Longer Chapters? I figured it out...🤔 (Patreon)

Hey guys,

How is everyone doing? I hope all is well.

As you guys know, I started illustrating the comic about a year ago. When December comes, it’ll officially be a year. It took me a while to learn everything I needed to.

When I first started, I tried sticking to the process that me and Tsun had been using for three years. That didn’t work for me, and I only figured that out about a month ago.

My art was bad, my paneling was all over the place, and honestly it made me want to drop LMB altogether. But I couldn’t do that to my readers, and I don’t like giving up on projects.

So, I locked in. I started researching techniques and drew every single day for months. I refused to quit. I figured, if I’m already a great writer, then once I level up my art too, I’ll be set.

I’m still learning, but now I feel more comfortable.

The biggest issue I had was my paneling. Back when Tsun and I were working together, I gave her a lot of creative freedom, so most of the techniques came from her. I tried copying that to keep some familiarity, but it just didn’t work for me. We ended up doing more pages because of the formatting. We weren’t using the “webcomic” format, we were using the “illustration” format. That meant making the canvas as big as possible to fit 8–10 panels per page, which added up to around 9–12 pages per chapter and about 120–140 panels total. It was insane and led straight to burnout.

Once I took over, I realized I couldn’t handle 12 pages by myself, so I cut it down to 8 pages per chapter with 5–6 panels per page. But that was too short. Still, it was the only format I knew at the time.

Then one day, I realized I was doing everything wrong. I needed to find my own way, so I switched to the vertical scrolling method for chapters.

Now I have more canvas space to draw. Not only can I fit more panels while sticking to my 8-page limit, but the panels are also bigger and the flow feels better.

I jumped from around 43 panels per chapter to 60–70 panels per chapter. That’s a big leap, right? The chapters also flow way better on INKR now, since scrolling gives readers more space and doesn’t make the chapter feel like it ended too quickly.

I can’t promise 120 panels per chapter, since it’s just me, but I’ll do my best to keep it at 60–70 panels per chapter. That’s around 120–140 panels every two chapters, which is still a lot.

The reason I’m saying all this is because I’m still learning, and that makes the process fun. I’m even working on character sheets to save myself time, and I think I’ve finally figured that out too.

As much as I’d love to keep everything familiar, I can’t. I like feeling free.

Thanks for reading, and look forward to the upcoming chapters. I’m really locking in.

-Kuru