Entry #8

It's me, once again.

Really close to the finish line with BWUMP, at last. Honestly I did NOT expect it to take so long to get done, even if I always intended to just chip away at it as I worked on other stuff.

Now I'm really itching to get my full attention back into Staff Room Trio, so I'm gonna speed up the process a wee bit. I'll try to get the next part done within the next 2 weeks. Lofty goal for my slow ass, I know...

Anyhow, not much to say about the entry itself that I haven't expressed on prior parts. I got really curious to see if I could fit Renée and all her co-workers in one single confined spot and the elevator came up as the perfect scenario.

A scene with 4 characters talking at once is a lot harder to balance than one would think. I kinda cheated a bit by splitting it all up into separate chunks where only 2 chars are exchanging bubbles at a time. hahaha.

The art was the most complex panel in this entire series to date, but I also had such a good damn time with it that I really did not mind all the energy spent on it! I think this one stands up well without quite dialogue, too.

The files unfortunately were way too big for Substar's size limit so I had to compress them a little. Still, I uploaded them in a MEGA folder HERE, for whoever cares about having the highest res of an artwork available.

But yeah, that is all for now. 
See you guys soon.

Entry #7

Finally here, and only...5 weeks later than intended!!!
Maaaan. this one was tough!

I had a lot of troubles with the art side of things. I think It is easily the most I spent rendering anything in this whole series. Each panel took as much time as I'd spent making...one of the earlier entries, lol.  I just kept adding on more layers and thinking 'hmmmm, could be meatier', and then work on it for another 40 minutes. XP.

This thing was genuinelly sitting open on clip studio pretty much finished for so long, but then I kept fiddling with random details because I couldnt' settle on them, and of course that is an endless cycle you just sorta have to force yourself out of.

I do think this borders on severely overworked, though. As I did with the dialogue, I'll try to keep things cleaner and to the point with the next entry. There is really no reason why I should fry my neurons working on any single page of a series that is supposed to be me taking a break from the main projects. hahahahah.

Wabutt really helped me out these past few weeks. Both with feedback as well as with being there as friend. I have utmost respect for him. Thanks dude.

As mentioned prior on bsky, Big things are brewing... I'm intending to stop being so sporadic with updating my works during summer, as I'm planning to sit down and hard focus on getting things done. Not quite settled on how I'll be tackling the comics yet but talks with peeps have given me a few ideas to consider. But my main goal is to have at least one of them fully published before the year is over! 

Anyhow, enough yap-fest for now. Thank you everyone as always for being around and enjoying this insane shite. Hope to see you very soon. 

Cheers

Entry #6 Part 1 and 2!

This one had a slightly longer dialogue that was full of the usual snarky back and forth between characters, but I chose to truncate it a wee bit as per my previously stated goal of unclogging my pages HAH. I do think there is value in knowing when to say only enough. Though, I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the end result here. 

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the overall dialogue/style, if there is anything worth mentioning that is ofc. It is defo the one area I wish to I improve on the most before returning to the bigger comic projects once this sequence is over.

To compensate for less dialogue, I put extra time on the art. May be a tad overcooked, but hey... I had some fun. Progress was actually quite smooth, bar the usual redos/polish because I can't help myself. I've attached the oldest wips I have of this one as a funny extra goodie.

I'm building up the courage to tackle the upcoming pages because things only derail further from here into nonsense LMAO

As always, I hope you guys are doing well!

Entry #5

WEEW. There we go. I did not expect this one to take this long to finish, and...to be honest, it really didn't. #4 was still by far the most troublesome entry in the project by a good margin.

This one was more of a case of December hitting, all the holiday events going around and then me completely losing energy to work on things.

Development on this one was just funny. It was one of the very first panels I inked, and as such, it was also one I kept coming back to and adding new little details to.

Initially, it was only going to feature Renée (the possum), with only Isabel (the bunny)'s  arm coming out from offscreen to hold the phone, but I was really struggling to figure out a natural position for that, so then the goal post moved to including all of her, which was a bit of a crapshoot because I really wanted to feature her fatass, but she was starting to eat up the focus of the image LOL

I eventually settled on the current pose as a good enough compromise in a very 'butt visible from the front - - still cute' way...heh. Not to worry, though. There will be more opportunities to see the shorty buns in their full glory soon enough >:)

Also, as much of a blast as I had seeing how far I can push the interweaving speech bubble style, this is defo gonna be like...future reference for when it's too much. It is quite chaotic by design as I wanted to convey multiple chars talking at once, but it's not lost on me that it can be a bit disorientating too.

Upcoming entries will go for way less dense dialogue (hopefully), letting the art breathe a bit more. We'll also finally be seeing the set of brand new pages amended into the sequence after the release of entry #1!

I'm including a few extra bits here too. I think out of all the other pages, this one's art stands the best on its own (not a bad or good thing, just...interesting). I went thru a lot of different comebacks for Naomi, trying to balance of funny and lewd as I figured out her personality.

Overall, really proud of of this one (hence the unreasonably large ramble lol).

Enough wall-of-texting, though XD. Hope you are all doing well.
Cheers!

Entry #4 (as in, 4real this time! hahahaha)

At long last, the true 4th part of the story! Won't repeat what I already said in the previous post, but hoo boy was this one trouble. I'm glad to finally get it done.

I'd hoped to keep a steady, weekly update rate with the series, with most of the work already been done before I even started posting it here, but then the work on the addons happened and it really set me back. lol.

Anyhow. I'm not 100% happy with how it came together, but I also know if I chased that perfection I'd just be a goner (again...xP). I'm still proud of what is there, nonetheless, even if just as a symbol of me overcoming that hell of a slump during november-december! 

For me, at least, it is definitely am improvement over the old one (#3.5). I channeled my hatred of printers into it!

Hope you enjoy, and if this is my last post this year, I really wish you a happy holiday!

Entry #3.5 (AKA scrapped #4)

Advanced apologies for the wall of text. This is the type of insane rambling I made this page for after all!!

This damned page has given me so much trouble you wouldn't believe!
Basically: This was part of the aaaancient drafts I did 2-3 years ago, and the second shot of the char that I inked for the overall sequence, so I've had plenty of time to stare at it if you couldn't tell :P.

The issue came when it was time to finally letter it, and I just...didn't really enjoy the lil blurb of dialogue I left aside for it since those OG drafts (I write a lot of my dialogue ideas down into a .txt file, many of them years old before I ever do anythign with them, hehehe).

I felt like, after adding in the new pages to the story, it just didn't feel as inspired, and then I got stuck for like 2 weeks trying to figure out anything else to replace the old dialogue. Nothing.

Spent some time fiddling with it, adding shading, changing the pose slightly, just sorta hoping I'd get something going. Nothing!

It felt like sort of a dead-end for me, so I decided to do the 100% reasonable person thing and add yet even more work to my plate by drawing a completely* new Entry #4! (It's pretty much finished btw, just missing some final touches. Hoping to get it done and uploaded this friday, as a weird lil post christmas gift :P )

Did I just spend the good part of a month mulling over something that is by all means NOT that deep? oh, absolutely. I guess I'm just stupid like that. 

I'm sorry for the dead-silence. This was a rather frustrating slump. I'm way happier with how the new one is shaping up, so I can't wait to show it. Hopefully now work will progress more smoothly going forward.

Happy Holidays to everyone, and see you soon!