TRW Strips are Back with a New Look This Fall

So the strips I used to do started out as a series of fourth wall breaking "letters to the cast" segments consisting of character assets I could conveniently reuse with every page. Eventually, full blown side comics emerged from this template. They focused on group DnD, Chloe's revenge schemes, and a day in Courtney's life to name a few.

So why did I stop doing them? I'd say scope creep was my greatest enemy back then. It got to the point where even while repurposing as much existing artwork as I could, these things were becoming almost as much work as a standard TRW page and there simply weren't enough hours in the day to continue.

Why do the cartoon look? Lots of reasons. One is that with this simplified style not only can I make the artwork faster, but as a bonus it will also be less obvious when assets are reused. Additionally a new look has potential to hook new readers, a distinct look from the main comic makes it less confusing when I put out two pages in a given week and both are telling different stories, and lastly I just thought it would be fun and wanted to try it.

As Casey's hat implies, these will be more SFW in nature so I can focus on character and story stuff that there isn't room for in the main comic. But another way that these new strips will be different than my old ones is that they'll be on the $1 tier and eventually public just like my normal comic pages. My point being I'd like to leave the door open to potential NSFW bonus panels that are only shown on the $1 tier at Patreon and Subscribestar.

Why wait until fall? Well the fact is I've already been working on these for a couple months now. I'll explain. The idea for these new strips started as one-off gags about the TRW cast getting up to their daily lives and...so help me I had zero ideas for weeks on end and just couldn't get started.

I've come to realize that whatever strengths I have when it comes to writing humor are dependent on some kind of story being present as a foundation. From there I can work in what I think are funny elements organically. But when I have to sit down and write a one-off strip, it's like someone pulls a gun and says "Be funny!" This isn't a new thing for me, either. Back when I made the old strips there were ten hour days where two hours were actual work and the other eight were me staring at a screen going "....I've got nothing."

So what started as one-off strips became what I estimate to be a 12-14 page miniseries about Kristina taking Casey and Elianna to a dance club. (I should mention that scope creep remains my greatest enemy.) And while the pages are indeed much quicker to make than a standard TRW page, I'm juggling them around lots of other stuff so the going is currently slow. To avoid long gaps between pages, I'd like to get as much of a head start as possible up until the end of August before I start posting.

And that's the announcement! If you don't care for the cartoon look, I assure you the current painted look of the main comic isn't going anywhere anytime soon. My thanks to everyone for being patient with me while my shriveled claw heals up, and I'll be back next Thursday with the next page of TRW! :)