N“My biggest philosophy as a creator is to write the book you want to read, and that’s how I go about choosing the characters and themes I focus on in my work. I also highly believe in being as self indulgent as you can with your work because your passion will shine through.”
NISNOW
isnow, the ingenious mind behind The Clockmaker’s Daughter, is a virtuoso artisan in the wondrous steampunk cosmos. They masterfully navigate the intricate gears and cogs of a steampunk universe, as a prodigious writer, illustrator, language creator, clever pun maker, and designer extraordinaire. Harmonizing Victorian slice of life aesthetics and deep feeling characters, their creations evoke the grandeur of bygone eras, interwoven with the marvels of futuristic robot machinery and the adventures of a chaotic family. Nisnow is also a software engineer, character designer for YouTube channels and gaming companies, and collaborator on zine projects that have donated thousands of dollars to charity. They enjoy reading obscure Wikipedia articles at ungodly hours, spreadsheets, coffee, and boba tea.
Join us in an ever expanding aPOPalyptic expedition that Nisnow creates, and we’ll explore their fascinating clockwork dreams.
Nisnow: Thank you so much for inviting me on! And that means so much!
Nisnow: Yeah, I’m Nisnow and I’m an illustrator, designer and writer focused on creating slice of life steampunk/ fantasy art through dramatic lighting, detailed backgrounds and bright colors. I’ve been drawing seriously for about twelve years now, but I’ve been only been doing art semi-professionally for about five years, since I started posting my work online around 2019, and I’ve been tabling at comic and anime conventions since February 2023. I call myself Nisnow Studios because I do so much more than just art; I also do graphic design, book layouts, and merchandise design. My brand itself is Steamworks Family, which is my focus, combining my love of art, science and technology with the steampunk/ solarpunk academia vibe. I have a STEM background and want to combine that with my art in some way. The name ‘Nisnow’ is a random word I made up when I was around eight years old, and the ‘phantom’ part was prepended because I thought it sounded cool. The name stuck since then!
Nisnow: I’ve been following artists online for so long since 2012, but it was only around 2018 that I learned about my favorite artists who table at big comic conventions such as Emerald City Comic Con and San Diego Comic-Con. I dreamed one day that I could be one of those “cool artists” who would table at these events to promote and sell their work. So I looked into it the year after and found a small event in my local college, applied, and got accepted. Unfortunately, the pandemic struck when I was supposed to do my first event in March 2020. Perfect timing, right? I had school and work to focus on, so it wasn’t until 2023 that I could start tabling. I’ve also been to several author signings in the past and wondered how I could do the same-being able to meet with fans in-person, talk about your work, and sign your own books & merchandise for them. As for steampunk art, I’ve always been a fan of the genre, having watched classics like Treasure Planet and several Studio Ghibli films that evoke the aesthetic. What truly made me fall in love with the genre, however, was when I first went to Tokyo DisneySea and took a step inside Mysterious Island and road Journey to the Center of the Earth. The entire line itself is an attraction, with props of cluttered scientific workspaces highlighted through the line, and beautiful paintings of the underground I stared at for so long to study, and I remember being so enamored by all the steampunk inspired decor and story that unfolded. Plus, the ride was incredibly fun. I rode it maybe five times and it’s been my favorite Disney attraction ever. I think I wanted to invoke the same sense of wonder in my work so that set sail my obsession for steampunk and similar science fiction genres.
Nisnow: Yeah! Frank is one of my main characters in my webcomic and upcoming book, The Clockmaker’s Daughter. He was a powerful automaton, a war machine designed to protect people from terrible storms and sea monsters. Frank, in particular, was a rejected design that the main character of my book, Dr. Kala, found while cleaning his attic. He then gets repurposed as a housekeeper and babysitter of sorts, and he helps Dr. Kala rekindle his love for his craft. Frank originally used to be a Warforged NPC from an old Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran about half a decade ago. The whole setting of my book is the same one from the campaign with a few things tweaked. I loved the world so much that I decided to repurpose it and tell the story of my favorite NPC’s I made for it. Frank was inspired by other “gentle giant” robotic characters like the Iron Giant and Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. He’s a friendly robot, but definitely someone you don’t want to anger.
Nisnow: Part of my previous freelance work included drawing other people’s D&D and Starfinder characters, and I was a rare artist who happened to enjoy drawing mechs and mechanical characters. Mechs are unfortunately common on artists “cannot draw” lists. So, I’ve drawn a lot of other Warforged and similar characters in the past. One of my current obsessions is the indie game ULTRAKILL and I’ve done a piece of fan art featuring the series’ protagonist V1 and archangel Gabriel! I’ve also been a Mega Man fan for a while and drew my favorite Robot Master Metal Man and Zero for YouTube illustrations on the channel Man on the Internet. To draw robotic characters better, I’ve done studies where I draw factory robots and vehicles. One of my favorite studies I’ve done were of Boston Dynamic’s Spot and Atlas, two robots with a ton of personality and incredible engineering. I’ve yet to try drawing mechs from Gundam or Evangelion, but I’d like to try someday. What makes drawing mechs so fun are all the little details you can add.
