Been a while since I’ve done one of these, eh? Been a while since I felt I need to explain some of my guilt, I suppose. (according to my tags, It’s been a year, even!)
Mad Matt Comics
Last week was rubbish. 2 more strips due last week coming tonight. Maybe even the one supposed to come out today. Depends how my night goes. I hope to be basically caught up, but we’ll see how it goes I guess.
I have no idea how much is left in this chapter of RiGP. Could be a lot. Might not be. Unsure. I have a lots of the plot points I have to close, but I can’t see how they interact with the other bits until I actually start bringing them in. Then my notes end up looking nothing like what it has in my script, which means I’m improving strips, which slows me down.
This will be the last chapter of our ongoing saga, at least for a little bit. You can call this the end of “Book 1”. I might look into making it into an actual book. Or at least, wrapping it up as a PDF for easier consumption.
So yeah, even if I have a lot more, I’ll make it into an epilogue, instead of a full chapter. No idea how much that is, still, but I know things are circling the drain for the story.
And then, I’m thinking of taking a break. I know I said that before and did the minotaurs thing that didn’t last anywhere near as long as I wanted it too. If I went and did that again, I have ideas on ways it could be much more… guaranteed.
But that story is not the plan. I have another story cooking that I have been working on (unknowingly) for a long time. One that draws heavily on my particular RPG experience and current interests.
I’m not… certain… that it’ll be interesting. There’s some stories where you know your plot has some hooks. But I think this thing will be more character dependent. Which is always more nail-biting. I think I’ve been good at creating interesting characters, but I’ve not gotten enough feedback to rest on laurels, so I have to hope and see what lands.
I don’t plan on making something un-interesting, It’s just a warning that my elevator pitch would make Michal Bay yawn. That’s not a requirement for good content, of course, but I feel a warning of my insecurities here is worth committing to page.
I still have a lot of thought cycles I need to dump into it. So I may rely on a filler project that I’ve been creating for a friend may be a stand in.
So lets talk pages vs. strips! I’ve been doing mostly strips so far, because they’re easier. And the way I do strips makes things like speech bubbles and afterthought. And I like that. It makes things a lot easier.
Pages though, take a lot more work. And for the birthday gift, these are real pages, not just strips set on their side. Rough math says I probably have 10 panels on a page normally. So they’re twice and a half as much work as a strip. So I need three hours on each one, minimum. I’m doing things more traditionally, letting me figure some things out at work, but still, I can’t produce them as much as I’d like.
I’m interested in the Next Project being in pages as well. I’ll experiment with the birthday filler, but I might have to drop from 5 strips a week to a lower number. Technically, you’ll have bigger, better content, but less regular content. Not sure what people will think about that.
The Shelf of Awesome
On a less-comic front, I started a D&D/RPG blog thing. Then immediately took a month off for vacation. Derp. I’ll be picking that up again really soon. I have ideas from a bunch I’ve been reading and I think I may have figured out a seed of an idea for a game that I want to actually make. So there may be some cool stuff going there. Honestly, until I see what people want there, I don’t know what type of thing to put there. I have a lot of projects like that.
Anyway, the link is mad-matt.com/shelf. If that’s your cup of tea, give it a shot maybe.
Online Game
I’m starting to jones for an online game again, specifically one that can include my sister languishing in Florida. So it’d probably be in the middle of the week. I have absolutely no details at the moment. I can tell you it’s probably not going to be D&D. Not sure of the system. Depends on the player base I end up with. I have a few people who I can tap, but I’ve tried doing things in the middle of the week before and the results weren’t spectacular. So I shall have to see.
How do we grow?
Look, y’all might not care about my little entertainment corner of the internet growing into a thing. All I can say is with more eyes and feedback, I can do more and be better. If I could get to the place where I could try to do comicking full time, I could do so much. There are plans and stories, but I’m limited in my time.
The secret, at the start, is to share. If you know a person who you think would like to read my stuff, please link them to it. I’m thinking of splitting my comics into slightly separate sites, so they’re not all muddled together on the front page. But I need to know its worth it, you know? So tell people about me, or tell me about things you like and dislike. That”l give me the boost I need to help over come the issues I have when I throw my art in the void and see nothing return.
Anyway, thanks for reading! Hopefully the later half of the year will be more reliable than the first half!
Cheers!
Matt
