genalovestoons:

dangermousse:

if you ever need a creative pickmeup remember that the administrator in tf2 was just this random disembodied old woman voice who announced match info in the game

but then a young lady did a fan design of her for kicks on her blog and da account full of fanart, and valve loved it so much that they bought the character design from her, and they eventually hired her to draw official tf2 comics for them, and now the administrator’s this big developed character through multiple oneoffs and arcs and stories in the canon and the fan is now an inhouse comic artist working ft for valve

you never know where your artistic and fandom passions will take you, if you love it and exercise your creativity in fun interesting ways, you never know what could come out of it

Out of curiosity, I went out to find Makani’s original fanart. Here it is:

And here’s her first official appearance in the comic, made only one year later: