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So while character designs are fun I also need to design some locations. So I flower looking delta because while designing Alisabet and Meia I wanted to have some symbols of their religion to be tied to their outfits since they are royalty. I thought that the capital being on a delta that looks like a waterlily could make waterlilies important to them. The idea was that delta kinda looked like the a waterlily but then the city intentionally shaped it into something more symmetrical. I then talked to a friend of mine Pricilla Spencer who designs fantasy maps for prose books.  She gave me a few suggestions on locals to look up to give me an idea of how the delta would effect the area. Stuff like the palace gardens would probably be very elaborate, the rivers can be used for the wealthy to get around, and I should make sure to have a lot of farmland around it.

Last two kids. Morcus and Ceallaigh are two new recruits to the palace guard. They sign up the same time as Michall. All of them sign up because of the dream but these two get caught up in a rivalry between the two of them.

Page 79 – 82

To push Kimber’s captions I had her think a lot more. She generally has a lot more she is sitting on. It’s why she is the one who ends up asking the important questions.

Also once again I like drawing/toning fire.

Kimber’s frustration with the team subside around when she starts talking to Elsie more. But that rough start I thought would be a good contrast as the two of them become friends.

Page 83 – 85

Rae’s entrance is 100% cool anime person. I was definitely thinking of when Sailor Uranus first appear. Does something cool and then takes off.

Her cool animeness is what makes Kimber get a crush on her.

Page 86 – 87

Kimber is the most interested in their adventure. This I figured would be good way to seperate her from everyone else on the team. But she’s not mature enough to think of a way to win Elsie and Morgan over her than yelling at them.

Another big thing I did with Kimber’s captions is she talks herself up more and repeats her thoughts to show she’s very unsure. It’s why I tried to make her small in that last panel to contrast her telling herself “I can COMPLETELY handle it.”

page 88 – 89

When I designed Kimber’s room I kept two things in mind. What did her mom put there and what did Kimber put there? I wanted it to be obvious when you looked at the room who decided what. So all the big stuff, the bed, the dresser, the curtains, those are from mom and are frilly and flowery. Everything smaller and temporary is from Kimber. So the posters and dresser nicknacks are goth and fantasy based. Stuff I remember for sale at Hot Topic or posters from magazines. This way you are ready for the conflict with Kimber’s mom before she even comes in the room.

Also the fact that Kimber’s mom doesn’t take her to the hair appointment herself and that Kimber can just leave her house without her mom realizing shows how much attention and hands on parenting she is getting. It should make the earlier thoughts of I can only count on myself make more of a picture.

page 90 – 91

Sometimes it’s hard drawing expressions on Cu. I don’t want to go to cartoony or he will stand out compared to everyone else. This scene I looked at a lot of sad dog pictures. I wanted him to look uneasy while Kimber was turned from him and then stiff up when she looks his way.

Again I tried to make Kimber look small as she is all alone to think about what is next.

page 92 – 96

In the diner I managed to get 6 of the 9 kids in Elsie’s family. Two kids at the counter, Billy, and the other two waitresses are Elsie’s siblings. This scene maybe should have been more pages.

Elsie’s non-reaction to her mom’s shouts is to show this is her normal. I think we all have something about our family that we grew up thinking everyone does but then realized is weird as we got older.

The customers leaving and Kimber’s caption are supposed to be the contrast to Elsie shrugging it off. I maybe should have given this another page or so to show Kimber’s face. Her parents don’t yell much, so this is extra scary for her. I only really managed to get a good look at Kimber’s face in page 94’s panel 2.

And speaking of not examining something shitty your parents do, Kimber isn’t immune and definitely picked up some body shamming opinions from her mom.

Kimber pouting wanted her to be really folded up in herself as she is defensive from Morgan making fun of her. I had Billy have a chat with her to just bring him up again in a minor way and so we got a good look at the bandage on her hand. Also cause I thought it would be funny if their King Arthur kept accidentally helping him.

Page 97 – 101

The librarian is a cameo for my former roommate Stef who was the one that told me the correct dewy decimal number for King Arthur stuff.  Also, I put in this bit to make the connection between Emain Ablach and Avalon but also cause Irish words are hard to spell if you’ve only heard them.

I was careful with Rae’s dialogue here.  Notice she doesn’t let Kimber use any of the books first, she just offers the ones she isn’t immediately using.  She also covers her notes/map as soon Kimber brings up the night before.

They are little hints that Rae is 100%. But Kimber misses it cause she is too busy being impressed by Rae.  I also wanted to build up Kimber’s crush thoughts about Rae over the series. So right now it’s just she’s so cool.

Page 102 – 104

Character’s logic needs to follow a logic, even if it’s not the same as the readers. The toast jelly bit is supposed to be Elsie misheard tots jealy and then justified it to her self why toast jelly makes sense. So Elsie logic.

I had Morgan mockingly ask and prop Kimber about her plans repeatedly to make Kimber more defensive. That way it makes sense when she responses angrily to Elsie asking the same questions sincerely in book 2.

All through this chapter I try to push Kimber as the outsider to Morgan and Elsie who already know each other. Pushing the age difference which a sex joke that goes over Kimber’s head would be a way to do it without resulting to them actively mocking her again.

