Happy Fall!

Hi Friends! It’s been a bit, but we have arrived at September, which may as well itself be the sole herald of fall. I’ve often noticed that as soon as September 1st rolls around, the temperatures just drop and we’re there. So being in fall now, let’s look to the future!

I have been operating at my personal best with art streams on Twitch, and page progress on Eyes Of Heaven #1. To the point where now, we’re at the coloring stage! I’ve been remarking for the last several weeks that the book should be completely done by October. That’s still the plan and it looks like I’m on track for that.

Here in the coloring phase, I’m getting into the flats and color picking for everything, and finalizing the renders. With Fridays and Saturdays being extra little workdays, it helps keep me on track. Speaking of which, it’s kinda weird to note that I’m only really productive when I’m streaming. That’s not how I intended, but it’s working and I’m not so inclined to break that pattern just yet. I like hanging out and showing how I work and what I’m working on in the moment, and the art streams are really fulfilling that need for me.

Also, being so close to the end of this book, I’ve taken notes on what’s been working in my process and how to more fully realize it. The goal is the stories being told, yes, but the method is just as important, because it’s the method that pushes the story to completion. A couple things on my method is what I can add in to my layouts process, but also how I layout my books, and what should be figured out. Also, I’m writing my scripts with an eye towards the alt-text on social media. I want to get that right, and so that means getting the script right so that I’m not just writing it in the moment. That’s not a good feeling when accessibility is vital to readers.

It also means changing how I draw to keep it simple for me at all stages: drawing shapes instead of figures, defining my lines in stronger ways, eliminating how much “background cleanup” I have to do and how much deleting of stuff I do because “you can’t see it there, so why did I draw it that way?” Whatever keeps me moving forward on pages without stressing. Also, I saw how fast I got through my drawings so I want to push myself to maintain that level of productivity every day. We’ll see if I can, but I have a goal to push to at one scene daily. It’s a goal worth striving for when you have lots of work already planned to do.

Once this book is done, I want to take a bit of time off: maybe the rest of the month, or the rest of the year, before starting the next book. It probably won’t be that long because we all know I can’t help myself from doing things. But I need to refill myself. It’s great timing for the end of the book because I can spend that time writing the scripts for the next issues in the run, as well as plotting out the first arcs of the main four. And that timing works with an availability change for streams, too.

I’m still putting some thought to this and don’t have anything final yet, but I’m looking at Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. We’ll see if that happens, or if I decide that every day is a game day (and believe me, there are lots of games I want to play through). But also, there are scripts to work on, and studying to do, which is why I’m even thinking about an availability change. We’ll see!

Anyway, that’s where we are right now. Pushing through on the last four or five weeks of page production and then sending these pages to live on the website and FINALLY opening them to be read.

Thanks for hanging out!