busybee comics

Between working on like three games at the same time, having to support some folks on long-running projects, and working on reviewing, modifying and enhancing my keyboard, not to mention having way too many music projects that I’m Not Getting Done, I’m kiiiiinda too busy to work on comics. I do, however, have a 6-page manga-style zine comic that I did for my drawing group; I can’t post it publicly yet but rumor has it that patrons might have early access to it…

Oh also! My games and I will be at Emerald City Comicon 2018 at the Indie Games Showcase! It is on the second floor North gallery. If you’re going to be at ECCC, stop on by! My current scheduled booth times are:

• Thursday, March 1, 2—8 PM
• Friday, March 2, 5—8 PM
• Saturday, March 3, 8—11 PM

Anyway! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it’s all for good reasons, I promise.

Oops, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a comic. Sorry about that. I’ve been pretty busy with lots of things.

For a few examples:

• I’ve been doing a lot of work with the augmented reality startup
• I’ve been working on a new website CMS (that I hope to move my website over to soon! because holy cow do I hate dealing with Movable Type anymore)
• Been doing some game development (I don’t think I mentioned CATcher here yet, that one’s a lot of fun)

In any case, I really appreciate your ongoing support. Even if you can’t help fund my Patreon or buy my items for sale, just knowing that there are people out there who are interested in my work does a lot to keep me going. Spreading the word would mean so much to me.

Things look different around here, don’t they?

This website is now powered by Publ, a CMS I’ve been building specifically to suit my needs for content management. There’s still a lot to do on the other site sections, but the comics section is pretty complete! Feel free to poke around and enjoy the hopefully more-intuitive multi-series navigation and the cleaner look to everything.

Oh yeah, my new CMS means I can post newsposts without needing an accompanying comic now! I don’t need to be beholden to bad habits caused by my old site’s limitations!

Okay, so, I was doing really well with actually getting comics made, and then as always happens whenever I say something silly like “I seem to be getting back in the groove of making comics” my body decides to remind me that I can’t have nice things. For now I’m just focusing on things that will potentially lead to actual income, namely the startup and on music, in particular working on a few video game OSTs. Since that stuff is paid work you’ll need to follow my Patreon (generally at the $3 level) to get previews of that stuff before it goes public. And I feel like I’m making some pretty good stuff!

I absolutely do want to be working on comics as well but it’s just not in the cards at the moment. But I’m feeling okay about that for now, because I have enough good stuff going on even if I’m not able to work on all the things I want to work on.

Fortunately, I have friends who are taking the time to remind me that my comics can wait and that I do so many things as it is.

That said: If there are any folks out there who want to work with me on my comics (Lewi, in particular), please get in touch! I have a lot of plot planned out and at least the next few strips' worth of scripts written, and while I can’t actually pay anything it’d be cool to work in collaboration with someone for a while.

Anyway! Hopefully I can get back to this when I’m ready to, because I am still really excited about these stories, and I hope other people are too.

(For what it’s worth, on the Mankoski pain scale I’m currently floating between 6 and 7.)

I’ve really gotten out of the groove of drawing. Fortunately, Inktober is about to happen! I no longer post that on my comic section, though, as there’s a specific gallery for that now. If you’re subscribed just to my comics feed, consider subscribing to my whole-site feed instead!

Anyway, hopefully this year I’ll get more done than last year. We’ll see!

This is possibly the longest comics break I’ve taken? The annoying thing is I’ve had the next several sketched out for a while but I just kind of hit a wall, and right now I’m not fond of what I’d written so I’m probably gonna go back and rewrite it or something.

Of course the weird paradoxical thing about having a new full-time job is that I’ll probably spend more time working on this than when I was trying to make this my full-time job. That’s burnout for you!

Who cares about Black Friday? Not me!

Let’s have a Plaid Friday sale instead. 25% off all physical books until Monday, with promo code plaidfriday. Or for direct links:

• Unity book 1
• Unity book 2
• Lewi book 1

While we’re at it, discount code plaidfriday is also good for 25% off at my Bandcamp, for those who enjoy my music.