What's Next?

Now that Exorcism Academy is wrapped up (wow!?) I'm reviewing my to-do list of things I would like to tackle first!

TLDR;

A clay project, finishing current Alternate Universe comics and starting Grant & Grimm comic, plans to refresh my website a little bit, chatting about logistics of printing a book, future comic idea mention, aaaand I have a cold (⁠-⁠_⁠- ;)

A little guy made out of clay

I've been dreaming about creating some of my characters in Super Sculpey clay for YEARS now, and just haven't been able to fit that into my schedule - but I want to make time now! If I could craft myself an AL to stand on my desk, I'd be thrilled. I also have it in my head that I could make different face plates and hands etc to swap out? Why I have to make everything three levels more difficult than it needs to be is a mystery. Even so, I don't know how well that will work with baked clay, it may be too brittle, but I've been googling and it seems there are tiny magnets that you can embed in your clay to fulfill this purpose. This is also how I learned that apparently, you can de-magnetize a magnet if you put it in the oven? Who knew?! It seems better to press the magnet into the clay and then remove it before baking. I'm sure like with most things, some trial and error will be necessary to come up with a nice final result. These are the sorts of things people learn tools like Blender for, and 3D print afterward, but I'm extremely hard headed and I really wanna make it with clay. I fully expect my first attempt to look like Al's very first illusion bed: wonky but perhaps charming? (ﾟ⊿ﾟ)

The return of the alternate universes

I still have a bunch of alternate universe "porn with a crumb of plot" comic ideas I haven't done yet, the Grant x Grimm canon history comic, kinktober prompts I would really, really like to get to in October, and some fan comics I've been thinking about on the list. Grant & Grimm are next in line immediately after I finish the current ongoing AUs: AU Comic #9: Experts Only (C-Class tier) and AU Basement Edition #4: Happy Anniversary (B-Class tier) that have been sitting on the back burner when I was focused 100% on the main comic. I only have a few more pages to do for both, and then I'm gonna get into the Grimm x Grant origin story! The script for that is already done. I also wanna do a Dirty Old Man Yaoi AU of "What if Grant wasn't emotionally constipated and these two were a pair this whole time" (⁠´⁠ε⁠｀⁠ ⁠) So many comics, too little time!

Giving the website a rinse

It's probably time for a slight redesign of some sort for my website now that the comic is complete, so my upcoming projects can take a more central spot. Has the time arrived for me to finally learn something about CSS?! (⊙_⊙;) I still have to decide if I want to put the blog front and center, and I wanna do some fiddling with the webcomic plug-in to see how I can handle doing previews for those upcoming short comics. I have the option to make a staging site so I can try things out in there without messing with the live production site, but I've never tried it before and am unsure how to set that up. Fingers crossed I don't bring the entire site crashing down on it's face in the process, haha.

The print job

With regard to printing Exorcism Academy - I have a feeling it may take me a while to do the pre-press work as I have to learn how Affinity Publisher works! I bought the Affinity suite when it was on sale a year or two ago, and haven't had a need to use it until now. I'll probably also need to do an editing pass for spelling errors, continuity errors in the art, etc, because I'm sure there's quite a few in there ಠ⁠﹏⁠ಠ. Once that's done, I'll have to check in with the two printers I know are okay with adult content and get a quote. I know the cost is gonna be higher than I would like since I have gradients of red mixed in all over the place in a mostly grayscale comic, which unfortunately bumps it into a full color print process. If I broke all the red out into spot color, that might be cheaper, but it would make things like the red aura of the exorcist weapons look quite different and it would take me a long time to edit. These are all things I'm putting into the Lessons Learned bucket for the next time I make a comic that might be headed for print! For now though, I've packed everything up as is into PDFs here on Patreon at the B-Class tier in the Collections library.

Oh my god, another idea

I also have ...uh...another idea for a long comic, lol. It's way too early to nail down details - I'm still in the very beginning brainstorming stages. I have notes with ideas and scene snippets and vague character designs and random dialogue written down, but it's all vibes and no substance right now. I don't even have a strong grasp of what the characters would look like outside of one face, lol. A comics mutual had recommended I check out the book "The Anatomy of Story" by John Truby and I've just started it - I know there's always room for me to improve my storytelling, and make it as strong as it can be, so I'm looking forward to whatever insights I can pick up here! I'm definitely not ready to launch back into another huge comic journey for a while, so I was thinking I could share my thoughts on this as it evolves in my brain? I've never really shared a whole lot of my brainstorm/evolution of a comic story before, and I'm not sure if that's something anyone would be interested in, but I think I'd like to post about it as it blossoms (slowly)! (´▽｀)

Life in general

I've caught a cold, and I'm not being brave about it at all. How can I be simultaneously sweaty and have chills? How can my nose be so completely blocked that no air may pass and yet still be running? (⁠｡⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠) Bad engineering, I tell you! I hope to be feeling better by this weekend to resume inking the current AUs.

Until next time, take care and be well!