Chapter 11, Page 10
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Okay, I didn’t wanna have to do this and I feel like such a colossal flake, but my health, both physical and mental but especially mental, has been in the absolute garbage recently. Killer migraines, alternating anxiety attacks and big depressive slumps, and insomnia that’s letting me sleep maybe an hour a night if I’m lucky. Most of what creative output I’ve had lately is either getting used up on commissions, or late-night attempts to keep myself sane and honestly working on the comic right now is not really happening. It doesn’t help, of course, that we’re swimming in pandemic-related uncertainty IRL which is…uh…not helping my stress around updating this accidentally-kinda-topical work. May/June/July have also had some distressing real life gut punches too.
I’m not shelving the comic; far from it. I’ve got ideas for the next couple of pages. But at the moment, sticking to a rigid update schedule on what’s essentially a personal project/labor of love is making me not enjoy working on it, and causing me rage at myself when I can’t keep to the schedule. Even when I take a break, if I set myself a date that the comic will definitely be back, it accidentally fuels my procrastinate/rush at the last minute habit and then I beat myself up some more over that.
So what I’m gonna do is: keep updating the comic, but on an adhoc kinda basis when I have time and inspiration to put together a decent, non-rushed page, until such a time as I can get myself back onto a proper schedule. I’m not sure when that’ll be I’ll be active both Facebook and on Twitter to let you all know when a new page has dropped.
I really appreciate everyone’s patience.
Facebook: @Five Comic; @Queencordite
Twitter: @Queencordite
I know it’s a bit of a long break but honestly I’ve just kind of hit that point again where I need to do a whole big pile of ‘getting my shit together’, mostly relating to my health, commissions/projects I’ve gotta do for other people, and my own rather flimsy pandemic-related sanity, but also including re-storyboarding some bits for this chapter anyway.
The comic itself will be back and hopefully a bit more coherent and less rushed on 7th June, and I’m gonna do a couple of comic-related colouring pages for patrons too.
Made this page before I take a break for a few weeks and get back on the comic train in January.
I’d normally wish everyone a happy winter solstice/Xmas/New Year/anything else being celebrated round about now, but happiness is pretty thin on the ground in this dumpster fire of a year.
Take care of each other, people. I hope better days eventually come in some form.
I hate, hate, hate doing this, and I know I’ve done it A LOT in this year alone, but I think I’m gonna need to take a break from the comic for the rest of December. Seasonal depression is hitting me hard, and on top of the dumpster fire that has been 2020 in general removing a lot of my means of keeping my sanity intact, I feel…pretty damn paralysed by this particular bout. I’ve got a big collaborative project for eventual publication to work on, and staying on top of that AND the comic might be a bit more than I can handle at the moment, so in the interests of both my mental health and making more progress on the collaborative project, I’ll be putting Five Comic on temporary hold until 4th Jan (the first Monday of 2021.)
Thank you all for being such understanding and excellent readers; I’ll still post doodles and stand-alone art here and on the web page. Have a good rest of the year, and may 2021 be slightly less shit.
Asset used for Water Tower Hill: https://www.deviantart.com/artreferencesource/art/Free-Stock-Background-PNG-The-Oupost-832747491