Blogs:
I'M ALIIIIIVEEEEEEE (and not in as much pain)
I am so sorry for disappearing for a year! I mentioned that I would be going on a short hiatus, but it turned out a bit longer than intended.
Basically, I've been living in daily pain from a neck injury I acquired at work; while drawing being painful was sort of incidental (it was all neck scar tissue stuff, not drawing itself causing the pain), it did make working on the comic very emotionally-draining, which caused me to burn out enough to not even want to look at the comic. Most of this was, honestly, my own fault. I did not take workflow into account at all when I launched the comic, which caused my workload to balloon as I got better at drawing. Some of the pages of the first two chapters took me 25+ hours (!) to complete, because I would re-draw the lineart over and over until I had achieved perfection. I chose probably the worst program when it comes to accomodating my drawing style, which meant I had to redraw even MORE. Couple that with pain, and it was a recipe for a nightmare.
So, I realized I had to step away and develop much more... healthy approaches to working on this comic if I was to continue. And because I ALMOST wrote myself into a corner, I realized I needed to complete the story before I could continue. Both of those required time, and also to hopefully not be in pain.
The good news is, after 4 years since the injury, I have finally found a physiotherapist who knows how to work with my type of injury. My body has essentially forgotten How 2 Upper Limb due to long-term nerve compression, so I've had to slowly re-learn how to lift my arms using the correct muscles, which are about as weak as a newborn's neck (exaggeration, I know, but I legit cannot support the weight of my own arms with the proper muscles engaged). This physio has been slowly working with me to untangle this mess, and.... I have slowly been going from "daily pain, awaiting the next dose of pain meds eagerly" to "sometimes, I forget to take the pain meds"! It's really exciting!
As a result, I've been able to work more and more without worrying about over-work. I've been able to make good progress on the story (which is basically complete!) and on the workflow (which is completely different!). I expect that barring setbacks, I should be resuming posting shortly. I realized that because I was trying to hard to cut down the number of pages I intended to draw, I cut out a lot of what I wanted in the comic - little character or world-building moments - so going forward, the flow will be different. I will also eventually replace the first two chapters, BUT, I know that it means more to readers that the story continues. Because the plot elements will not be drastically different between the old version and the update, I will try and save updating the chapters for last.
In the mean time, please accept some new sketches of Dot, and Halcyon Days! I will have the art time lapse for these available on youtube shortly.
Some newer style sketches, that make drawing much more manageable!
Interior cabin of Halcyon Days/HD1107!
New art, that will hopefully be what the final will look like, allowing me to progress much faster!