September 26th, 2017

oh gosh ITS TIME TO START THE NEXT CHAPTER, HERE WE!!! GO!!!!!!

So, in the interest of full disclosure, over the break I:
- caught up on patreon rewards
- finished the script for chapter 5
- finished thumbnails for chapter 5
- drew this
- began work on the chapter 4 book

THINGS I DID NOT DO:
- finish formatting the chapter 4 book
- finish editing the thumbnails for chapter 5
- get any kind of buffer at all

So! I'M GONNA DO MY BEST!! The script took longer to wrangle than I expected, but now I'm really excited about this chapter and I hope you guys enjoy it!
In the meantime, I'll do my best to get the next book put together, and I'll keep you guys posted here and on twitter if it looks like anything's gonna be late.;u;

For now, you can vote for a bigger version of the title page image. :>

Vote Incentive for This Comic.

Comment by Kaya

Hey, welcome back!

As usual, super excited for this comic. :D

But just out of curiosity: You've been working on this comic a long time! Any thoughts you'd like to share on how comicking has improved your art or storytelling abilities? Is it something you'd recommend? Asking for a "friend" who's interested in starting a comic to hopefully start consistently improving. ;D

Reply

posted at 4:55pm on September 29th, 2017

Reply by Shazzbaa

You can definitely see how much my art has changed over the course of the comic just by looking back at some of the older pages, but here's another pretty decent before & after -- I originally drew the characters on the top banner rotation before I started the comic, then redrew them a little bit after coming off the long hiatus!

I do feel like a lot of storytelling things, both long term and short term, kind of "clicked" more after I started trying to tell a story. I started Runewriters with like... half of the script for Chapter One written, and loose guidelines for the rest. Now, I like to have an entire chapter scripted before I start on it, because it helps me make sure the whole thing works in terms of pacing and information. I was wondering a bit ago, "would it have been better to wait to start RW until I had the whole first chapter scripted?" and I think, for me, it wouldn't have done me much good -- because before I made Chapter One, I didn't really have a good handle on what I needed or how to catch things in the script that would need to be tweaked. It was making that first chapter that taught me what to focus on and improve for the next time!

Anyway, for comics as a way to improve -- I'd absolutely recommend it, but I'd also make sure to warn that it's a lot of work!!
But I definitely believe the best way to get better at comicking is by comicking, and there are a lot of little ways comics really help you improve a lot -- comics involve a LOT of drawing, and drawing something over and over from panel to panel. Comics also require you to draw whatever the story needs, so I've ended up tackling poses, expressions, creatures, environments that I normally would be reluctant to draw.

A lot of folks recommend a shorter comic with a definite endpoint as your first comic (my first was technically As We Were, which was 100 pages long), and a lot of this is just because you'll be learning so fast that it's really common to feel like you want to change things and try something new, or that the new work doesn't match the old work anymore. But I think it depends on what you're passionate about, because honestly, it's hard to stick with a webcomic you don't care a lot about, and if what you're really passionate about is a longer story, I think that's okay as long as you're okay with the comic changing and growing along with you!!

TL;DR, yes! I think making a comic has improved my art and storytelling a LOT! I think making a comic stretches a lot of good art muscles and is absolutely a good way to stretch yourself and learn! It's also a heck of a lot of work, so don't feel bad if it's harder than expected or if you find you need to make changes to how you work along the way!

Reply

posted at 1:57am on October 1st, 2017

Reply by PK

1. Yay, you're back!

2. I love your creation-encouragement posts.

Reply

posted at 7:52am on October 4th, 2017

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