Whoopes

I literally even missed the before-2022 deadline I set for this post lol, so perhaps the title should be "It's begun" instead of "It's over". But it might still be 2021 somewhere in the world.

Anyway, since I obviously didn't publish the comic and I haven't really had anything else to show for my progress, you might be wondering if I've actually done anything. I myself felt like a waste. —But it turns out, yes, I have actually accomplished a lot of things this year! Pics or it didn't happen? Pics down below!

Proof that I actually did things

As a bit of history, the idea for this comic popped into my head during the last few months of last year. I did already have another, extremely heavily planned out (game) project going on at the time, but thought that if I could publish this dumb little idea first then I would be able to gain some pre-experience and maybe even the beginnings of a fanbase going forward.

Of course then this turned into a multi-season epic. Of dumb ideas, sure, but with entire gigabytes worth of plans. And while I did start writing the comic last year, the majority of those plans were definitely written this year.

Progress Timeline

A list of comic-related things I've accomplished, by month. Not listed here are things that have been done throughout the year: tightening up the plot, properly thinking out all the lore, and writing down episode/bonus ideas and story scripts.

Would also like to note that this is the schedule of someone who:

• Has a full time job
• Changed full time jobs, which meant spending time on multiple multi-stage interviews, recruiter calls, etc.
• Has an infirm dependent
• Moved provinces and bought a home for the first time, which basically removed around three months worth of drawing hours

So if you're reading this timeline and are thinking "man, so I should just give up if I'm slow at drawing", do note that external factors play a huge role and that you thus may have more success than I did. In fact, since two of those points are no longer going to be factors this new year, I might get a speed boost too!

January

• Created a reference sheet for a bunch of side characters
• Designed a common uniform

February

• Created a reference sheet for the main character
  • If you're wondering why it took me so long to tackle the MC versus everyone else, it's because I have trouble translating images from my head onto paper; so if I mess this up, I won't be able to unsee the incorrect design, and things will basically go kaboom.
• Started drawing episode 1!

March

• Created a palette file
• Created several CSP brushes
• Designed another common uniform This shit is hard
• Still drawing episode 1—was planning to finish it in two weeks but lol
  • I chalked this up to a lack of familiarity with the webtoon format, and a bunch of things that I never considered like font choice, file size, etc. But little did I know; it was probably mostly just because I'm abysmally slow

April

• Created a 3D background
• lmao I'm still...drawing episode 1... (※ I finally fucking finished it this month)
• I'm pretty sure I did something else this month but I didn't write anything down

May

• Designed the last common uniform This shit is very hard
• Designed in-world logos
• Created several 3D backgrounds! All from scratch and using hand-drawn textures:

June

• More 3D background work
• Created the title card/logo of the comic!
• Started drawing episode 2!
  • Also started writing down each day's progress on an Excel sheet. For anyone interested in ways to track their progress, the latest iteration of the sheet has the following columns:
    • Date - The day of the week and the actual date
    • Notes - Anything I wanted to write down about my day and how it affected my ability (or lack thereof) to work
    • Hours (approx) - The amount of time spent working on the comic. Useful to know how long I should expect to spend on future pages. That said, recently I've been too lazy to calculate the times, so the column is just filled with "idk"s lol whoopes.
    • Progress made - A point-form summary of exactly what I managed to accomplish
    • Other comic additions - Sometimes I have ideas for bonus scripts, images, etc. and writing those down takes a shitload of time. There's no point in tracking this spontaneity, but it's good to know that I'm at least furthering the comic in other ways, even if it's not with drawing the actual pages.
    • Stage - What stage I'm working on (ex. layout, panelling, rough sketches, etc.)
• Started being swamped with housing-related things

July

• Still drawing episode 2, to no surprise
• Spent just a bit over week on a CSP contest entry
  • This was done with the hopes that it could attract people to be interested in the comic but, obviously, you should just expect nihility if you have zero previous followers
• Housing bullshit was at an all time high—spent so much time on it practically every day, was frustrating as fuck but I'm glad it's over with now

August

• Created this blog! And published it literally the day of my move lol
  • Actually went over two iterations of it before this; first created it on WordPress because I wanted to get it out and over with, but the meager amount of customizations available made me turn to a Wordpress-React framework...which I fucking hated holy shit lol, wasted two days trying to work with it before deciding to just fuck it and code my own site from scratch. This took around 5 days, including planning, assets, content, and account creation (email/twitter/kofi/etc.), but the blog as a concept took 12 days in total due to the scrapped iterations. tl;dr - If you know how to code a website, then don't bother with trying out shortcuts.
• Moved mid this month so had basically no time to do anything substantial

September

• Dealing with move-in stuff and didn't even have my PC because it got fucked, so only managed to draw for a week total within the entire month OTL. Barely any hours per day too U_U

October

• Literally just decided to give up and start episode 3 lol. I've spent the past 4 months on ep 2—though arguably I didn't manage to actually work on it for two of those months—so decided to just move on for now for a hopefully great new start. Spoilers: it wasn't that great
• And thus, started drawing episode 3!
  • This one was special because there was a whole chunk of the script that I had apparently neglected to finish whoopes, it was all just summarization...so spent three days scripting, though only one of which any significant time went into.
  • This ended up being ridiculously long so this ep is double length. Couldn't find a good place to split it, and if any episode is going to be extra long this one made the most sense, so eventually just ran with it.
• Did layout, panelling, bubbling, and references over the rest of the month. This did take long af, but that's what happens when double-length occurs I guess. Also started doing roughs for the first half of the episode.

November

• Not sure what was going on, but there were a ton of days in the first half of the month where I did absolutely nothing. Spent the other half diligently working, drawing roughs and lineart.
• Had a sudden intense desire to make a JP version for this blog even though no one will ever read it lol. Not finished (mostly just did the translation framework and the About page instead of actual translated content), but you can check it out here.
  • This also means that the blog can now be localized, so if anyone would like to translate anything in any language, send me a message!
• Wrote down lots of plans for bonus things
• Made some more 3D backgrounds
• Started a new job

December

• More 3D backgrounds
• Started on the second half of the episode—and actually only missed two days out of 15! :OO
  • But I'm still slow lol

Dates going forward

I had been planning on finishing the basis for episode 3 and maybe 4, then making an assistant hiring post this very day...but obviously that didn't happen lol, not even done episode 3 yet (though it is double-length, and I'm almost done!). Thus, that post is going to come whenever I finish this third ep, which is hopefully going to be in a few days. Going to take the excuse that people are probably busy celebrating to give myself more time lol. Might even take a few more days to make sure I have all the assistant materials ready; instead of rushing to fulfill a self-imposed deadline that no one else is waiting for, I want to make sure that I have everything in place so that I won't be scrambling to get things done later.

As for the new publish-by date, since October 2021 didn't work out...I'm holding off on that for now. Not sure how the assistant thing is going to go since I've never hired anyone before, and honestly, not even sure I'll be able to get any assistants. Given my amazing history with comic deadlines thus far, it'll be easier and more helpful to just focus on the day-to-day tasks for now.

Anyhow, here's to hoping that this year will be filled with awesome progress and a publishing announcement!

Happy new years, and success to us all! 💪✨