busybee comics

I know you’re sick of hearing this but I’m sick of having to write this. Ugh. I just want to make comics.

So, wow, a lot’s been going on in my life.

I’ve finally come out at large about my gender stuff and am properly, publicly transitioning. This has had the interesting side effect of greatly reducing (although not eliminating) my wrist pain — turns out a lot of it was just due to my constant internal tension! Same with my anxiety! GO FIGURE!

I’m also really busy at work, both with a bunch of stuff regarding transition and with my actual day job. And I’m feeling great.

I also have so many other projects that take precedence over comics right now. Which sucks because I still really want to get back to comics (especially Lewi!) but at least it’s sucking for a generally positive reason now.

Thank you everyone who’s still holding on and checking for updates. (I assume you are just still subscribed to my RSS feed or something.)

(Oh also you can feel free to read an article about my medical transition, if you like.)

But I think it’s more important for my mental health that I work on comics instead of simply lamenting the fact I’m not working on comics.

Hopefully Friday will be the last strip of chapter 3, and then I’ll take another little break before starting on chapter 4. That’s where stuff starts to get pretty intense.

Originally this strip (which seems to have turned into a page) was going to be the end of chapter 3, but then I decided that the few strips after it make for a better end-of-chapter story beat. Which is how I’d originally planned it, really, so it’s less a change in plans and more a reversion. Hopefully this means chapter 3 will be done by the end of next week instead.

Also! My Patreon is pretty lonely right now. Feel free to give it some hugs and attention if you like.

Lewi #42 ends chapter 3 (for reals this time). I need to take another break from cartooning because of wrists. But at least this leaves the story not hanging in the middle of a story beat.

there’s so much iw ant to work on but i just can’t do it right now

my wrists hurt and my body hurts and if eel like i’m falling apart and i’m so tired and

i’m sorry

The problem I always seem to run into when I’m making comics is I get it in my brain that I need to finish a comic the same night I start it, so with my wrist issues I always set myself up for failure already. What I keep on telling myself and others is that if you spend only an hour or two a day working on a comic, even if you don’t finish it, that’s one or two hours more than you’d spent previously.

So, I’m taking my own advice, and spending one or two hours on comics every day. And it’s certainly changed my process a lot already — I’m thinking further ahead on the story and not worrying about getting a comic out the door right away, and for once I actually have a strip-by-strip breakdown script (although that’s more a result of how when I was first drawing #43 I recognized a story inconsistency due to my usual seat-of-the-pants story editing, and then realized I could rearrange some stuff to make certain things much more impactful and I wanted to figure out where what was #43 would now go in the story sooner rather than later).

Anyway! This is as good a time as any to plug my Patreon again, because patrons pledging $3 or more get to see the progress on comics as I complete a daily chunk of work! So, if you like seeing process and/or progress, that’s a good way to get at least a rough idea. And sometimes I post my breakdown scripts there, as I did for chapter 4!

I’m doing Inktober again, and this year I’m going to probably use the official prompts to design new species until I end up just doing more Undertale fanart.

I’m also going to keep on working on Lewi, of course; when a Lewi comic is ready it’ll preempt a post of Inktober, and I’ll just have to double Inktober posts up or something. Or maybe I could just post multiple things for a single day; technically my CMS supports it, but the results are kind of inelegant. Wait no, my CMS only supports it on archive pages and the RSS feed, it won’t work on the front page. Wellp.

Or, judging by how it went last year, I’ll only remember to post like three of them here and the rest will just have to be seen on my Tumblr.

(I swear I’m going to get around to making a better CMS for my site someday!)

Update: Inktober stuff now lives in the inktober section

Wrists are hurting as usual but I’m working on rearranging some lifestyle stuff to make it work out. Follow my Patreon if you want to know more!

As you might guess from today’s guest comic, I participated in the Web Comic Secret Santa Exchange this year. You can see my contribution over at TRU-Life Adventures by Andrew Rothery.

Also! I haven’t had much chance to work on comics lately but soon I’m going to have plenty of time to do so. More news to follow!

So, today’s comic ends chapter 4 of Lewi. But as chapter 5 starts, I’m also beginning another sort of chapter: I’ve left my job to work on my creative pursuits full-time! You can read about it over on my Patreon.

And on that note, now would be a really good time to consider backing me on Patreon.