What is Plexit?

In its simplest form, it's "Planet exit" – it's a comic about a group of people who, saddened by political developments, are motivated to leave the Earth on an alien space ship and fix the legacy of another alien race that had an eerily similar past.

I started this comic messing about with the software on the now-defunct Pixton Classic to see what it could do. I created a replica of myself to test the character creation system, then I created a scene entirely at random, which ended up being what's now panel 1 of Plexit. Then I pondered on what I would like to happen next. Panels 2 to 6 were born then, using default objects in the app, though the ship was originally just a re-colour of Pixton's flying saucer object.

I made most of episode 1 over the course of the afternoon and evening, with each panel being driven by what seemed a likely follow-on to the previous. Then I went to bed, intending to sleep... but, instead, I was still pondering on that comic. When I awoke the next morning, I had the whole back story that was told through volume 1, right up to when the three ships got together again.

I sketched out rough elevations of the ship on paper and went back to change panel 3, discovering that I needed premium membership to put in my own images, so I set about building the low-quality frontal shot seen in several early episodes, coming up with a direction for the story as I did.

I had a choice: to leave my character in or make up a fictional one. Laziness won – why make people up when you can use real ones? So almost every human character is based on a real person.

This is no longer the only comic I make, or even the only genre I write. My other comics are available on my overarching comic site, Oscouna Comics.

About the author

Douglas Carr, known as Jalnor for reasons that measure at least 650 words. I'm from Lanarkshire in Scotland, to which I returned in early 2019 after 5 years in Oxfordshire. When I'm not making comics (and, in some cases, outside of pandemic time) I can often be found playing Steam games or board/card games, visiting the real AJ in Swindon or hanging out with friends in Glasgow or Oxford. Or sometimes LARPing near Glasgow. I love Stargate, Star Trek, Discworld and classic Red vs. Blue – and references to all of these things tend to creep into Plexit, as does my political view of tolerance, sharing and freedom over bigotry, greed and fascism.

I studied CAD at Motherwell College, way back in the early years of the century, because I saw some renders on the wall after a freak mistake in where my "I've nothing better to do and don't know what to study" admin class was told to muster... and there, I learned AutoCAD, Revit, 3D Studio MAX and Inventor. I've since added to my repertoire Blender, SketchUp, DraftSight, a railway-orientated app whose name I forget and, finally, Daz Studio and its editor Hexagon, which are what I use to make Plexit now. I never studied anything media-related and never expected I'd be better known for my comic than for the written works I've been creating and deleting since high school! After that study, I went into architecture and then ended up working for the NHS. I tried to go self-employed making floor plans for estate agents in the West Midlands, failed and detoured into solar panels, then to Oxfordshire for daylight analysis. Shortly after I started making Plexit, I started selling kitchens for a big UK retailer, but was better at the design than the selling and got promoted to being the guy who finds all the other designers' mistakes. When that ended in 2018, my comics became a full time career and I don't plan on going back to selling my time to build someone else's dream.

How I'm funded

Mostly, I'm funded by unemployment support... though I'm hoping to change that. Kind of the trouble with publishing for free with an audience of fewer than 100. However, I also have the Patreon and Ko-Fi pages listed at the bottom of every page on this site and you can buy merchandise through the link down there too. That's helped out quite a bit with buying the resources like 3D models and website hosting.

If you're interested, you can support me on Patreon, Ko-Fi or through my merchandise on Redbubble.
I have an older shop on Teespring, but most of the stuff there was broken by a price system update they did and I had some issues with their quality, so am no longer maintaining that shop and will close it once everything is moved to Redbubble.

Star patrons

This wonderful person has pledged $50 a month for Plexit. You can too, to get your name (or someone else's, I guess) here forever!

Jace Sweeney

Sources

A number of images in this comic have come from other sources. Some of them are T-shirts you can buy.

Gigagalaxy Milky Way Panorama – Taken by Serge Brunier, used with permission, for all space scenes from season 2 episode 14 onwards. You can find the source site here.

AJ's butterfly dress – Simple butterfly design in black & yellow. Available on Teespring with a small amount of profit for me.

Bruce's T-shirt – A simple declaration, for which the real Bruce is well known in certain circles - "I concur. This sucks. Ben should be slapped." I can make this available on Redbubble if people are interested.

Cappy's T-shirt – A skull outline and the caption "Missing: Murray." Because the real Cappy thus named the skull in Halo 2. I can make this available on Redbubble if people are interested.

Christa's T-shirt – Girl in pink/purple/blue saying "well, what's the worst that could happen?" Blob labelled Anxiety responding, "sit down a minute. This is a good one." Available on Redbubble with a small amount of profit for me. (This links directly to the ladies' fitted T-shirt, but dozens of other formats are available)

Jason's T-shirt – Leaf over motion lines indicating upward movement. Available on Redbubble with a small amount of profit for me. (This links directly to the unisex classic T-shirt, but dozens of other formats are available)

Eileen's T-shirt – A fresh rendition of the US Navy emblem and motto, so credit goes to the US Navy there.

Gemma's T-shirt – A Dr. Who reference line art.

Jaxom's T-shirt – The Troll Face is owned by Whynne and you might be able to buy similar T-shirts from authorised parties.

Marie's T-shirt – A simply made purple dragon. I can make this available on Redbubble if people are interested.

Rico's T-shirt – This is a real mass-market T-shirt, available from Teepublic

Rob's T-shirt – My own interpretation of the "Trust Me, I'm A Doctor" concept available in many forms from many retailers.

Sonima's T-shirt – The Goth Hello Kitty image is apparently as old as the internet itself and very much public domain; I have been unable to track down the original artist.