busybee comics

It’s October. Well, it’s been October for a few days, but between being busy at GeekGirlCon and getting sick once again, I’m pretty far behind. Oh well.

Update: It’s over yonder.

It’s amazing how busy one can get when one is starting a new business, making a lot of music, and working on a bunch of games.

I do want to get back to both Lewi and Unity at some point though! Your patience is appreciated.

The best ways to follow for updates include (but are not limited to):

• Subscribing via RSS reader
• Subscribing via Patreon
• Subscribing via Comic Rocket
• Following on twitter or Facebook if you don’t mind missing every update because of the infrequency of the posts relative to the firehose of chatter on those sites

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.

Oops, I wanted to get this done by the start of the new year as is somewhat-traditional, but I was having some technical difficulties. And of course my day job has me pretty busy too. But I’ll try to do more comics this year! It’s at least in my plans, although we all know how those have a tendency to go…

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to really work on comics, between a bunch of software problems and my usual health problems. I’ve missed making comics though, but I’m just so tired all the time, and when I’m not tired I’m in pain and/or busy with stuff.

On the plus side, one of the things I’m busy with is getting ready for GeekGirlCon ‘19 – because I got a vendor table! See me at table 101 (hopefully I’ll have a map soon!) and buy my books and prints and enamel pins and stuff. Or poke me with a stick if I’ve fallen asleep!

Wow, I had a feeling that people would either really get or really not get this latest comic, but I had no idea how distinct the division would be.

I guess it really is true that there are two kinds of computer users…

It’s been a while since I’ve regularly done Good Things comics, or comics in general. I’m feeling generally better enough now that maybe this is something I can do.

I just need to remember that daily comics don’t need to be spectacularly-drawn, they just need to be drawn. And it’s okay to miss a day now and then.

And maybe I’ll get back into drawing Lewi and even Unity, both of which I really want to work on quite a lot.

I am filled with so many emotions right now and the deep-seated need to get this angry comic out of my system just barely overrode the excruciating pain I’m in right now, so you get shitty stick figures.

Wow, around two years since the last time I posted a Lewi comic. I finally got the itch again.

Wow it’s been way too long since I’ve worked on comics, and I seem to have forgotten how to draw. Today’s Lewi is something I’d actually drawn something like a year ago, and had about 95% finished for around 7 months. And this is a big turning point in the story.

I’m in pretty big amounts of pain right now though and I find it very difficult to focus on drawing things. I want to get back to drawing. But I just physically can’t, right now.

If any artists out there want to help out, maybe we could collaborate on getting this going at a better pace? I dunno. Right now it feels like even getting organized and writing stuff out for others to be able to work on is more than I can handle.

Fibromyalgia sucks, y'all.

I have just not had the determination to draw in a while and there’s a number of reasons for it. I thought this would feel good to get something done but it doesn’t look even remotely like how I wanted it to and I’m just so tired.

Mostly I miss using Photoshop, but Photoshop’s gotten pretty awful lately. I drew this in Clip Studio Paint which is good for some things but some of the tools are just so fussy. Maybe I need to bring it back to basics.

EDIT: Before recommending programs to me, please read these detailed blog posts I wrote:

• Drawing apps, still meh
• More rants about art programs
• My dream art program

In particular, please don’t recommend Krita or GIMP. I know a lot of people love those. I have very completely ruled them out for my needs.

It’s been too long since I’ve been able to make comics. I’m not happy with this one, either. I’m so out of practice, and I have no energy.

I want to be able to do this stuff again. I’m not sure how to get there from here.