Juggling and Changing Things Up

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Haigh. It’s Ellie. Let’s catch up.

First things first… It’s been a minute since I’ve updated. Okay, several hundred thousand minutes. Trust me, it’s been sitting on my mind like the rocks on Saint Stephen’s noggin. But I have a good reason for being slow with an update this time: I got accepted into grad school. I’m on an adventure of intense learning and nerve-rankling debt!

I spent the past couple of months making sure everything was in order before my first summer course started. When class started, I had to figure out how to juggle reading, research, and writing with other projects and life obligations. I’m slowly getting the hang of this new form of time management, and I have managed to sneak in some TEF work, but not enough to complete a scene on time.

Second things second… Work for TEF is going to change. Some readers might not mind that updates happen every few weeks or months—there’s a whole entertaining world out there, after all—but the gap in updates bothers me.

I’ve had the unfortunate habit of beginning projects and then letting them languish or abandoning them for one reason or another. I don’t want that to happen to TEF. Maybe it’s not the story of the ages, but it could be a fun story to look back on or revisit. But for that to happen, it needs to be finished. And in order to be finished one day, more updates need to happen.

That means changing how the comic is done. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing simple washes under linework, doing only linework, using halftones, and other minimalist styles. I’ve also thought about doing single panels instead of entire scenes. I’ll be experimenting with those in the upcoming comics.

After Scene 16 is uploaded, we’ll be leaving Cat and the others for a while. It’s time to take a trip to the past and find out how the current story came to be. Well, we’re not going to see the entire backstory. We need to leave a bit of mystery, you know.

Hey, maybe in the middle of all this experimentation, I’ll also figure out a website layout/theme that’s actually appealing.

Time to get back to the juggling. I’ve got a discussion board reply to finish and some APA citation to master before I can do fun

Is mise le meas,

Ellie

Scene 9

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Ellie’s Comments

Why not provide some commentary at the end of these things? I’m sure readers would want me to explain myself.

So far this is the shortest scene but, as far as my aching hands are concerned, it’s the most detailed in terms of backgrounds. Clip Studio Paint does have a way to “extract” lines from reference photos, but I didn’t like the effect.

I didn’t get my mythology mixed up. Of course centaurs aren’t native to Ireland. If humans from different countries can immigrate there, so too can other types of folks. Besides, I’m sure residents appreciate an alternative to the usual ridesharing services.

I’m sure centaurs can obey Irish road laws. They just choose not to when it’s convenient.

I don’t like the quality of the last panel, but I export these at 85% quality JPGs to save space. If I were publishing books, this would be a different matter. (And figuring out how to publish a seamless webtoon as a book would be another different matter.)

Scene 7

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Note: Yes, I’m aware of the white spaces between certain images. This is one of the many downsides to having a site on WordPress.com: the persistent use of blocks. WordPress.com claims that its blocks–its precious, wonderful blocks–are so versatile, that anyone can create anything they want on their sites.

This isn’t the case as you can see above. The seamless effect I’d been going for is ruined because of the space between blocks.

Yes, I did try different solutions. I tried grouping the images, editing them as HTML, and a number of other things I can’t remember right now.

I could install the Classic Editor plugin to get the exact look I want… but that requires a paid upgrade. Because of course it does.

Make a liar out of me, won’t you, WordPress.com? Those spaces between images were in the preview, not on the real post. Cripes, I still dislike WordPress.com so much, I don’t even want to take back what I said. I’ll just strike it out instead.