🎃October Report

Hello everyone and HAPPY NOVEMBER🍂! Thank you for your support and extra thanks to everyone that became a new patron in October! I love seeing new and familiar faces in the comments. 💖 I hope everyone had a fun Halloween and thank you all for indulging in my witch fixation this month!😌🖤 Please have a seat and I'll get right into the report.📊

4️⃣/4️⃣ October Goals Complete🎉

✅ CYOA Pt 16
✅ Libby & Holly Ch3 Complete
✅ New Fanart Poll
✅Physical Store Open

I'm happy to report that in spite of the late start this month we were able to get back on track with the goals! 

Out of habit I start a lot of sentences with "I" but in the future it'll probably shift to "we" more often because 🐰Kit has been instrumental in keeping things consistent and even growing.

I want to give more opportunities for Kit and other artists to contribute on projects and I'll do my best to highlight that as it happens.⭐ I never want to stop making art myself but directing projects that are too big for me to handle myself would be something kinda special to do in the future.

✅ CYOA Pt 16

 Speaking of things getting too big 👀--this little R.E. Howard-inspired project has really ballooned over time into something much more substantial.😏 But seriously, I think it's stuck around because the creative challenge is a healthy one for me.

I've learned that I need to design my work around a balance of strict consistency and open free time and improvisation to play with. I like that the CYOA has let me learn a bit more about improvising a story and just accepting what happens. I think fighting perfectionism in little ways like this is really healthy for me.

This month's improvisation was changing the brush I'm using. When I use too mono-width of brushes it can make me start to press to hard, which hurts my hand, so I'm switching to something more calligraphic.

It's so slight that most likely nobody will notice anyways ;) I also learned I gotta get better at drawing large breasts, this update was a pleasant challenge.

✅ Libby & Holly Ch3 "Complete"

While there's still a lot left to do, having all the drawing and writing done is an accomplishemnt for me because those are the hardest parts. What remains is really just getting everything tidied up, edited and ready for print.😎

Wordy pages take a lot of time for me because I don't want them to feel boring or drag, so I end up taking more care over the dialog and changing things a lot as I'm going.

Again with that necessary improvisation element. I had initially planned on this chapter ending in the rare book room, but I felt like making the whole chapter one tantric teasing session felt stronger and less frantic, and made the conclusion more satisfying too.

It's a balance of forging ahead and staying on task while staying open to good ideas when they show up along the way.

I know some of you will be sad to not have any new Libby and Holly for a couple months–these will fly by, I’m sure of it, but I think a small change of pace will be nice and I’ll be coming back to this project with fresh eyes and ideas.

I take pride in trying to win people over to new ideas also, so I think if you enjoy the flirty, dorky attitude of Libby & Holly you'll probably like the interim project I'm planning too. ❤️

✅ Witch Poll

I really appreciate everyone being on board with witches this month, I have so many ideas I still want to draw!

Getting back into animation in a small, sloppy way was really nice and refreshing for me creatively, I see a lot of potential in animation for the work we do here.

I made some slight changes to the Aster illustration (the halftone was printing fuzzy so i changed it to hatching lines) over the weekend to print it on sticker envelopes for the...

 ✅Physical Store Re-Opening!

It's live and you can buy stickers here: www.cominginhandy.com I made this silly logo but I haven't figured out where to implement it so I'm leaving it here for now. 😅 It's a deliberate choice to not have it just be the Winton Kidd store because I would love to sell other peoples' work over here too-collaborative projects and stuff.

 This goal really showed me just how distractible I am. I constantly found ways to not get this done and my assistant Kit🙏🏻really helped me stay on task ❤️, with the one indulgence of making this pink envelope print at the last minute.

This month I'm going to try to be more consistent about posting the behind the scenes and sketch stuff that happens. I sometimes don't want to spoil something I'm working on when it's a fun twist or reveal, but I owe it to Gold Patrons to you all see more thought/process stuff.

In my sketchbook I've been doing a lot of style experimentation still. Lots of cartoony things and I expect that to continue into November.

🍂November Goals

⏹️ Libby & Holly Ch3 100% Finished - Now that the Coming in Handy store is up and running, I am looking forward to adding more things to it again. Top of the list is physical comics, then prints. I don’t know if I’ll have prints by the end of the month but comics will certainly be available again.
⏹️Comics in Coming in Handy Store - I'd also like to open up international shipping with this!
⏹️CYOA Pt 17 - I’m very curious what y’all will pick for this month’s poll :D
⏹️ Witch fanart continued - I was really having fun with the witch stuff and I’d love to just kinda stick with it for a bit and continue to explore.

Thank you so much for your support this month and big thanks to those of you that have ordered stickers already! The first batch of orders will be going out by tomorrow!

 I hope you're all having a great start to your November!

🖤Winton