At the 10th French Comics and Graphic Novels Festival in Beijing this May, two young women wearing glasses sat side by side, though they appeared to come from entirely different worlds.

One was Yang Zhi, a Chinese cartoonist with shoulder-length black hair and a quiet, studious air. The other was French comics artist Cy (Cyrielle Evrard), whose cropped hair and understated style carried the effortless cool of a heroine from a late-night French film.

Yang draws on a digital tablet. Cy prefers colored pencils. One tells stories rooted in Chinese fox-spirit folklore; the other resurrects forgotten industrial tragedies from American history.

Their artistic styles couldn't be more different, yet their careers have followed remarkably similar paths.

At nearly the same age, both women left stable jobs to pursue comics independently. Both built audiences online through social media and both eventually arrived at the same conclusion: they no longer wanted other people deciding what they were allowed to create.

Socializing a fox

"When I dropped everything else and focused entirely on comics, that was when I felt happiest," Yang says.

Two years ago, she began publishing an online comic titled The Fox's Transformation Chronicle. The story follows a young fox surviving alone in the wilderness before being rescued by an older white fox who teaches her the art of shape-shifting. By observing human desires, the fox learns to transform into the "ideal version" of whatever others expect — a process of cultivation on the path toward becoming a nine-tailed fox.