Update
Added 2023-02-21 11:02:34 +0000 UTCHey~
It's been a while and 5 Saturdays since posting the final version of episode 3. I said I would stick to a schedule and failed to do so. Seems even if my health is on the better end life will still throw hurdles at me, and I am very easily disrupted. Following a schedule is one of the best ways to track growth/progress which is why I want to do it so badly, but even when I want to I still scramble it.
Pretty much I had to pack all my stuff and leave where I live temporarily while they replaced the flooring. They had to do the whole building, it wasn't a choice. I knew about it but it still snuck up on me. This means I went without internet for quite a while.
In the meantime as I try to get up to ep 8 I’ll drop two episodes now.
I really want to get back to writing new eps. I’ll admit editing the current set of 12 is pretty exhausting but necessary. I’m following through with the editors notes and addressing some more complicated issues brought up. For example ep 4 ends a little abruptly mainly because I didn't know what else I could do with that ep but I gained a bit of clarity and more ideas so the edits on that one are pretty noticeable.
It also seems I have a habit of being a little vague to no benefit. I love hiding foreshadowing and little hints and even just random Easter eggs (that no one has mentioned as of yet :P ) in the art and text. But I've leaned a little more toward clarity. Something that seems on the nose to me often isn't to others and I’m learning from that. The lore pages are another part of that push toward clarity. Just gotta be careful not to show too much. XD
It's also hard working so far ahead in the story and remembering exactly what hasn't been revealed yet when editing past eps. As far as applying the edits go, everything looks really clean but we are all human and sometimes errors still pop up, especially for the areas of whole scenes I’ve added that the editor hasn't touched. (They edit what you give them and any expansions you make can’t be batted back and forth without paying for that labor.) That being said, unless there is a grizzly mistake discovered in a final version I will not be touching them again.
Even now I’ve noticed some minor issues and have fought the urge to change them. In the already posted 3 episodes I found out the “Show Print Layout” on Google Docs doesn't actually show page divisions correctly which has led to some awkward double spacing or areas where a character’s name and dialogue are intercepted by a page break. These are fine on the critique versions so I’m not constantly fighting page layout while getting the ideas down, but not the final versions. Unless there is a random blank page then those are staying in the old ones.
I’ve done my best to fix it in ep 4-5 and will continue to keep an eye on it. This is what I mean. I have come to the realization that trying to keep what will eventually be 96 episodes—all about 6,000 words long—totally uniform is a little unrealistic for one person.
It's also a handful managing this story on multiple websites. I’ll only have up to 12 on other sites but I still want to put “blank” chapters with links leading here. I have figured out uploading an episode to each of the sites I’ll list in a second takes at least 10 hours, so pretty much a full day of non stop uploading a single episode.
Wolf of Penumbra is currently on:
If you've made it this far it means you must enjoy my rambling haha. That's another thing, length. The episodes are written to fit a specific length so a page count of 30-35 on the spec version is pretty much perfect. (The other version is spaced longer and the variety of fonts also lengthen it a bit.) Some episodes dip into the 40 page range and I think the longest ep at the moment is 46 pages. Since this is the last time I will be touching these episodes I am valuing aesthetic and narrative flow over the page count. This way I’m not tempted to expand the episode's premise too much and instead flesh out what is already there. But hey that just means more content for you guys.
Anyway there's that. I wrote a lot this time because I know I have a tendency to throw a lot out and interact only to go quiet suddenly. Really it's to focus on the project, but on the outside it looks like I’ve stopped doing things. I know this because that's what I used to think when I would see several months go by with no update to a story or comic I'm interested in.
Just know that even if months go by there's still moving gears in the background.
