Its kind of hard to .. like.. Remember, to be honest, how things come together. FFAK is nearly 10 years old and so I’ve had the story almost ⅓ of my life - and so the development of its world has gone through a lot of very spontaneous changes as well as slow ones. But i’d say as an observation about my worldbuilding, is that the foundational themes/vibe of the story usually is very fast, im talking 24hrs or like a few days fast and many aspects of that never change even if the story does a lot. Part of me (now that i’ve realized i’m bipolar), wonders if this is might be a signal of a manic episode - as the last time this “all at once, all together” worldbuilding clicks in was last october for a project I call Religion of Toy. The reason I hypothesize this is that, for certain stories that have a lot of worldbuilding, feel intense in a similar way to each other/feel like a distinct pattern in my creative bursts. They also aren't very common, and the ones which happened in certain portions of my life which I feel are likely to be manic episodes I’ve had in the past. I don’t know for sure though!
That’s to say, its not how every “epic story worldbuilding” starts, or not even how they end once they do - but that usually is a huge push that also acts as the base of what I feel the story is meant to stay true to. There’s always some deviation from the story as it develops, but sometimes If i feel things are going “too far” from this core feeling, whatever that might be for the story, its unlikely that I’ll push it to burst that bubble. With FFAK, i did push past its initial “bubble” when i later incorporated an older project into the timeline. It took several years for me to mend these two distinct story “cores” as well as juggle the story that it ended up being as a result, into what FFAK is now. But I got there eventually.
For NRD, i don’t feel its story started like this. It was more of a small idea that was very vague, but I can come up with very easily on the fly if I need to. It wasn’t this big place to unpack and explore. But for NRD, it ended up being a more slow burn for me to develop the story/worldbuilding and I’d say its only been the past couple years i’ve really understood the “rules” of this world. I think that this approach has helped me realize the other techniques of developing a story rather than the “all at once” big bang moments and I have a more balanced set of tools at my disposal for solving problems and developing ideas, which makes me feel more in control of my creative process than it used to be.
For the more intentional approach to worldbuilding, I usually tell the story to myself best I can, then try to look for an opportunity to see the story in a different perspective. Or if I get stuck somewhere in trying to tell the story to its end, I look at where I get stuck and try to explore reasons why that is. For NRD, i explored the “simple” first idea for the story of Kamila/Welt (outside, as i had not developed hte inside/outside dynamic of the plot) to its end, but then wondered about how the story would have changed if at the start, one of the humans that tried to take Kamila to their camp, had survived and was having their own adventure somewhere. This is how i ended up writing Teddy and also Laggard, which fleshed the story out enough that I felt that it was something I really wanted to draw. Laggard already existed as a character before, but was unnamed and had very few moments where he was included, so it was exciting to also bring depth to Welt’s past by developing that character too. Then, during the actual production of the comic, I included Gaueko on a whim because I wanted to include other “mythological dogs” that appear in various cultures around the world, not just Cerberus, so that’s how he found his way to the story. The Inside/Outside dynamic was also only something I decided to develop after starting drawing the comic in the first chapter. It took me a long time to figure out the way that worked in the lore, but I wanted it to be related to the ceremony of the “event” itself that changed the dogs - and so it was just a next step in the “decision making” when I tried to puzzle out how things worked.
I don’t make a lot of new stories these days and try to focus on the ones I have already. Sometimes I do get new ideas or concepts but they kind of cycle into a back burner or get forgotten quickly as they might already be too repetitive to something else that already exists. So its usually only once every 2-4 years that I come up with a Brand New “World” to explore. I’d imagine that once some of my larger projects finally wrap up, I’ll have more like.. Space in my head to fill it up with new ideas, or finally get to explore some of the back-burner concepts to a better degree than their limbo status LOL.. I think that’s about all I can say for now though.. IDK if this really answers your question but I hope it gives some insight to the processes.