The Anaether

I stuck these smut shots in the smut section earlier this year. I noticed I never posted these pics on this blog so I’ll just do that now.

I did originally mean to post on this blog regularly but I’m finding myself posting on my Patreon a lot more regularly, including updates on what’s going on with me. I somewhat keep people up to speed through my Patreon and Twitter.

I’m feeling a ton of momentum working on more comic pages. I almost completed 3 pages last week but I’ve been taking off every Saturday recently to be more social. I actually do seriously wish I can just work on this project completely uninterrupted and full time. I’ve gone on 3 trips this year and though they all involved spending good quality time with people I cared about, I always get at least this bit of ambient crankiness when I’m not working on the Anaether. It’s kind of painful, almost like I’m wasting my life away not working towards fulfilling my life’s purpose. I know I’m coming off as excessively pretentious in saying that, but honestly I’ve never felt as eager to get out of bed every day as I have been for the past few years working on this project. It really sucked living my life as a student and in my 20s feeling like I was constantly rehearsing and waiting for something. I don’t feel like that anymore. I always hated feeling like I had something better to do, but not knowing exactly what it was. I knew it was art-related, but I didn’t know what the project was. I do now and there’s literally nothing else I want to do more with my life. I’m probably saying this stuff for the 1000th time now, and I’m not sure when the novelty of this feeling is going to wear off. But I also still fear that I’ll lose interest in this project — again probably for the 1000th time I’m saying that too.

Well, the fear of going into hiatus hell is really not that bad right now but it’s still there. More immediately I have a problem with this annoying urge to take yet another break on comic page production to work on another illustration. I mean, I don’t think my audience has expressed a sense of impatience at the pace of comic page releases yet. But I’m so eager to finish the prototype chapter, illustrate more concept art and show you guys Act I. If I just hold off on doing literally anything else on this project and just focus on comic pages for now, I really feel like I can finish the prototype chapter by the end of this year. Right after that I’d probably do a bunch more concept art, maybe an animation, and a bunch of cover ideas for Act I, seriously not knowing which idea I’d go with for the official cover image. Then hopefully start releasing Act I pages by next spring or summer. Maybe.

There’s a ton of stuff I’m supposed to be doing that I’m not, regarding this project. I really should be hashing out a bunch more designs, including the emblems of the Therian Inter-Galactic Armada and the Voyant Inter-Stellar Navy, vehicles/ship design, interior designs and some more environment design but honestly… I’m probably just going to do most of it on the fly as I’m working through the comic pages. Oh yeah. I still haven’t re-thumbnailed Act I, or much of it yet. In my head though, I may have sort of re-written some scenes because I know they can be better and I cringe at the idea of the current iterations I have of the scenes in the thumbnails. God I feel like I’m going to be stuck at some pages if I still cringe way too hard at my own ideas. I’m really afraid of being incapable of writing the story out well enough for my own standards. I fear moments where my audience can clearly tell some of my scenes are so great that they’d end up expecting the next ones to consistently stick the landing again and again.

Not that this really excuses shoddy work, but I apologize in advance if my work is not up to your standards at any time. Well, if I make a creative decision that I’m insistent on that I know exists because I wanted it to, and perhaps even if it exists at the expense of the “quality” of the story, I’m probably less likely to apologize for that. For example maybe, the smut scenes in the comic (which I haven’t done yet but there wouldn’t be that many anyway). I would imagine for some audiences they really would super not be into it, and for others they’d wish there was more. Aside from all that, I’ve seen what perfectionism does to people and their projects. I really just want to get stuff done, if not done perfectly.