SUMMONER

Creation | Circa 2011

Tapas Serialisation | 2018-2019

Story

A fantasy world I co-created with my best friend in high school, D, for more than 10 years. The world & story of Summoner took many different forms & iterations over the years, until 2018 when I got my first gig after graduation with Tapas webtoons. D and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring Summoner to life.

Summoner would run on the Tapas Originals line for 1 Season. Due to various reasons it would not be renewed for another season and so was discontinued, but we’ll always be proud of this world & these characters we created.

Summoner was made alongside D, our editor Hayden, our colorist Novi & our assistant artist Aaron.

read Season 1 here

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WORLD OF SUMMONER

UNITE THE TWO WORLDS

Summoner was our take on the isekai (“transported to another world”) genre - following our protagonist Kokona who drops into the world of Ser, specifically the continent of Yurai.

We wanted the isekai elements to be baked into the actual world’s mythology: Originally, the World was one planet, but during creation was split into two pieces by the rulers of Chaos (the main antagonists of the setting). The larger piece, Aeda, became Earth, while the smaller, Ser, became victim to Chaos’ whims.

Our protagonist, Kokona, is a girl from Aeda (Earth) who falls into Ser. Since ancient times, a prophecy in Ser speaks of the Summoner, a Chosen One type figure whose destiny is to destroy the Chaos & once again unite the Sister Worlds.

Ser was a world D and myself built over many years; our biggest inspirations came from Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls series & Runeterra from League of Legends. We were super passionate about exploring Yurai, and spent many days at each other’s houses talking about future possible plotlines & characters we’d meet.

To say we were ambitious was putting it lightly; we dared to dream big, and a lot of making Summoner was us balancing between telling a proper story without splurging too much about unnecessary lore. In many ways, it was gonna be our “forever project”: a fantasy sandbox we could explore all our favourite ideas in; a world we could call all our own.

Season 1 journey

Season 1 was set in the Mai’ila Islands & parts of Glacea. Kokona drops into the Mai’ila Islands where she meets Cassia.

From there, they take a boat ride to the shores of the Yurai mainland, into the region of Glacea. You can see the yellow path where Kokona & her group travel, through Arkessos (previously named Braunside), Stoneshade & Dorova, arriving finally at Sophedia (previously named Sophene in the map) for Season 1’s finale.

Obviously you can see this is a very small portion of Glacea, & a totally miniscule part of Yurai itself - we had plans to take Kokona & pals all over Yurai, from the elven lands of Edrius to the deserts of Maraltha & snow-peaked tundra of northern Yurai.

Glacea itself is an interesting region, its main centrepiece being Corona (which we named way before Covid, so it’d be an unfortunate name now, lol), a city surrounded by 10 peaks. Glacea is an independent region stuck in a war of sorts with the bordering Imperium, separated by the Black Mountains, a war Kokona would have been caught in had the story expanded further.

SUMMONER: a comprehensive history

A gallery showing the progression of Summoner as a project, from oldest to newest.

Before I had RWBY projects or Voyager or Mancer, Summoner was my go-to project for many years, so there was never any long stretch of time where I didn’t draw for it.

Summoner is one of the things I’ve made the most drawings for, many of them unseen in the form of sketches, discussion notes and comics, a LOT of comics. You can read some of them in the next section.

The very first character lineup for Summoner - the leftmost girl on the 1st & 2nd rows became Kokona (originally named Kiyuki) & Miko, respectively. Nana is the last in the 3rd row. Some girls like Hana, Kami and Jun also reappear in the future. [circa 2011]

Character lineup. For some time, Immemorial was an alternate title for a more "serious" Summoner, so anything from 2012-2015 I consider the "Immemorial era".

Jun: One of the OG Summoner girls was Jun, a hot pirate chick.

Hana: Another OG girl, Hana's a princess/warrior from the Jozen region of Yurai. She was originally inspired by Momohime from Muramasa.

Miko: Early art for Miko, who was originally a barmaid in a naked apron using a frying pan to fight. I distinctly remember her redesign here being based on Nyaruko.

Cassia: Cassia was added to the OG group as a late addition, so for a long time she didn't have a name and was just called Wildcard. Cassia was originally designed based on an obscure fanart of Mono from Shadow of the Colossus. [2013]

Kokona: Koko was not Summoner's protagonist at first, and was more just a part of the group. She was a Fea: an elemental race that allowed her to transform her body into different elemental forms. Koko was originally inspired by a certain character in Ar Tonelico 2.

Jun and Nana: Nana was originally a stoic assassin girl with chain arms who was secretly Koko's lost sister, she was remade into a fairly mundane regular sister in the webtoon. [2013]

Nana with short hair. She also had shadow powers at the time.

Nana (short hair version) eating noodles.

Jun and Nana. I always liked the combo of Nana's cute long sleeves and deadly chain arms. [2012]

Sarma: A bubbly fox girl. She doesn't really reappear in the future, but parts of her would later evolve into Shayna.

