Backstage Pass #11 (Patreon)

On this edition of Backstage Pass, I’ll be talking about…

My end of the year reflection for OBT! I think I speak for a lot of folks when I say 2020 was not what we expected.

When this year began, I admittedly was a bit worried about the direction the comic was gonna take. After all, I began the year doing a lot of revisions to the beginning of the story- I entirely rewrote Chapter 1, added a prologue, and did a partial redraw of Chapter 2. While I was confident that this would help the health of the overall writing in the comic, I did also consider just throwing everything in the trash and starting over again. I decided to plug on though and at least get to a point where other teammates came into the story- and I’m glad I did, because as I get further along I’m not nearly as worried about my writing near the start of the comic.

There are still some parts of the story that I’m not 100% satisfied with- I worry that Requiem’s introduction may have been rushed, and not very thoroughly thought through. But, as folks say in the comic-making business say, you gotta aim for finished and not perfect. I can always smooth over awkward introductions later. Something I have been much more satisfied with though is my lettering and overall look of pages. This is in part due to me finding better resources to achieve the look I want out of the comic, and also in part due to more practice overall.

Something else I’ve been happy with is my current updating schedule! Because of it, I get to feel like I’m trekking through the story at a comfortable pace. Doing the math, I’d be able to complete somewhere close to at least 2 chapters a year! This is exciting for me considering I’m several years into the reboot at this point with only 3 chapters to show for it. Though I will blame some of that on the pandemic- I had to take multiple hiatuses I didn’t want to this year due to life circumstances.

This upcoming year, I look forward to updating more frequently and improving my workflow! I’m also excited to introduce new characters and environments- Mt. Bristle is a bit bland on basis of being a sort of barren mountain.