Page 105 – 108

This whole fight you can see they are attempting teamwork but failing. Like Morgan does pull Kimber out of the way of the falling giant fish.

Page 109 – 114

Morgan is the only one who isn’t immediately on board with Rae.  She’s the one that notice Rae hasn’t put herself at risk. She is also the only one who picked up on Rae’s subtle dig. Sometimes being distrustful and jaded can be good?

Then we see them successfully use teamwork. I had fun drawing these action bits.

Page 115 – 118

Elsie does her victory dance again while Rae is quickly headed out. I like the gesture of Elise putting her arm around Morgan and then getting pushed away.

Rae’s expression as she looks over all of them when Elsie suggests a team up is one of her few slip ups in book 1. There is one other.

The last page here, I use this layout once per book when dealing with Kimber and Rae. This first time it’s happy Kimber watching Rae leave.

Hi everyone,

So it’s the end of the year. I have been looking back over the year to make my goals for next year. Last year I posted my goals on Patreon for the highest backer level. It’s a level that no one ever backed at. I don’t know if the price was too high or just general lack of interest. But I liked writing those posts so as long as I have time, I think I’ll start posted some edited versions of them free on my site each month. Before I started doing that I thought I’d post a public behind the scenes wrap up.

2017 was rough and exhausting. That’s true for a lot of people.

I tried to stick to my professional and personal goals anyway. I also tried a few experiments to see how things would work out.

Last year, I had a few business/income related goals. I wanted to focus on building my Patreon, my newsletter, and my store. I wanted to get rid of ads and do less cons. Ads are ugly and hard to track down bad ones. Cons I want to do less of because they are exhausting to me. I don’t think I’ve ever got creative burn out but I definitely get hussle/promo burn out. It’s been taking me longer and longer to recover from cons. So anywhere that I can get money which isn’t from cons if great.

A lot of my site redesign was to push those things.

My newletter is I think the most successful of those goals. I got a good few hundred folks signing up from my website and a bunch of folks signing up after my kickstarter. Next year I’m gonna try to focus on making it better. I few people asked for highlights from the blog here as well as promo. But I’m still taking suggestions if anyone wants to leave them in the comic. Right now it’s just promo but if I don’t have promo that month I end up not knowing what to write.

The shop getting pushed more, I think it did better than last year but I haven’t crunched the numbers yet.

Patreon didn’t go very well this year. I wanted to get more patrons there to mostly get rid of ads. I ended up making less money on patreon than before. I used to charge weekly and thought switching to monthly would help get more people on board, but I never ended up attracting enough people to make up for the difference. I tired a few different things like business posts like this one, sketch requests, and streams. At first I was posting my early comics in a big PDF but then was told more frequent posts get peoples attention more. I also tried to post more art on there. None of those really enticed people to jump on. I don’t know if people just don’t like my stuff. If I’m just not cut out for promoting a long term thing rather just doing a focused push for one big project. Either way I’m feeling pretty discouraged and after last weeks debacle with the fee change is leaving me kinda sour on Patreon. In 2018 I’m gonna try to focus on other stuff that might pay off more.

I was looking for more work from publishers and companies in 2017 too. Or more working smarter not harder with companies. That didn’t pay off in 2017 but it get me some cool stuff lined up for 2018.

But for now it looks like I’m gonna still be hitting up 10 or more cons a year.

On the somewhat creative goal and somewhat personal, I spent a lot of of this year making sure I kept up with my comic reading. It can be easy to not keep up with reading new comics and know what is out there when you are busy trying to make comics. I buy most of my comics at conventions but I got an ipad pro to be a portable digital drawing tool so I’ve been reading a lot of manga on that. But here’s some high stuff I really enjoyed and will probably write about on my blog over the coarse of next year. I read them this year but they didn’t all come out this year. The webcomics I’m just gonna link cause they are free to read but I usually just read the print collections when it comes to webcomics. So when I say I read them this year I mean the print collection.

