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End of Chapter 03!
on 21st September 2023
That’s the end of Chapter 03 – thank you so much for reading this far! Every comment is a joy to read, and with every update I’m excited to know that many people out there are following along!
So, what will happen now?
I will be working on Chapter 04 – In the next two months’ time I will be writing and sketching all of “Chapter 04: His Royal Highness” and making the very first episode of the chapter ready. This episode will introduce new characters (!), get our main gang properly settled in and delve further into the mystery that is the world of Lakeshore.
The (tentative) Seedling return date is DECEMBER 1ST!
The Seedling Instagram and my webtoons profile feed will continue updating – I’ll be posting sketches, minicomics and replays as often as possible, aiming for at least once a week.
Seedling has a discord! – Come join us! Follow this link or click the discord button in the sidebar. It’s pretty humble right now, but I’ll be posting updates and extras over there regularly, and some day soon I hope to also host events. 🙂
That’s it! See you soon!
- Five
Small delay and update schedule change
on 28th August 2023
Forgot to mention I’d be delayed last week. 🙂 The pages are coming, so expect a couple updates this week.
Also, my update schedule is slightly changed. Instead of going for two pages a week, it’ll be a mix of either one or two pages each week. That’ll give me a bit of breathing room on more stressful weeks. Thankyou for understanding. 😊
- Five ♥
Vacation days
on 22nd July 2023
I’m currently enjoying family vacation time this week. 😊 I’m finding moments to work on pages on my ipad, but I might not make my website uploads before next week. The webtoons episode update should be unaffected.
UPDATE: The webtoons episode is a bit delayed after all, will be out tomorrow instead of today. 🙂
- Five ❤️
Plans going forward
on 9th July 2023
Alrighty.
I’ve now sat down and made a current plan for working on and updating Seedling, and I feel ready to share it with you. Bear in mind that the plan is always subject to change, but I will do my very best to inform you all if and when that happens. 🙂
On this website:
- For the rest of chapter 03, I am aiming to publish two pages a week at random times during the week. I’ve managed to do it this way since my return with no stress, and it’s worked well so far. Moving 90% of the work into Procreate has really helped. I may keep to this more flexible schedule going into chapter 04.
- On that subject, when chapter 03 is done, I will take two months off to prepare chapter 04. One month to write and one month to sketch. I will continue keeping you all updated on my progress on here, and the Seedling instagram will continue to update as well. More on that below.
On Webtoons:
- Episodes on webtoons will update every three weeks. This will make an episode worth 6 pages, which amounts to 30-40 panels. Would I prefer it to be more panels and/or more frequent? Definitely, but I’ve given it much consideration and this feels like the best balance between workload and productivity for me. So I’ll be trying this out for size and see how it goes.
- I will be looking into potentially hiring an editor to edit the pages down into webtoons episodes. While I don’t mind doing this myself, it’s time consuming and something I remember being a source of stress back in the day, especially when I was already behind schedule. I have no idea how it will work with a semi-flexible page schedule nor how much it costs, but I’m curious and open to trying it out. If any of you have some experience or know someone who might be interested, feel free to give me a poke in the comments and I will get back to you. I will also be checking through my own channels.
On Instagram:
- In between pages and episodes I’ll be randomly uploading content to the Seedling instagram. The content on there will be behind the scenes concepts, mini comics, sketches, page WIPs and process videos. Much like the pages there’s currently no set schedule for these updates, however I will try to update it at least once a week.
So far so good. Stay safe and happy out there.
Five ♥
Sooo…
on 29th May 2023
It’s been a while, huh?
First of all – hi! Thanks for sticking around, and sorry about the disappearance.
Alongside many, many new experiences and lessons in running this project, I’ve now got the dubious honor of having participated in that old and noble webcomic tradition – the long, silent hiatus.
So how did it come about? What happened in that time, and where’s the comic heading now?
What happened?
In truth, nothing major. The reason for my extended break from the comic wasn’t one thing, but rather the sum of different things. I’d been wearing myself thin on several fronts for a while. I was trying to balance a new, demanding and not all that awesome job while also keeping up with an, in hindsight, neck-breaking update schedule for the comic, both on here and on Webtoons. Towards the end, I stayed up half the night to finish pages that would still end up delayed. It affected the artwork as I had to cut out details I’d originally planned on including. It was, in a word, unsatisfying.
Instead of trying to correct my schedule, I took a break. I promised the comic would be back, then kept postponing the return. During the same time I kept getting sick, nothing serious but enough to be very annoying and delay my attempts at a return further. A new lesson was learned – the longer it takes to come back, the harder it is. It got to the point where it was very hard, hence further and further delay.
Even so, I never really thought I’d abandon the comic forever, though it might have seemed like it. I always had the rest of the story nagging in the back of my mind, and the desire to tell it.
So what happens now?
Right now I’ve got the last pages of Chapter 3 all sketched out, save for just a couple of pages. The current, short-term plan is to finish the chapter as quickly as can be done without sacrificing quality. I want to bring you the end of the chapter that has been cliff-hung for so long, and I feel it’s the least I can do for leaving you waiting.
The long term plan is still in the works, but I feel I’m close to finding a new schedule that works better for me. It will likely involve taking another (not quite as long) break to finish writing and sketching out the pages for Chapter 4. That is the de-facto planning phase of any chapter and will lighten my workload a lot for when publishing re-commences.
Even so, I can’t see myself doing 2-3 page updates a week as I did before. So I will start at a more gentle 1 page a week and go from there.
I’ve been torn about webtoons – I like the platform a lot, and the response and support I’ve gotten for Seedling through there has been amazing and something I’ve been very grateful for. But editing the comic to the mobile format alongside drawing and writing it is a lot of extra work. I really do want to keep publishing Seedling in both formats though, so right now I’m considering hiring an editor to edit the pages for me. It’s a new thing for me that I’ll have to take some time to look into.
There’s older pages I want to revisit and rework. This is less of a priority though – the main priority is still moving the story forward. But I might take some time out to do some edits for my own satisfaction.
My tumblr has been dead alongside this site, and I’ve moved most of my other activity to instagram. Seedling does have an instagram account of its own that I created way back. It’s almost empty right now, but I’m planning on using that for uploading mini-comics, sketches and concepts in the future. This means I’ll likely exchange the tumblr link in the top menu with the instagram link.
There’s other things, but I’ll leave it here for now. Thank you for sticking around on the bumpy road of this comic project, and for all your encouragement both during the comics creation and through its long hiatus. ♥
- Five