I finally got all the programs I need for decent comicing up and running again!

I wonder if this means that I'll actually start posting things again ... ?

Hey guys,

I've been producing a lot of art for my comic at a quick rate. (stuff like NPCs, backgrounds, props etc) so I have a good basis to work from once I start producing new pages, and I actually figured you guys might be able to help me with something.

As I said before, rather than immediately jumping into a full fledged reset I'd like to tackle a few smaller short stories to really experiment with, see it as interesting little tales that are so short and inconsequential that minor flaws or me not enjoying them utmost won't be as important, as they're short anyway.

(think around 10 pages for shortest, 40 or so for the absolute longest)

either way, I just want to poll some interest to see what sort of thing you'd like to see me handle.

Feel free to suggest anything along the lines of:

1. genre

2. type of protagonist

3. moral/topic

4. "setting" (although I'll probably still have it take place in the aptGG world, it is a world with a lot of diversity in settings so most things could work)

5. short stories based on something minor in the comic you would like to see explored. (as long as it's something that works for a short story, hahah)

etc.

I'm not entirely sure if I'll end up using anything, but as you guys are my readers, I'm interested in what you'd like to see me do now that I'm open for some alternative stuff.

p.s.

I'm not gonna do a romantic horror about eloy as a drunk cowboy looking for the true meaning of love.

Windows 7 MS Paint is an abomination.

Sincerely,
Neorice

Yo!

I've been thinking for a long time what to post here, the only real reason is because I didn't want to prematurely say anything I'd completely change my mind on a short while later.

I'll get straight to the point, because this is probably what you all want to know:

Am I quitting the comic?

I'd answer with a simple yes or no as that'd be the most direct answer, but truth to be told, if the answer was anything that simple I would've given it to you all 2-3 months ago.

I'll be perfectly honest, the comic, in it's current format, is dead to me.

But at the same time I love doing comics and I love a large part of the characters & the underlying story.

Now I'll explain what's going on:

Truth to be told, I've had desires to quit my comic at least 7 times during the course of it's life because of unresolvable problems with art, plot or related issues.

Most of you probably saw these moments as "just another art change", but truthfully, this wasn't just me experimenting just for the fun of it, it almost always had to do with a big problem.

I'll be completely honest in saying that as things are now, I have almost no motivation to continue with my story as is, it's been stressful and fairly unenjoyable for me at too many moments, and the plotline I've set out really wouldn't go anywhere interesting for years.

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Either way, the important part is obviously, what happens next?

I've been working on new material all the while that I haven't updated my comic (barring 1 week due to sickness & a second week due to my computer being busted -_-) to get an idea of what sort of art style I'm comfortable with without the pressure of having to update soon making me pick a bad/problematic style just so I can get new pages out sooner.

I've also reconsidered a few important things related to the plot & actual stories.

Namely:

1. can I actually manage to update 3 seperate stories at the same time without it negatively affecting the progression of all 3 in a bad way.

2. what are the most effective ways to tell the seperate stories in a way that lead to more enjoyable individual pages.

As things stand now if I continue my comic it'll be under a few conditions, and most importantly, it will almost be guaranteed to be a complete reset of some sort, because I can't possibly enjoy going on with what I have now.

One condition has been largely met already, namely, I've figured out a style for the sprites & characters that I enjoy super much, and I feel that after working with it quietly for months, it's possibly the first style that works in every possible situation I'd want to use them for.

A few conditions that I'm still trying to master are:

1. I want to be able to make decent combat scenes that aren't a confusing mess.

I've found 1 or 2 methods to portray stuff like punches, attacks in a clear manner so far, but honestly, almost any time a lot of action happened in the comic, in more than half the cases it became hard as hell to tell what was going on, this actively made me avoid making battle scenes too elaborate or intense, as I simply wasn't capable of doing it justice.

For the type of story I want to tell I actually have to learn how to handle this in a satisfying way.

2. I want to learn how to make clean, interesting & easy to produce backgrounds.

This partly goes hand in hand with the combat point, but during the creation of my comic backgrounds often fell in two camps. "awesome but way too time consuming" or "okay but filled with perspective mistakes".

