Weekly Update - 162 (Patreon)

Why, hello there!

I have some good news! Last week I was getting kinda discouraged with redrawing some of those early pages for Volume #1. Early Chapter 2 (the first few pages with Max,) make me sad, and much like I did for Kiera on Page 3, I wanted to give the character a proper introduction in the book. So I had to increase his cuteness.

But, redrawing pages takes a lot of time, as I'm sure you all know. So after spending almost 3 full days on Page 23, I went to Chapter 4 and just got it out of the way. The entire chapter. It was super quick, because Chapter 4 follows more of my current comic-drawing standards. All I really had to do was replace the font, and for a lot of those pages I could just open the file, do that, and then save it as the remastered page. Of course, not every page in Chapter 4 is perfect, necessarily, but I'm still pretty happy with how most of them look and the benefits I'd get out of tweaking or touching up or redrawing any of those panels would be significantly less than the benefit from touching up more of the earlier pages that are in desperate need.

So that means we're now 2 chapters down out of 4 for Volume 1. Which means I'll be taking another break from remastering pages to work on another Riley comic this week! (As a reminder, it takes me about 1.5-2 weeks to finish a Riley comic, so it won't be done this week, but maybe next week!)

Volume #1: 40/72

Drawing: Riley #7

Playing: Still waiting for May 2nd.

Reading: Not much (The Heroes is a tough book to get into, it's proving to be slow to start)

Ramble:

So any of you that've been following me for awhile has probably heard this ramble (or one like it) before, but... maybe that's true of everything I say? Since my brain is just a ridiculous conglomeration of half-formed and half-executed ideas at all times? Who knows! Anyway, it's been on my mind lately and I wanna talk a little bit about CRITICS.

Lately while I draw, I've been watching a lot of CinemaSins on Youtube (you know, because I watched one of them once and the ALMIGHTY algorithm knows that means I need to have ALL OF THEM suggested to me at all times from now on.) And while I recognize that CinemaSins is obviously intended for the purposes of comedy and entertainment, it has also lead to me watching a number of other movie critics that provide a little more insightful and interesting critique of related films. One thing I've noticed, however, is that many critics will quite often shame one movie for doing one thing, and go on to shame a different movie for doing the opposite thing.

And that's super annoying to me from a writer's perspective because it feels like any given story could potentially be criticized for any conceivable reason. Any story breaks down under close enough scrutiny, because it's fiction, and every writer is a human and we humans cannot conceive any single story from all possible perspectives. Honestly sometimes I feel like certain critics could find flaws with stories taken directly from historical accounts. As it turns out, writing is a messy, imperfect process wherein the writer tries to give form to something that is heretofore nonexistent and formless, and it's not too difficult to find problems with any given thing if you aren't offering up potential solutions.

But then I had to stop myself from going further down that train of thought, because while it might seem natural, the relationship between writers and critics doesn't need to be adversarial at all. Critics are not the enemies of writers or creators. The fact is, we need them, much like they need us. Critics cannot exist, as an entity, without something to critique, by very definition. Likewise, thoughtful and meaningful critique is the best way for a writer or artist to learn what they did wrong and to perhaps improve from those mistakes in their future efforts.

It's very difficult, when creating a thing, to identify all the flaws you might run into while creating. You do your best, of course, to avoid the ones you know about, but you are still going to make mistakes all throughout the creation process. And the longer that process is, the more complicated the thing you are making, the more mistakes you are likely to make.

Critics can help to point out the mistakes that might be otherwise invisible to the writer. Ones buried under an well-thought out interaction, or a finely-crafted plot, mistakes that emerge which stand out under objective scrutiny. And by calling attention to such mistakes, the writer can perhaps recalibrate their perspective and focus more on the things that might matter more to their audience.

Basically, at the end of it all, what I'm saying is, none of you should ever be afraid to critique my stories. I know I'm dumb and flawed, so you aren't in danger of hurting my feelings. I'll appreciate it more than you might think. And the things I write in the future might benefit from any critique I receive today.