Thicker Than Blood is a story about community, belonging, and just how far one would go to have it.
The very first concepts for this story started in 2021, with what started as a random design for a red-haired mercenary-type character. I didn't know what I wanted to do with this character at the time, let alone what his story could be about. However, something about the character stuck, and gradually, a story started to form around him. Keia — whose name was originally Keya — is the main character of Thicker Than Blood, a young, outcast creature unsure of their origins and looking for their place in the world.
This story had many directions in which it could've gone, but eventually, I realized I simply wanted to tell a story of belonging. Although it is set under tense political circumstances, the real thing that drives it forward is the characters, and how they interact with others and themselves. I wanted this to mirror current times: through the internet, we can access everything wrong in the world at once, which can lead to feeling like we are constantly fighting battles we did not sign up for. It is important to find community and stability in times like these, so that we may have the strength to fight back against injustices without letting it consume us. What I wanted to do most of all was showcase the humanity within every person, and how sometimes we need the help of others in order to find it in ourselves.
About the project
As most OC (Original Character) projects do, this one started out as a lot of lore written down in various sketchbooks, text messages, and Google Docs. As time went on, I thought of turning it into a webcomic, even making a couple test panels, but I eventually decided against it due to it being too time-consuming to do on my own. However, I have always enjoyed writing novels, and by the time the idea of writing this all down as a book came to me, I already had way too much lore and artwork than I knew what to do with, so I figured it was the reasonable next step. I wrote about ten chapters before putting the project on hold due to post-secondary studies. Luckily for me, these post-secondary studies were in the field of animation and concept art, and by the end of the year, I had gotten the chance to devote four entire months to Thicker Than Blood as part of my graduation project. I graduated from the program with over fifty new concept art pieces for the project, a one-minute long proof of concept/portfolio video, and a new idea: an animated series.
The ultimate goal for Thicker Than Blood is to turn it into a 3D-animated tv series of approximately ten episodes. Think Pantheon, Blue Eye Samurai, or Arcane for their complex and sophisticated stories told through beautiful visuals, or Dune Prophecy and Foundation for their balanced mix of political drama with action and fantasy. I feel that the story would be best told in this way, as it would allow for more room to explore the entire cast and their full contributions to the story, along with the nuances of the relationships between characters.
The concept art completed during my post-secondary program, as well as the work done before and after it, is scattered throughout this website. You can also find it on its own dedicated page, here. Once all parts of the book are published, I will officially begin looking for help making it into a series, but if you are already interested in or curious about contributing to the project, please do reach out in the meantime — I would love to hear from you.
About the author
Olive Humphrey (any pronouns) is a Canadian artist who has been coming up with stories practically their entire life. At the age of fourteen, Olive self-published their first completed novel, The Differents, which won them numerous local prizes, including a vintage typewriter! Their poetry has also been published and printed as part of an anthology made possible by the University of British Columbia. Olive has always been drawn to telling stories through a variety of different mediums, and will often bounce back and forth between writing and drawing to get their ideas across. The time they took away from writing was filled with drawing, and it was only a few months after finishing The Differents that those first ideas for Thicker Than Blood started to take shape. Thicker Than Blood is Olive's next project after taking several years away from writing to focus on fine, applied, and commercial art, and by far their biggest, most developed, and most ambitious one.
Olive graduated with honours from Vancouver Film School's Animation Concept Art program in 2025. They currently work as a freelance concept artist and illustrator working on a number of exciting upcoming game projects. They love hiking, UX/UI design, meeting new people, and painting with gouache.
Support the Project
Thicker Than Blood has been in the works since 2021, back when it was only a sketchbook page with Keia's character design on it. Since then, the story has developed, evolved, and definitely changed, and it couldn't have come as far as it did without the small community of people who kept asking about it. Thanks to a handful of people in a little corner of the internet, this story was able to make it out of the sketchbook and into the world, where it continues to find people who resonate with it. Thank you deeply to everyone who has shown interest in the project thus far, and a warm welcome to those just beginning to discover it.
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Are you an artist, animator, 3D modeler, rigger, musician, or voice actor? Interested in contributing your skills to this project? Do you have your own indie project that you want to connect over? Get in touch using the below form. This project may exist as a webnovel at the moment, but the long-term goal is to found an indie studio and turn it into a 10-episode 3D-animated series. Let's get in touch and see what we can make together!