The Aussie Goldmine
The Aussie Goldmine is an upcoming webcomic written and illustrated by Darien Brice Dickinson (a.k.a. NeonWabbit) under his Studio RGB-Newt / The Fishal Project brand, self-published on multiple social media accounts, webcomic hosting services (such as Naver WEBTOON, Tapas, NamiComi, and ComicFury), and self-hosted on RedGreenBlue.art using the Comix Cleric web framework.
| The Aussie Goldmine | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Darien Brice Dickinson (Studio RGB-Newt) |
| Current status/schedule | Unpublished |
| Publisher(s) | The Fishal Project |
| Genre(s) |
|
| Rating(s) | Mature 15+ |
Originally envisioned as a collaborative animated series that anyone could contribute stories to, but later brought back under NeonWabbit's control as a solo effort, the comic follows the adventures of an eccentric kangaroo, Gerald Symons, who accidentally awakens the magical ghost of an emu, named Aurora Australis, while digging for gold and cracking open a geode with his pickaxe. When the crystals of said geode aren't shined upon by sun or moonlight (i.e. stuffed inside a cabinet, or in a building with no windows), Aurora immediately disappears and goes into a stasis state.
After Gerald reveals to her that emus went extinct during the "Great Emu War" of the 1930s, Aurora teams up with Gerald and his three remaining friends (Vivienne MacKenzie, The Tazza, and Kylie Illawarra) to form a ragtag bunch of vigilantes that dedicate themselves to freelance crime-fighting, detective work, and solving disputes between friends.
Plot
Setting
Characters
Production
Concept
Character design
The original designs for The Aussie Goldmine characters were sketched up in 2017, and further refined in 2018, during NeonWabbit's classes at Raffles College. Gerald was originally a nerdy-type who would wear t-shirts referencing various Studio RGB-Newt / The Fishal Project productions, and even owned a body pillow of Nyah from Nyah Has an Adventure. Aurora on the other hand was a nurse during The Emu War. A coloured version of Aurora in this original beta design ended up on the album cover of the single release for The Neoclassics' "Put Down Your Pickaxe", the theme song of an attempt at starting an animated series for The Aussie Goldmine in the late 2010s.
Starting in the 2020s, all main characters in The Aussie Goldmine have since been redesigned by artist Kappamomo. She styled Gerald after Matt Smith's portrayal of The Doctor from Doctor Who to match his new eccentric personality, and gave Aurora more height to be reminscent of an actual emu, and also an outfit more befitting her new lore that she used to be a Star of Stage and Screen in the 1930s, the time period she came from.