Nisnow: Mayhem is going to cause mayhem, of course! He’s a friendly dragon dog, I promise. Just don’t steal his food.
Nisnow: The types of characters and themes I focus on in my work, stem from both my own experiences and my wishes of the types of characters and themes I wanted to see realized in fiction, but haven’t seen yet. Clockmaker’s, in particular, revolves around the main character’s theme of burnout as a creative person, depression, and trauma, while juggling living in a post-apocalyptic world and raising a family. I’ve experienced extreme burnout in the past and suffered through depression during the pandemic, and I pulled a lot of those vulnerable feelings into my characters’ own stories and themes in my work, and I feel they’re also themes that many of us can empathize with today. I want to make sure my characters are empathetic, and feel real, and like people, my readers, could talk to or see themselves in. The setting of Nauticaius, the flooded post apocalyptic world that Clockmaker’s is set in, takes place in a time similar to America’s Industrial Revolution. The progression of technology and this historical period has intrigued me ever since I learned about it, and the political and scientific dynamics of the time made for some intriguing storytelling, I’m hoping to explore more later in Clockmaker’s. That’s kind of where steampunk rolls in, because I can kind of play with the tech while adding some fantastical elements. My biggest philosophy as a creator is to “write the book you want to read”, and that’s how I go about choosing the characters and themes I focus on in my work. I also highly believe in being as self-indulgent as you can with your work, because your passion will shine through, so I combined all my favorite genres, tropes, and cliches into my work to create something new.
Nisnow: It all starts with an idea-everything, even the smallest things in life, from how a light casts an interesting shadow shape, a small scientific piece of trivia, or a funny phrase a friend tells me-provides some kind of inspiration for me. I’m honestly always thinking about art and potential ideas, so I bring a notebook around everywhere I go to doodle quick thumbnails or write down ideas for later. I might do the same on my phone through my notes app. Ideas will just spring from anything, so I make sure to have something to record them all down later. For my big projects, I tend to let the idea marinate in my head a bit before I sit down and start working. By the time I’m at my computer, I already have a good idea of what I need to do and the rest of the process is refining from there. I take my doodles and rough sketches and then refine them a bit more, trying out different things with the composition and colors. The key is iteration-one of my previous art mentors, Scott Fischer, ingrained the phrase “drawing is redrawing”, which means that I can always redraw a bad idea later to make it better and keep refining things. In the beginning, I want to just get ideas down and worry about perfectionism later. This is the messy, ugly stage, but the most important. It lays down the foundations for the rest of the work. Once the foundation is complete, usually a refined sketch is down, I start doing a bit of research and reference gathering. This is where I’ll take pictures of myself posing like the characters or finding various photos to put together so I can get an accurate drawing of the character’s anatomy, some details, and things I can’t draw completely out of my head yet. I’ll compile a lot of photos similar to the vibe I want in my current piece which also provides more reference for details like the background. Reference gathering and research is incredibly important, as it helps me draw things as accurately as possible and helps me add even more cool things in my illustration. Posing like my character also helps me put myself in their shoes and I can draw them in more natural poses depending on how I do the pose and feel. If you think reference is cheating, try drawing the main character of the last show you watch from memory. Chances are you struggled a lot and ended up with looking for a picture of them online. You’re now able to draw them more accurately with a picture of what they look like now. And that is exactly how reference works and why artists need them! I always add a narrative element to my work, whether I’m telling a story or trying to invoke an emotion. The story can be conveyed through various artistic techniques and intentional choices, from how I position the characters and various elements, color choice, shape language, and even the contrast between light and dark. Every choice I make within the piece contributes to the overall narrative and should serve a purpose in the piece, whether to add to the story or give more focus to one character over another. I purposely manipulate the scene so viewers can notice certain things or feel away about a piece. These choices are what come together to make something impactful, something with emotional oomph that takes a lot of time and effort to curate. And each piece poses a new challenge for me, whether its lighting, perspective or anatomy. I don’t have a set formula for creating a new illustration and some are easier to draw than others, but I follow a general process. I’ll intentionally procrastinate in-between stages, so that I can come back to the piece with fresh eyes, and I’ll often find mistakes or things I want to change. I call this the “does this still look good the next morning or next week” test, and it’s pretty foolproof. My active time drawing a full illustration like my prints takes around 6-10 hours, but if you factor in all the research and iteration, it comes out to 20-30+ hours per piece. Drawing isn’t easy, and if you’re anything like me, I am incredibly meticulous about my work and want to make sure all the details are in. I’ve written a long post on my tumblr showing each step of one of my most popular pieces.
