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March Update
9 years ago
A long time ago. I used to try and do regular monthly update journals and I've decided to have a go at doing that again, in the hope that talking about my progress and goals will help keep me motivated and moving forward. It remains to be seen if this actually works.
We're already more than a week into March, so I'm a little late with this. But with being so focused on Hypno Bear Week, sleeping difficulties and work, I haven't managed to get around to it before now.
Working Bears 2
So, a good part of March will probably be spent finishing off Working Bears 2. I've got two more stories to finish writing and a bunch of illustrations to get done. I won't give any estimates as to when it might be done, as every aspect of Working Bears 2 has ended up taking me longer than expected so far. Ideally, I'd like to have the whole thing done by the end of the month. I won't be working on it exclusively however, because that could lead to me burning out on it, I will be taking breaks from it to work on some other things.
Art
I'm not sure how much I'm going to work on individual pics this month, what with most of my art time needing to be spent on other stuff. But if I do, I am determined not to start anything new, just work on finishing stuff I've already started. We'll see what happens.
Commissions
I'm also determined to try and make some good progress on my commissions backlog this month. In fact, I'm going to set myself the goal of trying to have one of them finished off by the end of the month. This is certainly doable, I have a few that are far enough along that I could manage to finish them provided I remain focused. So that's what I'm going to try and do.
Livestreaming
I may very well do some more livestreaming this month. I might see if I can do a regular weekly stream, but I'm not going to make any promises. However, any streaming I do for the foreseeable future will likely be spent working on my 'Fallen Hero' comic. I've neglected it for far too long and want to try and get it finished. And since it originally started as a livestreaming project, it makes sense to use my streams to work on it.
The Corps
I think it's time for me to face facts and finally make the decision about the future of The Corps. So I'm sorry to have to let you all know that The Corps will not be continuing as a comic. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and it simply isn't working. At the rate I'm going, it will never be finished, I will never manage to tell the big epic story I have in mind for it. It's time for a change.
This is not the end of The Corps. I will be reworking it into a prose story, probably with plenty of illustrations, and I'm feeling more and more like that is a better format for it, that it will work better in the long run and it will help my ongoing efforts to get back into my writing more. I have already started thinking about how its going to work as a written story.
Exactly what form the story will take I have yet to decide. A part of me is tempted to see if it could be written for publication, possibly as a series of books or novellas. I'll keep you updated as I decide more. And my apologies to all of you who liked The Corps as a comic. I'm sorry it won't be continuing in that form.
The House of Lazarus #4
One up side to this journal being delayed is that I'm able to report that I have today made a little progress on 'The House of Lazarus'. I happened to take a look at the page I'd been stuck on for so long, the cause of my creative block on the comic, and on the spur of the moment decided to take another crack at it. Before I knew it, I had actually finished drawing the page, which was a surprise. Now, there's still a bunch of pages to be drawn, and then the whole thing then needs to be inked, coloured and scripted, but this is the first bit of progress I've made on this comic in a long time. Maybe I'll even make more progress this month. We'll have to wait and see.
We're already more than a week into March, so I'm a little late with this. But with being so focused on Hypno Bear Week, sleeping difficulties and work, I haven't managed to get around to it before now.
Working Bears 2
So, a good part of March will probably be spent finishing off Working Bears 2. I've got two more stories to finish writing and a bunch of illustrations to get done. I won't give any estimates as to when it might be done, as every aspect of Working Bears 2 has ended up taking me longer than expected so far. Ideally, I'd like to have the whole thing done by the end of the month. I won't be working on it exclusively however, because that could lead to me burning out on it, I will be taking breaks from it to work on some other things.
Art
I'm not sure how much I'm going to work on individual pics this month, what with most of my art time needing to be spent on other stuff. But if I do, I am determined not to start anything new, just work on finishing stuff I've already started. We'll see what happens.
Commissions
I'm also determined to try and make some good progress on my commissions backlog this month. In fact, I'm going to set myself the goal of trying to have one of them finished off by the end of the month. This is certainly doable, I have a few that are far enough along that I could manage to finish them provided I remain focused. So that's what I'm going to try and do.
Livestreaming
I may very well do some more livestreaming this month. I might see if I can do a regular weekly stream, but I'm not going to make any promises. However, any streaming I do for the foreseeable future will likely be spent working on my 'Fallen Hero' comic. I've neglected it for far too long and want to try and get it finished. And since it originally started as a livestreaming project, it makes sense to use my streams to work on it.
The Corps
I think it's time for me to face facts and finally make the decision about the future of The Corps. So I'm sorry to have to let you all know that The Corps will not be continuing as a comic. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and it simply isn't working. At the rate I'm going, it will never be finished, I will never manage to tell the big epic story I have in mind for it. It's time for a change.
This is not the end of The Corps. I will be reworking it into a prose story, probably with plenty of illustrations, and I'm feeling more and more like that is a better format for it, that it will work better in the long run and it will help my ongoing efforts to get back into my writing more. I have already started thinking about how its going to work as a written story.
Exactly what form the story will take I have yet to decide. A part of me is tempted to see if it could be written for publication, possibly as a series of books or novellas. I'll keep you updated as I decide more. And my apologies to all of you who liked The Corps as a comic. I'm sorry it won't be continuing in that form.
The House of Lazarus #4
One up side to this journal being delayed is that I'm able to report that I have today made a little progress on 'The House of Lazarus'. I happened to take a look at the page I'd been stuck on for so long, the cause of my creative block on the comic, and on the spur of the moment decided to take another crack at it. Before I knew it, I had actually finished drawing the page, which was a surprise. Now, there's still a bunch of pages to be drawn, and then the whole thing then needs to be inked, coloured and scripted, but this is the first bit of progress I've made on this comic in a long time. Maybe I'll even make more progress this month. We'll have to wait and see.
Really good news about HOL, I felt maybe you had a confidence hang up on it + sometimes the longer you leave something the harder it is to go back
try not to spead yourself too thin with all these things mentioned in your journal above, I wouldn't go too overboard with "The Corps" just yet, maybe just finish the current comic story/arc as "Written" and see how that goes. I had the opposite problem with "Banzuke", I originally imagined it as a comic [Even have a folder full of my old page layouts I've never had the heart to throw away] but I couldn't draw for shit, so it was written or nothing, but theres pros and cons to both - with Comics you can often move stories along faster without tons of expination, have visual jokes/background jokes etc characters facial expressions "Telling the story" etc etc
"Written" is a whole different kettle of fish, its really hard writing some story elements without them seeming "Samey" or tedious/over long/wordy [Banzuke was a real pain writing loads of Sumo bouts and training etc when in a comic it would be a few page montage kinda thing or more visually interesting] you might find with Corps things like space battles, gun fights + Sci Fi stuff are like that [ I found Sci Fi really hard to write, remember my "Sky Spirits" series ?, same with Humor/comerdy [Ur-so - disaster of the universe, one I started then abandoned + Ruler of the rocket bears, 1930s movie serial spoof] felt my LFS never got much of a readership either as I think the Historical setting put a lot of my readers off/seemed a bit too high brow, latin stuff thrown in etc
Anyway my advice would be to try it, but don't try and run with the ball too much/get over ambitious [which you've admitted you sometimes do] aiming for a novel series etc, as I said my advice would be just try finishing the current Corps storyline/arc from the comic as written and see how you get on or "Feel" with that
I always thought Working bears would have worked well as a comic along with Micheal and Mitchell, always felt you could have done more with Muscle house and Apprentice no more as well. To be brutally honest Fallen Hero never grabbed me that much, seems a bit like a superhero rehash of HOL to me