Jukashi
Four Thousand Club
So, I went on hiatus, a little holiday, and the purpose behind it was the hope that, after taking time away, I would feel much better about the comic when I got back - I would have missed doing it and it would therefore be more fun, easier and faster. Instead, as you witnessed with the update coming back from the holiday, it appears to now be much worse, to the point where I have stayed up through the night and into the evening of the next day trying to get it out of my head and into the computer.
I love this comic, I really do. I like writing the story, coming up with the characters, designing the look of places and people, writing dialogue, orchestrating events and depicting the action, and trying to bring the scope of the Exalted setting in there as well. I even enjoy comic minutia such as panel layout and pacing and toying with the medium, as I've already done, which most people wouldn't, I think. But actually making the comic - sitting down and moving sprites around and redrawing arms and backgrounds a half-dozen times each and cutting lines and moving things by fractions to get them in just the right position and realigning Marena's tattoos and getting people's hair right and so on and so on and so on... that is a terrible, tedious chore, especially since I did add the aforementioned arms. And, so, I'm basically not enjoying it any more.
Now, there are solutions.
The first thing I'm going to try is a concerted effort to break the comic-making process into manageable chunks. A third of a comic done every day will not only be less of an ordeal, hopefully, but end up producing an extra comic every three weeks. I'm hoping this will work, though it occurs to me with such a schedule that I will be doing more work than it takes to produce most newspaper comics. How amusing.
As for other options... well, I've got one, and I'd like to ask you for suggestions on others.
Some of you may (or may not) know that maybe a year ago I did Lunar Quest over on tgchan, a site for people to make and play suggest-an-action CYOA-style games/stories, in the style of MSPA, and which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who has the ability to ignore things they don't like. And when I began it, I used a style and method of production very similar to what I use in keychain now, albeit in black and white. Again, I soon found it to be deeply irritating, and after a while - and after getting a good tablet - I started to just draw things the normal way. And I found that to be a lot better!
So the other possibility is that I shift the art again and start to just draw the comic like other people do. The downside of this is that the visual quality of the comic will decrease, at least until I get better at it. Allow me to thoroughly embarrass myself by indicating a comic I did about My Little Pony as a rough example of the level it would probably begin at. Not a good one, in other words (though probably a bit better than that)! It would also be a gamble in that I don't know for sure the comic would become easier or more fun, it's just a possibility.
What do you think?
I love this comic, I really do. I like writing the story, coming up with the characters, designing the look of places and people, writing dialogue, orchestrating events and depicting the action, and trying to bring the scope of the Exalted setting in there as well. I even enjoy comic minutia such as panel layout and pacing and toying with the medium, as I've already done, which most people wouldn't, I think. But actually making the comic - sitting down and moving sprites around and redrawing arms and backgrounds a half-dozen times each and cutting lines and moving things by fractions to get them in just the right position and realigning Marena's tattoos and getting people's hair right and so on and so on and so on... that is a terrible, tedious chore, especially since I did add the aforementioned arms. And, so, I'm basically not enjoying it any more.
Now, there are solutions.
The first thing I'm going to try is a concerted effort to break the comic-making process into manageable chunks. A third of a comic done every day will not only be less of an ordeal, hopefully, but end up producing an extra comic every three weeks. I'm hoping this will work, though it occurs to me with such a schedule that I will be doing more work than it takes to produce most newspaper comics. How amusing.
As for other options... well, I've got one, and I'd like to ask you for suggestions on others.
Some of you may (or may not) know that maybe a year ago I did Lunar Quest over on tgchan, a site for people to make and play suggest-an-action CYOA-style games/stories, in the style of MSPA, and which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who has the ability to ignore things they don't like. And when I began it, I used a style and method of production very similar to what I use in keychain now, albeit in black and white. Again, I soon found it to be deeply irritating, and after a while - and after getting a good tablet - I started to just draw things the normal way. And I found that to be a lot better!
So the other possibility is that I shift the art again and start to just draw the comic like other people do. The downside of this is that the visual quality of the comic will decrease, at least until I get better at it. Allow me to thoroughly embarrass myself by indicating a comic I did about My Little Pony as a rough example of the level it would probably begin at. Not a good one, in other words (though probably a bit better than that)! It would also be a gamble in that I don't know for sure the comic would become easier or more fun, it's just a possibility.
What do you think?
) It'll make it easier to draw each time, and able to finish them faster. There's no shame in doing this 
