update 11/27/2021

Okay I was impressed last month but this month we have TWENTY new patrons! 🎉Thank you all so much and I'm so happy to finally release FST to such positive feedback!

That said, the tunnel vision I've had on my comic means the only income for this month has been from Patreon (and commissions that I'm yet to do the work for. yikes.) thanks for the support guys. It's really saved my ass.

I need to make some changes. I've spent the last year and a half trying to make a comic that's resulted in 13 sketchy pages, mostly drawn over the last 2 months. It's mind boggling what I didn't know when I started this Patreon. It's time to start applying the things I've learned. More about that at the end.

Over the last month:

-7 comic pages. that's it. that's all I've done. That's my absolute fucking limit. now we know.

plans for December:

-actually, for real, really finish FST this time. its just two more pages. I got this.

-finish all the WIP commissions that I've already been paid for.

-start on a big commission that, thank goodness, will be enough to keep me covered through January.

-two quickies. i already have them sketched, they're both for the most recent vote since Mr. P and Jax ran away with the vote. sorry to the almost 30 people that have joined since then but the next poll will be up after quickies #10

Changes in the future:

So let's talk about this "secret project" that's on the calendar. It's rebranding. Or more appropriately just branding for the first time. As you can see, I've already made a wordmark. I want 2022 to be the year that I start treating this like the company it is. 

-make a public schedule every month so people know what I'm doing, where, and how often.

-I want to only put out work that looks ready for print, commissions or otherwise. I'll still post sketches and concept stuff here and to telegram but not to twitter.

-something I've wanted to do since last year is make splash art for my characters. something I can use for banners and branding.

-I want to get better about social media managing

-revive my dead SFW accounts. (that way I can draw my DnD characters and call it "work")

-more long term stuff like making merch, prints, professional looking sticker packs

-my next comic. (it will not be FST ch.2. It will be 2 pages long. I will spend an entire month on it. and it will look a way that I would be happy to have printed and sold in a convention. no ugly shortcuts and no deadline crunch.)

-experiment with the quickies format and style so that I can still finish a page in 1 sitting but it looks more professional.

Reflecting on the path to FST:

In the Spring of 2020, like so many other fools, I decided to use quarantine time to prove to myself that I could do that thing I've always dreamed of doing. In my case; making my own comic. I've been writing comics since before I could read. But I've never finished one. So I set my sights really low and started remaking an unfinished 9 page teacher/student comic from 2017. In June 2020 it was finished. Seven sketchy pages, not perfect but finished.  For the first time in my life I had an entire thought, out of my head, and in view of the world. Start to finish. The response was astonishing! Comments flooded in, compliments on not only the art but also the writing and characters! The things I pour my heart into. That night I called my best friend sobbing because I DID IT. I MADE THE THING! That was one of the happiest moments in my life and I'll remember it forever.

The next day, on top of the world, I sat down and wrote a comic about a father/son pairing that I had been making doodles of for the last year. I thought 16 pages would be a reasonable step up in difficulty. I applied what I had learned, Things were going smoothly, regular, steady progress. I think I was on a clean sketch pass of page 3. But then...

I had a PTSD attack while role playing a very similar situation with my partner. If you wondered why the final version of FST doesn't show any hitting, only belt marks, you now know why. I don't need to get graphic, about the attack or the trauma, but it was a terrible experience to say the least. I've stopped doing BDSM in my personal life.

I started seeing a therapist. I struggled with what to do. The origins of my daddy issues festered and I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to be doing this anymore. ANY of this. I applied for real graphic design jobs. Thank god I'm underqualified.

A new therapist means a new person to write my ADHD meds prescription. Long story short I was functionally unmedicated from September through January. I should have sued but that doctor is retired now. In the dead heart of quarantine winter I was falling apart and couldn't stay on schedule to save my life. I've been financially dependent on my partner to stay afloat since then. A situation that generally sucks for everyone but I'm thankful for it every day. Eventually we got my meds sorted out, thank god. and my PTSD is... Better. 

In January, I started the comic over. I decided that I wanted to do this taboo pairing but it needed to be a happy and functional dynamic. Something closer to a real life age gap couple. A wholesome fantasy. But there was just one more huge problem:

My ADHD brain has been focused on this story and these characters for months with no outlet. The only time I got work done off meds was when it was making something NEW. So a 16 page comic became 23 pages, became a whole series, became 4 issues, became more characters, became 9 issues. Let's make it a visual novel! Let's learn to code! Lets make a magic system! lets bring in musical talent! It's going to be 10 episodes long and be just like a TV show! By the time my meds were fully back online mid summer I was buried in this project with no end in sight. I was making projections for 5-6 years down the line trying to figure out how to do all this.

2021 is the year that I finally started to understand the depth of my mental illness. It's a lot more than just "OOooh shiny!" although it is also that. Attention Deficit Disorder is a name given to my illness by people who don't have it. I have plenty of attention, sometimes even too much. ADHD is a Deficit in Executive Function. I can't just do things, I can't just try harder, "applying myself" isn't an option the way it is for neurotypical people. I have to trick myself into brushing my teeth every. single. morning. I've always had tricks. But now, thanks to therapy, I know their names. I am now armed with solutions to life ruining problems I didn't know I had.

So, I started over. For the 5th or 6th time. September 2021. FST chapter 1, subtitled "pilot," The truth is, I don't think FST: the series is physically possible for me to make. I cut scenes, combined characters, smoothed out the plot, and got Chapter 1 from 26 pages to 13 and the plan for the rest of the story down to six 12-page chapters from twelve 24-page episode scripts. I made a schedule and a deadline. I fell behind that schedule and missed that deadline. But now the first 7 pages are out there! I have 2 more pages to finish but with a shiny new weekly release schedule I'm now months ahead. It's time I started making rent again.

I don't know if the future has any sequels in store for this webcomic but FUCK I am so proud of these 13 sketchy pages. Finished is better than perfect.

If you read this: thanks, it means a lot. If you didn't: thanks for paying for the option, it means a lot.