Hiya! This is the comic I mentioned last time when I said I wanted to express my feelings "as a story." I posted this as I drew it on Twitter, but here it is again in a nice scrollable format for Patreon.
It's been a long and strange six months, but I'm feeling positive about where things are headed, and I finally feel like I have something to show for it, too, in the form of a newfound perspective on art.
Below is the text I posted alongside the comic on the Halos site, elaborating a bit more about my feelings and plans. (Some of this is not news if you've seen the previous patreon-exclusive comic.) If you have any questions or comments, you can post 'em here and I'll answer them too!
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First, the obvious question: Where have I been? Actually, I spent the lion's share of this year working on something other than Goodbye to Halos. It was a coloring project for money that was meant to take about a month, but ended up taking closer to four, due primarily to nitpicky perfectionism on my part.
Without going into specifics, I found myself working for 8+ hours a day without breaks do to meet this entirely self-imposed standard of quality -- little tiny details and tweaks that absolutely nobody would ever notice or care about. But I did!!
I burnt out so hard I was basically useless for an entire month, and what I realized as I crawled out of that pile of ash was: What I had just done was a fast-motion version of what I'm doing with Goodbye to Halos.
I drew and posted "Confession," the comic you see above, over the course of a few weeks on Twitter. I could have just written a text post, but there was just no version of a blog-style update that could have conveyed my troubled feelings.
"Confession" is thus two things at once:
First, a raw representation of my emotions as I come to terms with my broken relationship to art, and Goodbye to Halos in particular.
Second, a challenge to myself -- to find a sustainable model for how to go forward. A comic with "just the bits that matter."
Confession is messy, fast, and in many places the art is unbearably sloppy for me to look at. I drew each of these pages in one go, in about an hour each, mostly without penciling or thumbnailing of any kind -- just straight to inks. It's a far cry from some of the meticulously rendered Halos pages I've posted most recently, and even from the simpler inked pages from last year.
But, I posted 32 pages in about two weeks.
I had a complete thought, told a complete story, and as far as I can tell based on initial responses, I think the emotions i was trying to convey came through. That's all incredibly big for me.
It's left a little ambiguous in Confession, but it's worth saying unambiguously: Goodbye to Halos is not over. In fact, I'm more excited now than I've ever been about it.
I'm going to tell the rest of this story, and I'm going to do it fast, messy, and from the heart.
Thank you so much to the readers who I know have continued to refresh this page through over half a year of unintentional hiatus. I'm so sorry for not posting more direct status updates here on the site -- a complex mix of shame and grandiose overconfidence made any update I *could* post feel premature, like if I just held out a bit longer I would surely get everything together and have a proper comic for you to read.
What does Goodbye to Halos look like going forward? Is the Video Update still coming? I'm not completely sure yet! I have to see what shape things take. I've rearranged the chapter slightly to fit in a small scene before the one that would be the Video Update, so the next update you see will be more of a traditional comic page.
I hope this change doesn't have you feeling nervous. It's not about quantity over quality: it's about doing the thing versus not doing it. And i want to do it. I have to, right?
The alternative is just so boring!!!