Adding on to the pressure

Not too long ago, I made the decision to get started on drawing up the thumbnails for the prologue for my Mydan project. If me in the past found out I was doing this, I would be worried that I'd be going on a head a bit too early in the project. But now, I've chosen to go head-first into the waters. I want to channel my thoughts into a mindset close to the one I had in my first attempt at making a webcomic: going straight into production after a good-enough script to base everything. 

First, I wanted to get rid of that sense of perfectionism that has been stopping me from moving along in the past couple of years. When working on my SteelHouse project, my plan was to be around 5+ chapters ahead and make sure *everything* was in line and confirmed. But throughout the months, I kept making little tweaks and edits, always treating things like they were never ready. Because of that, I haven't even started making the right concept art.

I also thought that by doing this, I would be able to take my projects a crap-ton more seriously. I'd be setting myself time limits, due dates, and be not-so laid back when it comes to this stuff. There are many stories that I want to get out there, some in comic form, and knowing how long it takes to actually get a narrative out there, my lifespan won't be able to fit in everything in time, which is a pretty tough truth to face.

Anyways, here's the notebook I'm doing my thumbnails on. Here are the ones for only the prologue for my Mydan project, so I'm okay with showing you what I've got:

Organising the process

Lately, I've been thinking of ways to speed up the process of my much larger, more ambitious comic projects. Now, here's the thing: since they're so long, it would be quite intimidating to work on them one at a time. It's a huge commitment and I'm kind of fickle, so I'd be afraid of losing interest, especially since they're projects that I'm really passionate about. Since I don't want to have to go through all that, I've spent a long time trying to come up with a plan to manage my projects and my time working on them.

Here's the plan: I'm going to divide those big projects into acts. Which I have done long already, since that's part of the storywriting process, but now I'm chosing to implement that aspect to use in my time-management.

It'll work something a bit like this...

First, the conditions:

• I have 2 big projects: Project A and Project B
• A has 3 Acts and B has 5 acts
• A is Set years Before the events of B and their Stories Aren't Overlapped

And here's the pattern I plan on undertaking:

1. Project A, Act 1
2. Project B, Act 1
3. Project A, Act 2
4. Project B, Act 2
5. Project A, Act 3
6. Project B, Act 3
7. Etc.

And if any new major projects pop up, I'll figure stuff out from there.

Hopefully posting again!

Log 2022-03-10

So, I guess I should start actually posting here, huh. I know it's been a long while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything in the past months. And I'm happy to say, I've made some nice progress (for my standard, at least).

Here's the current status for a bunch of  my major projects right now:

Gone Unsupervised!
Good news for this one: I'm actually drawing up the pages right now! This one's a long-term laid-back project so I'm hoping to keep up for as long as I can. The characters featured in this project have been with me since 2014 and they still have a very special place in my heart to this day, so I'm ffeeling pretty confident with that statement. I've got lots of ideas for this one, and since this is a comedic slice-of-life, I don't have to worry about too much of the story and worldbuilding as much as my other stuff.

Steel House in the Prairie
This one's on hold, currently: that's because there's a shorter story that I've got in mind that actually comes before SHP. Since this is a longer and more ambitious project, I feel like starting off with a story that's a bit less compared to SHP would do me a huuge favour in terms with the quality of it. Really excited to get back to this one, though.

Mydan: Post-Beginnings
Now, here's the story that comes before SHP, as well as the main major project I'm working on right now. Unfortunately, I'm still not past chapter 1 of the story, but I guess that's because I still want clarity on the basics of the story surrounding our narrative. I don't want exactly to "try too hard" with this story since this will be my first, but to keep it from being forgettable, I'll try gather some inspiration from the more simplistic stories of older video games.

The Side Effects of Outer Space Loneliness
This one is nothing more than a casual side-project. I plan for this to only be 24 parts long with a more simplistic art style. I'll just work on this whenever, but despite its lacking qualities, I still find myself enjoying working on this small project. Fun fact: I've had the concept of this strip series in mind since 2018!

Rebranding! (Sort Of)

I'm going to make this the main place for where I write any major updates for my projects. Which I know it seems like this is what the blog is for already, but here's something behind the scenes: I'm actually writing the blog posts for my major projects in their own platforms and then pasting them onto this one, which can get a little time-consuming and, I'll admit, tedious. I've been suspecting that that's the reason I've been a bit demotivated to write these logs in the past months, and been coming and going with these logs in the past, I suppose, year.

I'm still trying to figure out my little game plan, but I guess I'll just improvise and see what works. That's all I want to say, really.

-Chocco

Project: April and friends - Log #039

We are back!

Right! So it’s been ages since my last update log, but that’s (once again) not to say that I haven’t been working on anything since then. I’ve been working on more of the concepts side of my SHP project, as well as Mydan, the story that comes before that one. 

I also should mention that I’ve been focusing on my Mydan project a lot more, recently, particularly because I really want that one to come out before SHP does. It’s a lot tamer when it comes to story and characters, so I feel like I could get this one out pretty soon. I just got to get some concept art out of the way. Really excited, and I hope I actually live up to my word!

Gone Unsupervised! - Log #017

Will this finally be the time? ‘Cause it’s been waiting too damn long!

GODDAMN. It’s been ages since I’ve made my last update on this project. But, I’ve got some good news. Now, I believe it’s coming back. Hiatus could be over and I’m feeling pretty motivated right now.

Here’s the game plan: I’m gonna start off “cheap”. Like, I’ll make the official pages with low-effort material (like plain paper n stuff) and it doesn’t matter if the scanning looks kinda crap. I just want to achieve the feeling of actually getting something out, and consistently. And then once I’ve gotten used to that, I’ll slowly make my way up to improving the production.

This is just going to be a simple webcomic after all, and not something to be printed or anything fancy like that. Pretty hyped! 

Dyrus' Men - Log #002

Hoping I'm back onto this soon

You know why? I've found the pencil case with all my inking stuff in it. Unfortunately, right now, I've been really busy with uni stuff. Y'know, finishing off my Winter School stuff, starting Semester 2 smoothly... It's a bit difficult to get back to this project and my other projects in general, at this time. Which sucks.

Luckily, in my spare time, I've decided to make a fan blog for the main guys featured in this project. You can check it out, >>here!<<