got her re-design and I assigned Cleo to Conny, although Cleo fits to each of my chars, because I had often staged her with the other chars. However, a whole series of pictures with the two of them was created in 2020 and so the relationship between the two manifested itself. 2021 saw the start of a new series of pictures with the two of them.

The first real rise to fame came in September 2019. It took a little coincidence when another illustrator with reach advertised me on his FurAffinity account. Since then, my work has been very well received wherever I upload it and I’ve been more motivated than ever to continue working on my success and reach. The joint project Furpix, which I started together with Wunderhase in January 2019, also continued to increase my reach. A detour to the German Furry Amino also went very well, but ended with me giving up, as my content there was probably a little too “sexy” and I had to give up. In the meantime, however, I’m aiming to expand to Twitter and Instagram. This should happen in 2021.

Furry – over and out. In 2018, after a convention, I decided to say goodbye to furry fandom. No more cons and no more regulars’ tables. There were a few reasons for this, which I won’t go into here. However, I continued to draw in this area and also continued to have contacts in this area. You can do it without being part of a fandom.

The challenge: In 2020, I once again set myself a challenge: I wanted to have at least 100 finished works in the same year’s folder by the end of December. In short: I made it. Exactly 100 finished works. In 2021, on the other hand, I took it easy.

-2022:

2022 got off to a fairly balanced start. But I lost some of my desire to draw. This was exacerbated by the fact that I decided to make drawing a career after all. The hurdles, the effort, the pressure…. everything would have been too much, especially if you still draw traditionally. So in April of this year, I created my last pictures for the time being, as I needed a break. But I still drew a lot of pictures until June. And then it happened as I had intended. Another break of around two years.

-2024: The “second” comeback:

I skipped 2023 completely. There were other projects that had to be implemented first. I also had the urge to play a lot of games. Playstation, Xbox, PC… simply everything was played to the full.
This continued into early 2024. But then the desire to draw came back. Even followers on the sites where I still had my pictures online asked about me.
And then, exactly 20 years after I started drawing, on 31.01.2024, the time had come again. I started again.
But more professionally than in 2014. First I practiced in my sketchbooks for a few months, then I started preparing pictures in April and in June I created my first real works in over two years with a small comeback comic and two pictures. And it felt really good.
Leaving everything as it was. That’s how I wanted to get back into it. No big changes in style, that was important to me at first. The same characters as before the break were used again. Some just got small new features, such as Vanilla’s tail, which from now on had black stripes at the end, just like the realistic model of the cheetah.

But then there were changes of a different kind. The desire to draw comics was greater than to take pictures. And so I kept creating short comics that were similar in style to the old Rico comics, but had different characteristics depending on which characters I chose for the comics. This led to a lot of ideas for comics that I wanted to realize bit by bit.

I also realized that I no longer wanted to draw for money. I simply can’t do commissions. Exceptions are gifts for important people or pictures where I have freedom (requests). The idea of offering merchandise of my characters or certain designs came up and would be a good alternative later on to make money from drawing, but then passively. But I need more reach for that. I’m working hard again on new works to achieve this goal. And then maybe I can get involved with sites like Patreon, Gofundme and co. again.

-Epilogue:

In this sense, I can only say that drawing is the most beautiful hobby in the world. It’s not difficult to do it yourself. The important thing is to have patience and imagination. The rest comes naturally with willpower. In over 20 years, I managed to create something out of nothing for which I would have declared someone crazy if they had told me that I could do it.

And now have fun on my homepage, which was designed and built by my talented friend Wunderhase.
Many thanks for that 🙂

I will add or expand my rough background story over time.
I therefore reserve the right to make changes without notice.

~Tira Shanks

Edited: September 11th, 2024