Marooned

Well it’s Fall once again, and time for another Marooned update. First, on the current story I had my usual run-in with the “writing myself into a corner” situation. Once again, Steve Ogden helped talked me out of it. The story has dodged and weaved a bit from the original story map, and the current situation on the ship is definitely adding a few extra strips. I’m pretty sure there’s going to more ending up on paper (so to speak) than I planned. I’m estimating right now about 36 strips left.

With the busyness of the Christmas season, I’m planning on taking most of December off. I’ll post specifics when we get closer. Readership always takes a huge dip in December, anyway.

I’ve been basically posting once a week lately, partly due to the complexity of pages and story, and partly due to work on the archive. I expect the twice a week schedule to pick up more in the new year. If that holds true, it would mean Marooned would end somewhere in late April, early May. I still think I want to post the last week as a daily thing, so there may be a break before the finale.

Speaking of the archive, things are going well and I am pleased with the results. I have been posting panels here and there on my Facebook page if you are interested. I’m currently on #131. I am still doing a fair amount of redrawing, and of course everything is getting recolored. The big challenge at the moment is Lian… oh Lord. The drawings are pretty bad – and to think, these are the *fixed* drawings that I had already once went back and modified! The good news is that soon they start getting better. But at the moment, I am pretty much redrawing every single instance of her. Soon my experiment with crosshatching ends, character design gets better, and things will be a little easier. I believe that begins happening in the late 100s.

I’ve certainly put well over 100 hours into this already, but I really think the results are worth it. I am honestly excited to read the finished product as a book when it’s done.

Regarding my next project, I’m about 90% certain it will be my story “The Flower.” I’ve not had much time to work on it, but I have tweaked the story a bit, and identified the areas where it needs work. I did some rough sketches that I liked too – now if only I can find them again! Early in 2013, I will be putting up a new website that collects all my artistic works, and I will probably begin blogging about that project there. (I know I said some of this before, but I’m repeating it in case anyone missed the earlier post.)

Lastly, early in the year I talked about possibly taking down the archive when Marooned is done. I’m pretty sure I am going to do that now. While I know it’s nice to show artistic progress, I really am looking forward to taking the old stuff down when I am finished with the book – especially because some of it will clash with the fixed versions.

What will exist on this website will be some kind of free preview, and then links to buy books/digital versions.

That’s all for now, hope you are enjoying the story!