So I'm going to start thumb nailing Issue 5 of Synthetic Instinct. It's a huge tonal shift so I look forward to that.
In autumn of last year I had kind of a massive burn out which has never happened to me before on that scale... I've put 5 years into Synthetic Instinct, roughly a year for an issue, as the first year of working on it doesn't count too much as I was in and out of the hospital and my cats dying.
It was an awful year. ... yet I still worked just slowly.
When I finished Issue 4 I kind of pushed myself hard to get it done for Eurofurence which I then couldn't attend due to health reasons.... I'm still sitting on those books.
I pride myself on my finished art being BOOK quality not web comic, I hear constantly the 'advice' of cut the quality of the art down for speed. Yah if it looks like crap, then when you print it, it's printed crap! For pencils, inks, colours it's an acceptable time frame for each step I do but the problem is it's all ONE person, one person that can't work faster and only for so long.
I realize now I cannot pour myself into a singular project otherwise I put that project on a pedestal of expectations. I also cannot write super short projects, which often do better online compared to print as I need a few issues to say what I want to say. It's why I think of my work as comics that are available online... not a webcomic.
No high mighty attitude towards creators of webcomics, comic regardless of where it's from or how it's presents is still a comic to me, which is a boatload of passionate work... I just feel WEB+COMIC has a different expectation from READERS.
From now on I'll be working on two projects, do a few (let's say ten) pages of Synthetic and then ten of another project. I did this with Wild Autumn but honestly amount of negativity that it wasn't Synthetic Instinct kinda cracked me... As well as negativity I get online for Synthetic.
It's why I need to stay away from comment sections, they are not for me and info overload me.
My next project is not fully anthropomorphic, I also need to make OTHER comics as bleeding myself into one thing just doesn't work for me and leads to frustration.
Once I get to a point of being able to post comics I'll give ample warning as my comics will be Bronze tier so $5 a month not Onyx that is $2.
Public release will be even slower this time around, I'm debating on only releasing pages till I have 15 or 30 finished/reformatted and then scheduling every 2 week release of said pages and then freezing it in a hiatus till I get another 15-30 finished. As once a month two pages people just non stop complained at me. So it feels a fit of posting and hiatus seems better.
I am also re-doing my website, I think it's better if I put comics on their own subdomains and operate separately from my portfolio and eventually a store. I think toochecke is great (I'll still use it) but it's multi-comic feature doesn't work well for comics that are long form and not strips... It's a bit disorganized....
Phantasmas35
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