An early cast lineup of Summoner. From left to right: Sarma, Hana, Jun, Cassia, Koko, Nana & Miko [2012]

Another character lineup: 1. Koko; 2. Nana; 3. Cassia; 4. Jun; 5. Hana; 6. Miko; 7. Sarma; 8. Kami [2013]

Corona: While working on Summoner, we thought up of a battle royale manga concept where 10 girls from 10 provinces compete to become ruler of the kingdom. Many of these characters would evolve into other characters down the line, such as Dwenryr (Project WAND/Mancer), Phenoria and Kayda (Summoner). Mayumi and Sunnet would merge together to become Shayna. [2013]

The ten provinces of Corona and their representatives. Corona itself would be absorbed into Summoner's world as one of its locations. [2013]

Corona: two contestants meeting, Mayumi (right) and Marina.

A cool cover I drew for Summoner (Immemorial era). Initially, there was more than one Summoner (hence the plural), and the definition of what a Summoner was changes in every iteration. The very first OG reason was that Summoners could summon unique magical weapons.

Hana. I was still very new to digital art at this time, mainly using Photoshop. [2014]

In many early iterations, Summoner wasn't an isekai, so Koko was either a wanderer or a plain village girl.

Some villagers for Summoner: Immemorial. Immemorial starts with Koko and Nana having their village destroyed (with many of these characters dying). Their uncle Gaius would be reborn 10 years later in the webtoon.

Team Koko in Immemorial. I was super inspired by the trailer for Assassin's Creed: Unity at the time.

Miko in Immemorial. It was here she was reworked from a barmaid into a knight.

Immemorial Season 2 cover. Immemorial Season 1 had 5 chapters and mainly covered Koko's growing powers until she meets Miko. I still have it all stashed in my desk drawer. [2015]

A design for Miko's improved knight armour. I liked the dragonscale gauntlets.

Kokona. I group the sketches and comics from 2015-2018 as the Strike era. It's also where I considered my artstyle to have cemented itself in that time. [2015]

Cassia: The underboob was always a part of her design since early on, but we had to cover her up more in the webtoon, lol. [2015]

Went back to barmaid apron Miko. The idea is that she'd start as a barmaid before becoming a knight. [2016]

Summoner didn't become an isekai until way later; one iteration of Summoner had Koko & Nana as orphaned sisters living in a dingy shack with dreams of becoming famous adventurers. [2016]

Kokona and Nana. Summoner: Strike was more straightforwardly a fun fantasy story that didn't take itself as seriously as Immemorial. Here, Koko became less serious and more spunky, with simple goals of being a leader of her own adventuring guild.

Phenoria. Some comics I drew briefly featured Phenoria as the protagonist. Kayda can be seen to her left.

Kayda: At this point, Kayda was salvaged from Corona and would soon be integrated into the new Team Koko. Her role was to be a strong, reputable knight who represents the first "super rare" ally Koko makes.

Shayna. A lot of sketches carried over elements of Mayumi from Corona. She wore these scabbard-greaves for a long time before I settled on prosthetic legs instead.

Started going a more martial arts focus with Shayna. [2017]

Comic page idea for Koko discussing her guild. Atria and Nadia were two twins who were in the OG Summoner cast, inspired by a certain pair of twins in To Love Ru.

Basil and Cassia. I'm not sure what influenced me to suddenly give Cassia a brother, but he was definitely inspired by one of my favourite heroes Mirio Togata. [2017]

Cassia. 80% of any Cassia redesigns are mostly just trying to figure out what pattern boob window to give her. [2017]

Shayna. It was around here she started getting her prosthetic legs. [2017]

Spunky Koko. I started becoming obsessed with Kokona around this time. [2017]

Character poster idea. I like drawing these big posters with lots of dynamic poses in them; I find the action poses help me figure out a lot more about the character than just standing around.

Kokona that I drew in art college. To this day it's still one of my favourite drawings. [2017]

I was bouncing between Summoner being full fantasy (Koko running her adventurers guild) vs. a kind of isekai battle royale, where Koko enters a livestreamed tournament by entering the fantasy world and competes with other isekai'd people from Earth. Some of these isekai'd people vary from nerds to moguls and e-celebs.

Shayna's shotgun legs. Sadly the webtoon run ended before we got to see her put them on.

Miko, Koko & Cassia. I drew a lot of them as part of my digital art lessons in college. [2018]

Early concept sketch for Phenoria's outfit.

Early concept cover for the Summoner webtoon. We are now in the Tapas webtoon era (2018-2019). Water was a common motif for the liminal space between Earth & Ser, where Koko enters into the fantasy world & becomes separated from Nana. [2018]

Miko's Earth wear before dropping into Ser. The naked apron was not approved for the webtoon sadly, which eventually led to an overall less fanservicey tone in the webtoon.

Early concept sketch of Koko meeting Chase, her divine bird companion in the webtoon.

