Coming up in 2023 on this here Patreon! (Patreon)

While the $10 & $20 Patron tiers are getting their Exclusive Monthly Bonus Post today (featuring what might be the only completed comic page from now-on-hiatus project Rose & Lily: Flowers of Peril), figured I might as well show the rest of you  an incomplete post that I started writing at the end of December re: my 2023 plans for the ol' Patreon.

As we'll see, the text that follows has been somewhat overtaken by events in January.

(Incomplete post's text begins:)

Wellp, on top of the monthly list of content I rattled off yesterday, time to briefly yammer about some longer-term goals I have in mind for this here Patreon during the year of our Lord 2023.

*First off, I desperately need to stop spinning my g-d wheels—as I've essentially been doing ever since finishing primary work on Empowered vol.12 back in March, ouch—and nail down a digital workflow that allows for comics production with aesthetically acceptable output. I can loosely sketch in Clip Studio Paint via the ol' Cintiq all I want (though I still prefer working on the iPad, gotta admit), but I've drawn—ha ha!—no closer to having an approach enabling finished comic-page artwork. 

*Ah, but if/when the "aesthetically acceptable" threshold of digital production is reached, an equally problematic issue immediately arises: Whatever the heck kind of workflow I end up using, the results need to be fast. At all costs, I need to avoid replicating my old, maddeningly slow, analog-media approach of roughs >>> layouts >>> pencils >>> inks >>> graytones or color guides, as the month-long nightmare of that recent Harley Quinn short story showed me yet again.

TBH, my once-speedy Empowered workflow of scrawled pencils on copy paper long ago slowed to an unacceptably snail-like pace, as I'm pretty sure I never wrote and drew more than 20 pages in a month during the production of both volumes 11 and 12. (Really, I rarely cleared 15 pages per month, to be even more honest.) Compare that with the semi-recent experience of Empowered vols. 8 and 9, where I occasionally plowed through upwards of 40pp/month(!), albeit under much more favorable work circumstances.

While I feel that my actual Empowered artwork improved considerably during vols. 11 & 12, the corresponding dropoff in speed of production rendered the series less than viable in its old, 200+ page Original Graphic Novel format. I need to find some g-d way of returning to my earlier days of speedier workflow for future projects, presumably by streamlining my narrative and artistic process, and also by looking into less time-consuming, higher-frequency comic formats. (More on this matter down the road.)

(Incomplete post's text ends.)

The main event that overtook this dormant draft post during January was the spontaneous generation of new(-ish) project The Chaste and the Chained, which is now assuming the role of digital workflow test comic as addressed above—and, alas, callously elbowing aside former test comic Rose & Lily: Flowers of Peril.

I'm planning to start cranking out the first Chaste pages pretty shortly, as soon as I can finish grinding my way through another Harley Quinn variant cover that, I hope, won't be quite as time-consuming at this fall's HQ short story.

Not yet sure how those pages will be serialized here. As the comic will be a "damsel-in-distress"-adjacent fantasy project, the "DiD" pages will probably be posted under the $5+ tier, but I miiiiight post some of the non-DiD pages to the $3 tier.

Other than that, more of the usual next month: three more Life Drawing posts as usual, s'more Work Stages on both that 2013 A+X story and the recent HQ short, a Vintage Con Sketches dealie, something videogamey from the PSM era, probably 3-4 posts total in the DiD vein (counting Chaste), and I'm not sure what else. Could be another Failed-Project Friday outing, that Dirty Pair statue sketchbook, or a text piece, or something else entirely.

And now, back to inking Harley and hyenas. Thanks for your generous support, and I'll talk at ya later, okay?