Update 1

I said I was going to create an update for this comic roughly once every two months, and I'm a little behind schedule.

When I put this WIP onto itch.io, I was very unsure if it would be worth continuing work on the comic. I'd been sharing around CBR files of the WIP and was not seeing a lot of interest, and I wondered if there was really any kind of an audience for the material. I can attribute this to a handful of things:

-Obviously the weight gain elements of the comic are alienating to a lot of people, even people who read NSFW comics.

-My artwork doesn't have a real anime influence, and it also doesn't look like Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, or any of those other 2010s cartoons that a lot of people imitate on some level.

-In many ways I'm trying to make the comic about stuff I'm not seeing in a lot of transfem art, which predictably is working against me in some ways. Try to fill a niche, and discover that there's no audience for that genre nobody was making stuff for.

However, I've recently received a handful of comments from people. They're mostly comments from people who are looking at all of the entries into the 2024 Yuri Jam, and so it's not "natural" traffic. But all of the commenters seem to appreciate and understand why I'm trying to do on some level, which makes me think that this comic perhaps does have a future.

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I haven't done a lot of work on the comic since uploading the CBR to itch.io. That being said, there are already another handful of layout pages completed that I didn't include in the available CBR file because the entire chapter wasn't completed. The rest of the story has already been outlined, but there are a lot of small problems that need to be solved in terms of specific details with the last few parts of the story.

Aside from a perceived lack of interest, the other reasons I stopped working on the comic were more practical. I was doing the layouts at my computer desk, and ergonomically it just wasn't working. At a certain point, my body told me I needed to stop what I was doing, and I listened. I'd like to eventually buy a nice drafting table, but that's a massive investment to make, and it's risky because I don't draw as much as I'd like and I can't buy a drafting table that I barely use. I also don't really have a place to put it.

I also want to draw the entire comic on bristol board, because I don't like doing a lot of perspective-related things on my Wacom, but it's very difficult to buy the kind of bristol board I'd like to use here in Portugal. Not difficult as in "expensive", but difficult as in "I literally don't know where to buy it, period".

I also want to print blue-line stuff onto the bristol board that I'm drawing on, and that's very arcane stuff that's hard to find good information for, because only a relative handful of pro comic artists work that way. A tutorial I once saw mentioned that it's important to buy a printer that uses non-water soluble ink, and . . . good luck finding that kind of information out in a printer product page. Making matters worse, buying a printer that can print on large bristol board sheets is expensive, and they don't sell laser printers that do that in the hobbyist or prosumer range. Buying an inkjet printer that can do A3 or whatever is risky because ink dries, and also is insanely expensive.

This isn't even getting into software - Gimp isn't really built for cleaning up scans, and the program I like drawing with, Medibang, definitely isn't. Everyone recommends Clip Studio Paint, which costs money, and Photoshop, which costs even more money.

So, it would cost probably well over a thousand dollars to complete the comic, between the cost of buying a new drafting table, buying bristol board, buying a printer / scanner, buying pens, and maybe even getting new software. I've thought about completing the layouts and then doing a Kickstarter, to either get the funds to finish the comic on my own, or to hire someone else to draw it. I really would like to draw it myself, though, because most artists I've seen who do NSFW pinups and such don't really understand mathematical perspective. Of course, there's also the problem where the Kickstarter probably wouldn't reach its goal, and I don't need the pressure of fulfilling a Kickstarter in my life.

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It's going to be a long road to finish this comic, and I'm remembering all of the overwhelming questions that caused me to push it aside in the first place.

I think what I need to do is make a detailed outline of the rest of the narrative, and just spend a couple of weeks drawing concept art for those chapters. The part of the story where I got overwhelmed and stepped away was a part that required designing an entire medieval village with its own cult iconography and such, which was just too fucking much when combined with the normal storytelling problems I was trying to work out in terms of layouts, pacing, etc.

I think, once I've done a lot of the creative heavy lifting, I can hopefully return to thumbnailing eight pages in one day, and then spending the next few days doing more detailed layouts, which is a process I outlined here.

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in the comic! I'm doing a lot of writing for my new website right now, but I hope to return to The Spider Queen of Manhattan soon.