Early concept panel for Summoner's webtoon run. [2018]

An early map of Yurai. Through many a discussion, this would be expanded greatly and have a more distinct shape in the current map.

The Summoner Wall in the webtoon, a triptych detailing the prophecy of the Summoner. The right side depicted the rulers of Chaos and was supposed to tease a bunch of future villains, though we only really met Yomi.

The Summoner trio, drawn by our assistant artist Aaron.

Summoner celebration drawing by our colorist Novi.

Summoner Christmas + New Year drawing by Novi. [2019]

Chase: a divine creature called an avonant, rarely seen in Ser since ancient times but now acting in service to the Summoner (largely as a bodyguard and ride). [2019]

Drawing of a Fel, a Chaos creature of obsidian and liquid flame. Still one of my favourite dragon designs I've ever drawn.

After the webtoon run, there was a short-lived attempt to extend the current timeline as a video series called Summoner+. It was pretty experimental and tried to go back to Summoner's more ecchi roots. [2021]

A screenshot from the Summoner+ test pilot video. Miko and Shayna had a brief fling as a couple in this timeline.

Kokona and Chase. Through unknown circumstances, Chase was shrinked into a fun-sized companion.

There were also plans to make a Summoner visual novel at some point, with some portraits made of Team Koko. [2023]

the many lives of SUMMONER

A collection of the many different comics that Summoner was before the webtoon.

These are not all of them; there at least 3 other comics: The very earliest and first incarnation of Summoner is sadly lost to time; another had Jun and Hana as the protagonists (and was drawn on manga paper so it’s too big to scan); and the “dark and gritty” Summoner comic has a full complete season of comics sitting in my drawer.

SUMMONER: THE SEARCH [1/6] One iteration of Summoner revolved around Nana and Cassia searching for Kokona and other members of the team, travelling around Yurai & getting into cool fights.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [1/22] Probably one of my favourite iterations of Summoner; it was a simple pilot with a generic isekai + RPG world setting, but I felt it had the best execution of all previous versions - just a simple focus on action & chemistry between a fully formed Team Koko. [2017]

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [3/22] Note: the Xs on the page are used in manga - used to mark areas to be filled with black later.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [4/22] The reporter girl is Ai, a super old character from the very first version of Summoner, who makes a cameo here.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [6/22] Kayda is another commonly appearing character that didn't make it into the webtoon. She's basically a classic noble knight but with a hidden vice...

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [8/22] Kokona in this iteration had powers allowing her to form pacts with her teammates and summon them at will.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [11/22] A secondary power Kokona has are runes on her hand that let her use blast magic to deal damage and propel herself.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [16/22] I get happy whenever I get to draw Shayna using her shotgun legs.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [17/22] Part of the fun of this version is that Kokona uses her past experiences on Earth to help her on missions, but it's not an OP power, just information she has to gamble and strategise on.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [20/22] Phenoria's a familiar name to those who play Project: WAND, she was originally a Summoner character and was Team Koko's trump card.

SUMMONER: THE QUEST [22/22] One of my favourite parts about The Quest is that we're already seeing a fully-formed Team Koko, and we're left to figure out their dynamics from there. It had a very nice episodic, Teen Titans-esque vibe to it. I also like that it ends at the reclaimed lake, now an idyllic tourist spot.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [1/19] The Deal is set in the same continuity as The Quest, following Team Koko conducting an undercover mission on this pleasure house, all pretending to be different guests and staff in the building.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [2/19] It's not too apparent, but Cassia is the tall figure following behind Kokona here.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [4/19] Kayda returns here, succumbing to her fatal vice.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [5/19] Shayna was introduced almost identically the same way in the webtoon, chugging down drinks with abandon.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [9/19] Koko uses her blast magic rune to launch the ink bottle with concussive force.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [10/19] Koko kicking Hornwall is still one of my favourite action poses I've ever drawn, lol.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [14/19] This wolf girl was made on the fly for this comic, so I never named her.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [16/19] Since this was meant as a pilot, Miko coming in to help was meant as a twist, since she was just a nice waitress serving drinks earlier.

SUMMONER: THE DEAL [17/19] If it's not clear, Shayna vaults over the statue and catches wolf girl in a leglock.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME A [1/12] A version of Summoner that went a more LitRPG, "trapped in the game" premise, a la Sword Art Online. Corona was obviously named pre-Covid, so it does sound unfortunate now lol.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME A [9/12] One thing I find fun with the isekai premise is Koko meeting other isekai'd people and seeing how those people adapt (or fumble) to their new environment.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME A [11/12] Cassia appears in this as a denizen of the game world.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME B [1/6] An alternate to the mobile game premise. This one starts more in media res, with Koko already being an adventurer leading a team.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME B [4/6] Yomi stars in this comic, who is one of the main villains in the webtoon.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME B [5/6] Yomi's head tilt would be something she does in the webtoon too.

SUMMONER: MOBILE GAME B [6/6] Zombies attack Team Koko. I think at this point I had a different premise for Summoner instead and moved on to that instead.