• Wilde Life by Pascalle Lepas 
• Agents of the Realm by Mildred Louis
• The Meek by Der-shing Helmer
• Feywinds by Nicole Chartrand
• Check Please by Ngozi Ukazu
• O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti
• A Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Ōima which is about a guy trying to get forgiveness from the deaf girl he bullied in elementary school. It’s very intense and grips with complicated questions about who gets forgiven and who decides who gets that forgiveness.
• Monstress by Marijorie liu and  Sana Takeda. It’s a fantasy epic that is set in a matriarchal setting where magical humanoid creatures and sorceresses are at war. The main character is trying to learn more about an elder god type thing that has taken over her arm. It’s gorgeous and complicated and female focused. This might be my favorite comic right now.
• Fun Family by Ben Frisch. I picked this up because I went to college which Ben. Fun Family is a fictional behind the scenes of Family Circus. It kinda odd but I liked it because it explores how a simple wholesome comic like Family Circus can be comforting when your home life is falling apart.
• Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama. I don’t got to tell you all what Dragon Ball is about. But I read it for the first time and really liked it. I had only seen the anime before this. It was interesting to see the source material. I thought it was a lot of fun.
• Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaki. Most anime fans know about this one too but again I read it this year. For you none anime fans alien parasites take over human hosts and replace their heads. The main character gets his hand taken over instead and he has to work with the parasite to hide from both humans and parasites. It’s an interesting mix of body horror and exploring morality.
• My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi. It’s about a superhero school in world where more people have superpowers and being a superhero is partly being a celebrity and partly a government job.
• Space Battle Lunch Time by Natalie Riess. It’s about a cooking reality tv show in space. I was a lot of fun and very cute. It does a good job of having multiple rounds of cooking contests without getting repetitive. The main character is super charming.
• Moonlighters by Katie Schenkel and Cal Moray. An all ages comic about werewolves doing magical odd jobs on their college campus.
• Soupy Leave Home by Cecil Castellucci and Jose Pimenta. I picked this up because I introduced Cecil and Jose to each other. Their book is really good. It’s about a girl who disguises herself as a boy so she can run away to ride the rails as a hobo during the great depression. It’s bitter sweet and does an excellent job showing the relationship build between Soupy and her mentor on the rails.

I also liked Castoffs by MK Reed, Brain Smith, and Molly Ostertag and Letters for Lucardo by Noora Heikkilä but those both are only at volume 1 and I feel like the stuff that I’ll really want to talk about will probably happen in volume 2. My reading list is organized shortest to longest and so some have been on there for awhile. For 2018 far it’s:

• As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gilman
• Not Drunk Enough by Tess Stone
• The Fifth Beatle by Vivek Tiwary, Kyle Baker, and Andrew C. Robinson
• Vattu vol 2 by Evan Dahm
• The Last Halloween by Abby Howard
• East of West year 2 by Jonathan Hichman and Nick Dragotta
• Drive by Dave Kellet
• The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal by EK Weaver
• I Am Hero by Shinsuke Sato

If you all got recommendations I’m open to em. I think it’s important to read comic if you want to improve. So while I am gearing up for my next big project I wanted to make sure knew what was out there. I have been writing about them on Patreon but I’m gonna start posting them publicly. Writing about the stuff I like is just to help me articulate what I’m looking for in stories and be more deliberate in the future. I’m intentionally not reading Marvel and DC though. So if you suggest stuff from them I’ll probably pass.

And then here are more general personal goals and experiments.

I got really unhealthy while working on Misfits of Avalon because juggling two comics isn’t super smart when when has a hard deadline. There were a few months while working on it where I basically drank ALL THE REDBULL to finish on time. I also gained 20 lbs while working on it. So a lot of 2017 was me trying to undo the damage caused by overworking.

I don’t pay a lot of attention to my weight and mostly noticed because I got faced with the choice of lose weight or buy new clothes. Excising takes more work but is cheaper. So I started biking 3 times a week and used the biking version of couch to 5k to improve. I mostly stuck with it because MK Reed was my biking buddy. We fell off a few times when con season got hectic. Then because of con season I tried to think of something that is easier to do while away. So in October after all my cons were done I gave jogging a try. I wanted to die and my throat was closing up. I couldn’t finish even half of what couch to 5k tells you to do the first day. I thought maybe I’d improve. But after no improvement for a month I went to the doctor. Turns out my lungs are all fucked up and I just didn’t know it because that was how I always breathed. Doctor gave me an inhaler which helped with running so now I can completely the first day of the program, but my none running breathing is still not as good as it should be. So I just got a different inhaler that is supposed to help with that. Otherwise I might have some expensive medical tests coming up. So fingers crossed that everything is fine.

I also tried to do some push ups at the beginning of the year. I started by doing them off my counter and then moved lower to the arm rest of my couch. But I was apparently doing them wrong so I never successfully got to doing push ups off the floor. Building muscle strength might be something I need more help with than cardio.

And while running sucks honestly the hardest thing to do was fix how bad my caffeine addiction got. I mentioned above that I drank a lot of Redbull when Misfit of Avalon deadlines got tight. Well, when I went to C2E2 last year, the time it took me to wake up, go to the airport, fly to Chicago, and get to where I was staying gave me a withdrawal headache. So less than 24 hours. I still had 2-3 months of work to do on Misfits but I made a self note that this is a problem I needed to deal with once finished. So I turned in my pages that June. Then I quit caffeine cold turkey because I’m very bad at cutting back on things. It was a miserable two weeks. But by the time SDCC rolled around I could get through a con day with only one cup (as opposed to like 6 cups).

So for health stuff in 2018, I’m gonna try to keep up the jogging and biking. Figure out what is up with my lungs. And try to get help on the upper body strength that I am lacking.

Two more kids from You are the Chosen One. Michall is a new recruit to the palace guard. I tried to play up a Disney prince/hero look for him. So I look at Prince Philip and Prince Eric while designing him. He is gonna hang with Alisabet  a lot. So I intentionally wanted them to match. Kit grew up in the woods near the village where Esme and Harrien live. I thought maybe their mother was a criminal who was hiding out there. So Kit’s had almost no contact with other people growing up and are very self sufficient in a very cold climate.