Nisnow: Before delving into my own business and books, I worked on a lot of fanzines-collaborative books with artists all around the world to celebrate something, usually a piece of fandom. I organized three large fanzine projects: I was a promotional illustrator for Nomtendo, a Nintendo themed cookbook; graphic designer and finance assistant for the Winds of Hoenn fanzine, a giant art book consisting of more than 130 artists to celebrate the Pokemon Ruby Sapphire and Emerald games; and I hosted a Xenoblade Chronicles fanzine called Beyond the Sky that had over 70 contributors from artists, writers, chefs, crochet artists, and even musicians. The finances for all these projects went to charity, where we were able to raise more than $20,000 USD for a good cause. I also hosted a smaller project revolving around the theme of women in STEM and was the cover artist for a zine dedicated to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. I’ve been in more than 40 other zines since the end of 2019. These projects were what taught me merchandise production, project finance, and book layout design to be able to make my own books. Plus, I made a ton of friends with these projects who now help me today! Otherwise, I had tried to make other webcomics and stories in the past, but I ended up either getting stuck in the worldbuilding phase or never working on them. One project in particular I had been working on for more than a decade, and I consider it more as a personal project at this point. I wanted to start on that instead, but found the plot too difficult to work on, so I started on something smaller, which ended up being The Clockmaker’s Daughter. I wasn’t a fan of drawing traditional panel-by-panel comics, so I figured out a different format that worked for me, which is what Clockmaker’s is: more of a picture book of similar format to Dinotopia, prose with accompanied art. This format was also what Winds of Hoenn consisted of, and advising the layout for that project inspired me to do similar for Clockmaker’s, which allows me to still indulge in high-effort, high-detail illustrations and narrative writing.
Nisnow: I grew up watching classic, hand drawn Disney cartoons and DreamWorks films. A lot of my art style takes from those, especially Treasure Planet, Atlantis and Hercules. What got me into drawing, though, was Pokemon, and I picked up some how-to-draw Pokemon books when I was younger and started creating my own fake Pokemon. In middle school, I got inspired by a lot of Japanese anime and manga, especially Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and Studio Ghibli films. I was also highly inspired by Nintendo video games and JRPGs like Fire Emblem, NieR: Automata and Final Fantasy. Mega Man and Kirby games are also a big art style influence for me, funny enough. These days I take a little inspiration from every piece of art I see. I’ve learned a lot about narrative composition through Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons art, and I love Tyler Jacobson’s, Cynthia Sheppard’s, Tony DiTerlizzi’s, and Evyn Fong’s work a lot. I was really inspired by Devin Elle Kurtz’ art book and want to put as much passion into my own work as she has with hers. The Spider-Verse movies recently made a big impact on my work and inspired me to try some new stuff, especially with how Kat Tsai works with color and light. I’m also very inspired by Kelogsloops, krusierweasley, Thomas Romain, Velinxi, loishh, Temmie Chang, and Inkwell.
Nisnow: As of this interview, I’ve done six shows this year: Emerald City Comic Con, Sakura-Con, C2E2, MomoCon, Lilac City Comicon, and a small local event called Rinjin Art Market. Soon I’ll be going to San Diego Comic-Con and Dragon Con this year. I’ve also vended at Rose City Comic Con and Kumoricon in the past, and I’m hoping to do those two shows this year as well. I try to do all the big events in the Pacific Northwest. Then I select events mainly because I happen to get accepted to them and are in-line with my audience, which are comic, anime and gaming conventions. Conventions are becoming increasingly difficult to get into, so I mostly just apply to several and choose the one that accepts me.
Nisnow: My favorite so far is Emerald City Comic Con because it’s my local convention. I’m based in Seattle. Not only was it a record-breaking convention for me financially, but being home meant that all my friends and familiar faces were there. It was such a big show and super encouraging for me to get the Clockmaker’s Daughter out soon. It was encouraging to see so many people interested in the story and my work, and it only made me want to keep creating stuff. That convention this year was also a turning point for me because previously I had a lot of fan art to sell, but that show made me realize that I could sustain myself through mostly original art. I slowly phased out all my fan art and now do all original character stuff, and I’ve been so much happier and made even more sales since then!
Nisnow: I’ve always wanted to attend Gen Con and be in the art show, as I’m a big tabletop gamer and tabletop roleplaying game player. I’ve also wanted to go to overseas conventions like Comiket in Japan and Doujima in Singapore because the artists there are so skilled and the merchandise is on a whole other level! Whether I’ll eventually vend at these events is a question for future me, though.
