Public comic progress update, and info on the next comic

A little half-year progress report for everyone, with a new illustration at the end

Hi guys! It’s been half a year since the last public blog post so here’s another one, so those of you who aren’t subscribers of the behind-the-scenes can stay in the loop of how things are progressing, and what I’ve decided for next year’s comic project:

First: Update on the personal testimony comic

The testimony comic is progressing on schedule and is almost halfway done! I have one month of inking left, and then the coloring will start. It’s currently tracking to be done around the end of the year (2022). Of course once it’s finished I’ll post it online for free (in one big chunk). Oh, and even though progress images belong to the subscribers-only-posts, here is a teeny-tiny one for fun: a inked panel of me freaking out about something, as always:

Second: What’s next after that comic is finished?

Yeah, what comic will I start afterwards, aka next year? Well, some of you might remember that I had an idea for a lighthearted slice-of-life type setting that could be used to explore theological themes… but… I don’t feel ready for it! xD So I’ve decided to take a couple years to make a medium-length adventure comic first, during which I can grow and mature in the faith a bit more. Afer all, I’ve only been a full-on Christian for 1,5 years now, and it feels like so little!

This is actually a bit similar to the situation I had when I was in university and wanted to start my first big comic, which I was really excited about. But because I had very lacking comic-drawing skills at the time I didn’t feel like I’d be able to do my idea justice. So I took a couple years to finish a shorter “practice comic“, and that arrangement worked out really well for both projects. (For those of you who have followed me from my previous works: the idea I had in university was the one for “Stand Still. Stay Silent“ and the practice comic was “A Redtail’s Dream.“)

But this time my problem isn’t “oh noes, I’m not good enough at comics!“. I’ve drawn over 2000 comic pages in the last 12 years, I feel pretty comfortable in the craft now! This time it’s my understanding of God. Who is Jesus REALLY? What is he LIKE? Like, REALLY??? I need to know MORE and BETTER! I’m very grateful that early on after my conversion I was blessed with a lot of big, BIG chunks of crucial theological granite blocks falling into place. At the time I didn’t even realize how crucial blocks, but I’m starting to appreciate it more and more.

But what I need now is all the soil, and gravel, and smaller rocks that are supposed to be around, and in between, those big granite blocks. And all the pieces need to settle properly, and then some plants need to grow their roots in there too. It’s the kind of stuff that simply needs time to happen. Right now me learning to spend time with other Christians (at Church etc.) is particularly helping with adding some of that soil and organic matter between the granite blocks.

So aaaanyway, what is the in-between comic then?

Glad you asked! But I can’t say a lot yet, because I just started working on the idea last month hahah! But a picture is better than a thousand words, so I prepared an illustration specifically for this update post:

So as you can see it’s uhhh… animals… going… somewhere, for some reason. That’s the synopsis for now: Animals going somewhere, for some reason. Does it have a title yet? Nope. I’ll write up a proper synopsis and come up with a title in a few months when we’re getting close to the testimony comic being done. Right now I only have about half a day per week to do prep-work for it, so I’m mostly just ruminating on the plot and the characters in my head (subscribers have seen a few more character sketches, but that’s really all I’ve got to show so far.)

But once I switch over from the Testimony comic to working pimarily on his one there’ll be a lot more content coming! That’s when I’ll make new social medias for posting art on, and make some sort of website hub for the comic, and do all that other stuff you need for an online comic.

That’s a lot of characters! And I’ll have to decide on names for all of them, uh-oh.

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But yeah, I’ll see you all later when I see you! The next free public update will probably be probably in a few months, or when I have something important enough to update about. ( Subscribers-only-updates will of course continue to be monthly. And of course thanks to all who have subscribed so far, if I remember correctly we just crossed the 70 paid subscribers mark. :3)

~Minna