Due to me working out the specifics of the second chapter, the week after next’s Swordmaster Odyssey update will likely be very minor. Probably three pages at most. That, and I wasted too much of last week playing video games. My own fault, really, I usually pick games to play during breaks that don’t last more than an hour a sitting. Great way to loosen up before starting the dreaded inking phase. But not when you don’t stop playing and never get around to inking. XD

On the first chapter, I decided “Hey, I’ll just script the chapter and worry about layout as I go.” Bad call on my part, which is why the early part of the chapter has a bunch of bland panels with off-model characters. In hindsight, the exact wording the characters use is unimportant to know beforehand. What is important is to know how they’ll say it, and what it will look like on the page. For chapter 2, I’m doing a rough version on index cards first and not worrying about dialouge specifics. All I really need to make sure is that there’s enough room in the panel for the character to say what needs to be said. :3

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been showing the merchant family’s cart in Swordmaster Odyssey nearly as much as I should. Well, truth is, I hate drawing the thing and I honestly don’t know how I would have managed if I’d ended up sticking with the original draft of the story where there was a whole caravan of carts of all different shapes and sizes. In hind sight, this was a good thing.

Today I spent at least four hours working on a page much further on in the story than where the website is at where you had to see the entire cart to really see what’s going on. And I still have to scan the page in and clean it up, add tones, and letter it. Granted, if this was a larger operation three or four hours a page would be nothing. But considering this is a small indie webcomic where I’m trying to get four pages up a week, four hours is a long time. Hopefully things will speed up and then you won’t have to listen to me whine anymore. 😉

As the first chapter of Swordmaster Odyssey expands as I finish more and more pages, I continue to wish more and more that I had done it in full color instead of simple black and white. Even though I don’t identify myself as that great a painter, a splash of color just seems like it would add so much.

In the end, though, it’s probably best that I didn’t do the comic in full-color. Printing costs aside, doing a single page takes quite awhile. Adding color to the process could double the time it takes, or more. Right now, I shouldn’t have any trouble pushing out four pages a week, but with color I could probably only manage three at best, but more likely only two. I would also end up having to spend all my time doing Swordmaster Odyssey, and I would be unable to start up some of the other projects that I’m planning.

Granted, if I had an assistant or nine I could easily pull it off, but being an upstart indie studio, it’s really just me. Maybe I’ll get the chance to do another webcomic story, and then that one can be in color.