Nisnow: I frequently have either my dad or a friend help me at my booth, usually there to watch over and fetch food, but they’ll help with sales from time to time, as well. I think a trusty robot sidekick would be really fun to have, especially for the events I had the table at solo! While managing the table all by myself is doable, it’s definitely more difficult and having another person with me makes the experience so much more fun.
Nisnow: My biggest advice is to START SMALL! Big comic conventions are not only difficult to get into, but can be expensive, from booths costing around $200 to $500 to rent, and for out-of-state conventions, you have to factor in hotel and travel costs as well. That’s also not including the cost of producing merchandise, which adds up incredibly quickly! So start small with the local convention or art market, where the table fees are low or even free. The stakes are much lower to get in, and you don’t need to spend an extraordinary amount on your first table or make a ton of merch unless you already have an established online store or presence. My first table is much more humble than my current one; it took more than a year to build up to where I am today! I started vending at a small college event where I was able to see what I felt about vending first. I was then able to learn from the smaller events, upgrade my display, figure out what works and doesn’t, improve my marketing skills, and build inventory so that I could be more prepared for the larger events where you’re among much more experienced artists. That’s another reason to start small. You can make all your mistakes early on, fail fast, so you can truly shine in the big leagues. Another big tip I have is to focus on what you’re passionate about and be your biggest fan. Don’t feel pressured to follow trends or draw fan art of the most popular piece of media now; draw what you love doing and an audience will find you. If you love drawing animals, stick to doing that; if you love drawing your original characters, then do that. What’s helped me the most is by making friends at these events early on and also joining the local artist collective where we all share our art and make friends, but also share knowledge about art and vending. Especially with social media getting worse and worse these days, meeting up in a meet space and making more physical connections has been more valuable than ever. I thank both my friends online and from in-person events for their never-ending support and enthusiasm to see me grow!
Nisnow: It’s always so neat to meet people who have followed me on social media or even read the Clockmaker’s Daughter in-person. I’ve met several social media followers and people who have read my webcomic, even though it’s only been out for about a month, which is absolutely wild to me. I’ve been asked to sign prints or even take selfies and I feel like I’m living my dream as an artist, able to share my work with others like this. All the blood, sweat and tears that goes into my craft are all worth it when I’m able to do things like this.
Nisnow: I love how pop culture is starting to explore more complex issues such as mental health and gender identity, and generally are starting to tell more diverse stories. I’ve been seeing a lot more stories from various cultures, stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters, neurodivergent characters, disabled characters, and twists of and reimagining of common tropes. I love seeing all of this explored more in fantasy and science fiction, especially where things don’t necessarily have to follow the rules of our world. This kind of diversity gives fantastical worlds more believability and we can feel more seen in these stories, which can then give us hope or inspire us, like I believe art should. I’m hoping to explore these themes in my own work as well, and Clockmaker’s has a disabled main character who struggles with depression, which I don’t see very often, fantasy or steampunk for that matter, and I take a lot from my own experience and inspiration from others as well.
Nisnow: Yeah! Since my new sticker sheets have been so popular lately, I plan to make at least three more designs soon. I’ve also planned charms, tote bags, and a special kind of merch, I won’t reveal just yet, though I’m working hard on prototyping it. I’ve recently been invited to the yearly Object Head Zine project for its 2025 edition, as an illustrator! I’m hoping to draw some neat steampunk-fantasy stuff for it. The project will be open for pre-orders later this year in November, and the artist lineup is absolutely stacked!
Nisnow: Yeah! I got a lot of birthday gifts from friends and received fan art in conventions and online. I have a section on the Clockmaker’s Daughter website dedicated to fan art and some of the artists there include camberdraws, prin_vt, natsukashiiart, JUPITERWEATHERS and claystate. Definitely check the workout! They’re also skilled!
Nisnow: My Twitter and Instagram handles are both phantom_nisnow. That’s Phantom_N-i-s-n-o-w and my website is Nisnow.Art N-i-s-n-o-w dot Art. You can read my webcomic the Clockmaker’s Daughter on the site Steamworks.family. The best way to follow me is through my free fortnightly newsletter, which you can sign up for on my website.
Nisnow: Leave things better than before! A simple smile or act of kindness can go a long way, and it’s small things that eventually add up to something greater.
Nisnow: Thank you so much for the interview! I really enjoyed talking about my experiences, and for sure the newsletters will keep coming!
Discover Nisnow at https://nisnow.art/ or find them on:
Nisnow can also be found on Ko-fi and their store is on Big Cartel.
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