Interview with Wikkidlester of Amazing Transformation Comics (#comics #femdom #shemale)

Continuing our theme of illustrated delights, I am delighted to have the opportunity to feature some more exciting titles (and artists) from Amazing Transformation Comics.

This week Wikkidlester has graciously agreed to stop by this morning for an interview to keep the fun going. I will be following up with a review of one of his comics, Last Light of the Phempax Star, this afternoon, so stick around!

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♥ Thank you so much for taking the time to join us, Wikkidlester - we are so very delighted to have you! Can you give us a brief introduction?

Thank you so much for having me.  This is a rare treat.  So my fake name is wikkidlester or Les Wikkid.  I invented a character who hypnotized people with her butt, so I’ve learned not to take myself too seriously.  After falling down a rabbit hole of fetish on the internet, I began learning DAZ so I could make my own comics.  Some of those early attempts I would probably cringe at if I saw them, but my mindset going in was to try everything and keep getting better.  When I run out of stories then I’ll stop.  4 years later, and I’m still at it.

♥ While self-publishing has almost become the standard for authors, comics almost demand a different platform. What was it that attracted you to Amazing Transformation Comics?

It was more that they found me.  Soon after I got the hang of DAZ and posted those rough first attempts at comics, Saline contacted me and asked if I wanted to contribute to the new site they were starting.  Transformations weren’t really on my list of preferred fetishes at the time, simply because I just didn’t have much exposure to it.  But it was still a huge opportunity for someone who was just a beginner.  So before making that first comic for ATC, I looked around the web for inspiration.

I’ll say that transformations quickly shot up on my list of preferred fetishes after that because I felt like I could really put my own personality into it.  That first comic, “Dr. Bender’s Lab of Dubious Sexual Experimentation” was basically my own wide-eyed approach and has one of my favorite sequences in it.  The mad scientist turns our male hero into a shemale to try and torture him, but instead he’s thrilled with it because he now has the best of both worlds.  So I’m really lucky ATC came to me because if they hadn’t then I’d be knocking on their door relentlessly.

♥ Is there anywhere else that readers can find your work?

Yes, a few places.  Aside from ATC, I do work for Metrobay Comix, MCComix, and also have my own gallery at Threemoonsart.  But the best place to go if you want to get familiar with my work or just chat would be my DeviantArt page.

♥ Your work usually takes advantage of sci-fi settings or concepts, from outer space to superheroes. Where do you find your inspiration?

A lot of it comes from comics and cartoons from the 1980s.  I’ve been known to drop dozens of references to them in my comics.  My characters usually have exaggerated cartoonish shapes and I also try to keep things a bit silly, in spite of what is actually happening in the story.  That’s by design, partly because you can get away with crazier things if you stray away from reality, and also because there was something I always enjoyed about a cartoon character like the Coyote splatting on the ground then picking himself up and dusting himself off.

♥ Themes of BDSM, Femdom, and Shemales often accompany those sci-fi elements. If it’s not too personal of a question, where does lifestyle experience end and vicarious fantasy begin within your comics?

It is all fantasy, though not by choice.  The time and place where I grew up had a very narrow view of what “normal” was.  If you had any interest in anything that didn’t conform to it, then you were pretty much an outcast.  Fantasizing was really the only way to experience these things safely.  The one fetish that’s in most of my comics is the theme of mind control or mental transformation and I think that’s at least a little bit a product of where I grew up.  Most of the time, in my comics I will identify more with the person being controlled rather than the controller.  That’s because they’re usually made to do things they won’t normally do.  It’s an excuse to step outside one’s comfort zone and I’ve since learned that outside the comfort zone is actually pretty fun.

♥ On that note, is there a personal fetish or a fantasy that you have yet to explore in your work? Somewhere, maybe, you fear to go?

I’m sure there’s something I haven’t done yet, there’s just so many things to explore.  If there is a fear, it would be the fear of not doing justice to the fetish.  As I’ve dipped my toe in things over the years, one thing I make a point of doing is understanding at least a general appeal of the fetish and not just going through the motions.

♥ How does your creative process work? Do you start with a story and illustrate from there, or is it images that drive your creative process?

This has varied over the years.  At the beginning, I was all about cranking out content.  The fastest way I could do that is by starting with an image, or a setting, or some group of characters and rendering one image at a time, just feeling out where the story would go.  Then add text to tie it together later.  It’s a very ‘seat of the pants’ approach that often ends up with some tiny plot holes and gaps.  I still use a somewhat more refined version of this approach when I make my comics for threemoons because those are my more experimental ones.  But for ATC, I’ve gone to planning the story out ahead of time and refining it as I go.  It helps overall quality but the drawback is it takes longer to make. 

♥ What are some of the weirdest or most wonderful reactions you’ve had from readers?

Weirdest is a tough one to answer because after doing this for so long, nothing is weird to me.  I don’t have one specific wonderful reaction, but what always amazes me is getting messages from people all over the world.  People who speak different languages, different countries, different backgrounds, yet they somehow connect to something I made and that’s always wonderful.

♥ Is there another writer or an illustrator who inspires you, either in the comics genre or from the mainstream, or someone you turn to when you want to escape into someone else's imagination?

Well, there is one that sticks out but probably for the wrong reason.  I won’t mention names, but it was in my first year of making comics.  I put out 10-20 on my own and was working on a series for Metrobay.  One day there was a discussion over there amongst a bunch of the creatives.  I was the new guy and had a huge inferiority complex, especially at Metrobay because those were all the people who inspired me to do comics in the first place.  So I felt the need to chime in and prove I belonged.  I ended up getting into an argument with another artist over continuity or breast size or some other thing.

It was just a difference of opinion, but I saw it as a personal attack which it absolutely was not.  I kept escalating until eventually he had to say, look, you belong here, I wouldn’t be buying your other comics if you didn’t.  That shut my dumbass down right there.  Ever since then, when I make a comic I’ll catch myself wondering what they’ll think of it when they read it.  It gives me a little nudge to make it better.  I still piss that artist off on a fairly routine basis nowadays, but only 60% of the time it’s intentional.  The lesson is: you never know who’s reading your work.

♥ Finally, with Spring upon us, what can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming months?

At ATC, the next project I’m planning is the 5th installment of “Superguy”.  If I had a breakout hit, it would probably be the first Superguy.  He’s a classic stereotype cocky male superhero who eventually becomes turned into a bimbo.  But I do try to sneak in some character growth as well.

♥ Thanks again for taking the time to join us, hon. I am look forward to sharing my review of Last Light of the Phempax Star this afternoon.