Sneak preview of my page roughs for a new story introducing THE CHASTE AND THE CHAINED! (Patreon)

So!

My final task during a relatively productive June was to rough out and script a new story to serve as an introductory chapter of fantasy "romantic action-comedy" The Chaste and the Chained. After cranking out a scrawled first draft of page roughs and working up a finished script with dialogue and panel descriptions, I went back and recopied the roughs in the "quad thumbnail" format I've used off and on over the last decade or two of sporadically writing comics for other artists to draw:

 Note, by the way, that this version of an introductory story features a setting and selection of Elf-distressing antagonists that is thematically similar but much easier to draw than what I rendered myself in a series of art tests for The Chaste and the Chained last summer:

 I currently have no idea who might end up drawing this series (though I have a few possibilities in mind), but he or she will definitely face an easier artistic challenge than I did!

After spending an alarming 2:15 worth of precious work time recopying and redrawing those first three roughs, I switched to a B&W, pencil-only format for the next four pages:

...which took an only slightly less alarming 1:45 to crank out, with the next set consuming a similar amount of work time:

 Ah, but what began to belatedly dawn on me is that this format of recopied "quad thumbnails" is simply not viable in the (admittedly unlikely but) happy event that I wind up having to write multiple titles on a regular basis as well as writing and drawing another series myself. Blowing most of 2-4 workdays on this somewhat redundant work stage (which I wouldn't and don't get paid for, BTW) would be a luxury I won't be able to afford, even though I find the results pleasing and (usually) fun to work on.

Looks like I'll just have to run my initial, much "rougher" page roughs by the eventual artist(s) to save work time, which is more or less what I did for the first issue of other fantasy project Godplayers (aka Unidentified Fantasy Offering); note that I'll be previewing some of those roughs here later on this summer.

Anyhoo, a new and improved 31-page introductory story for The Chaste and the Chained is now pretty much finished and ready to roll (in script and page rough form, that is), so I can go bug potential artists about the project. Yay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?