This isn't because I don't know perspective, but because to produce decent backgrounds at a good enough speed to updated several times a week, I had to let things lie left and right just to get them done in time.

If there was a critical mistake or some perspective problem simply to get it out easier, I didn't have the time to redo the entire thing, because without the background I couldn't start on any other part of my page.

If I find a decent method to quickly make impressive backgrounds with minimal or no glaring errors, this alone will increase my capacity to properly update my comic in the quality I desire.

3. I've been restructuring the plot so I can emphasize a few important base points that really fell flat during my comic's first run.

I love doing fun stuff, I love working with things like crazy animals, weird adventures and strong but short bursts of story, yet I ended up doing almost exactly the opposite in how I handled the actual execution of my story.

I won't reveal too much related to plot issues, but this is an important point I need to figure out before I continue.

Now I'm sure a lot of you are wondering "okay so what does this mean ? you're quitting and might come back some day?", which is a method other authors have sometimes suggested/relied on in the past, and in my experience it's very questionable, as a lot of them just flat out don't return.

At the same time I really feel like I can't continue with my story as_is for the simple reason that this summer I've finally gotten to the point where I lost nearly all interest.

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I do have a suggestion for the comic/site that doesn't revolve around "just be patient and some day I might return"

namely: I can't bloody practice to make my comic better, unless I make actual comics; so to me it seems almost entirely pointless to just stop producing anything until I'm "ready", that just won't work.

I'd like to make a lot of practice comics to test out ideas, without the constraints of having my past plot and comics weight down my ambition and creativity.

For this reason I want to use the website to post a lot of practice pages about whatever I feel like that are largely disconnected from what I've made before.

To put it simply, I want to focus on stuff like single page gag strips, short adventures and short stories that are all over the place in content and "setting" to give me a much better idea of what problems I do and don't have.

Most of these will probably star familiar characters, though as I mentioned, it just won't be connected to the previous pages, as they'll be purely for personal practice.

Either way, apologies for the long post, as your reward for going through it all, here's a little picture to provide an example of sorts of the things I've been working on in private:

Either way, I'll probably post some more in the future, if any of you have questions I'll answer them in my next newspost (or in comments, whatever)

Talk to you guys later!

(By the way, I approve all of your comments personally, so whoever pretended to be me to say the comic was dead, shame on you, I totally saw that.)

I'll actually have something informative to post later this week, but my bloody computer is at the store for repairs right now, so I'm writing this on my tiny slow netbook. :(

Apologes for the long moment of silence, but I didn't want to prematurely post anything I might regret.

Kind regards,
Neorice

Some of you are probably wondering where I am;

I can tell you that I'm still alive, but in a bit of a pickle regarding some comic-related things.

The big reason I haven't posted any messages about this yet is, truth to be told, I'm not entirely sure what to tell you guys yet as I'm really figuring out how to handle some things.

I'll probably keep you up to date as I continue, but there's really not enough work done to say anything specific.

Either way, sorry for the very vague message; but I feel like a sign of life is better than anything, right?

hahahahah.

Toodles.

Sup guys, I'm back from France!

I noticed I skipped a page in my buffer, so I uploaded page 287 retroactively today, my apologies for the inconvenience.

I'll try to get back to a regular updating schedule soon, but there's a few things I gotta work on before
I can produce more pages.

I hope the filler pages weren't too bothersome, hahahah.

Kind regards,
Guido Bos

I'm probably gonna take the last 3 days of my week to focus entirely on my portfolio, as I'm supposed to hand it in by Friday.

So I don't think I'll be able to update again until the weekend starts; Just informing you as the daily updates might've left you a tiny bit spoiled.

If I get my portfolio done I should have A LOT of extra free time though, then I can really go crazy with the comic again, yay.

Peace out!

For those who haven't noticed, the comic's updating again.

Still working on homework, how dreadful;
I wonder if I can get enough done this week
to start my comic back up next week, it might
be possible..

but only if things go well!

In other news,

Did any of you follow E3 this year?

Peace,
Guido Bos