Actual Diary

April 22nd

Progress! After talking with a friend, something clicked and I finally did a Formal (capital F) edit of SLEIG into a nice fancy volume format with a cover and chapter headings and all that jazz, and I put in all the previously removed chapters (with some touching up here and there). Wow I'm happy with it! I think I had this weird wobbling period where I was like 'man this kind of sucks, cut the fat out, let's keep it clean and focused'. You can read all about that a few diary entries ago, where I talk about the problems with too much exposition and so on. I still believe that, but what I didn't realise at the time is I was making something of a category error.

What I mean by that is that for a commercial product, it's absolutely better to have a relatively tight narrative with carefully considered levels of exposition, clear hooks and intelligent pacing. True. But SLEIG isn't a sleek commercial product, it's my first work of indie comic fiction that is supposed to feel kind of weird, janky and idiosyncratic. For works like that, a lot of their character comes from precisely the things you would try and cut out with a more commercial approach. So the exposition, the meandering pace, the slightly obtuse and self-indulgent dialogue... I had cut out all the best bits! Not to mention I had also completely excised Trout as a result who people routinely tell me is their favourite character. Being an author is a mess, there's so much trial and error...

Anyway, silver-lining is it's looking really good now I think. Sixty-six pages! After a couple more chapters it'll be a complete volume 1, and then I can print it or do whatever.

FIELD NOTES: More job-hunting... shipwreck has been great though so far.

April 2nd

I wouldn't talk about this anywhere else since even I find it tedious to rehearse again and again, but it's really tricky working out what to do and when to do it... Something I conditioned into myself a long time ago was never to let creativity intermingle with hype. Like, you watch Fight Club and suddenly you want to make Fight Club. Or, you watch Lord of the Rings, and suddenly post-apocalyptic fantasy is your mission in life. And then, 24-48 hours later, you're over it and you don't want to do that anymore. I learned that early and it's given me a lot of focus, and helped me discern which ideas I care about (or have actual weight behind them) and which are just emphemeral ideas carried by the winds of hype.

The problem is, that turns out to be only part of the problem, because the question then becomes - of the ideas that remain, which should take priority? I'm primarily occupied with finishing SLEIG (finishing stuff is one of the single most important disciplines to enforce!), but then what? What do I want people to see me as? Is it better to be a kind of gloomy poetic figure making Serious Stuff? Or someone sillier and more manic creating cute stuff that makes people laugh? I feel like both of those people, but when you're making art, you're necessarily forced to collapse that superposition into a single stable identity, at least for as long as you're working on a given project. Furthermore, is it better to be safer and more deliberately commercial? Or is it better to be riskier with the expectation that if it's good enough it'll probably go somewhere? Again, I don't feel particularly averse to either approach, but you can't do both.

I don't know. It's tricky. It's what Sartre would have called your garden variety existential crisis. It's a choice, and no one can help you make it except yourself. I have friends who I admire a lot on both of those tracks, and so if I wanted to be more or less confident about one or the other, I could just go talk to them... but at the end of the day it's still me that needs to make the choice.

... oh man I just remembered the visual novel too. It's tricky!

FIELD NOTES: Still job-hunting! I started a minicomic-making collective called shipwreck last week which has been great so far! Let's see where it goes.

March 11th

Recently there's been a bit of a trend online wherein people mock and strongly resist any critique or subversive takes on classic visual novels / dating sims / eroges. The idea being that most of the people doing this actually have very little experience or knowledge of the thing they're supposedly critiquing, and that it's shallow to assume that something is superfluous or gratuitous simply because you don't enjoy it or get it. I'm pretty sympathetic to this - I agree it's dumb to be like "hey I removed this characteristic feature of X, isn't X better now?" or "hey I'm mocking this characteristic feature of X, pretty clever right?". I don't think that necessarily constitutes an imporvement nor do I think it's particularly clever.

However, I was reading back over my manga diary, and specifically the entry on Made in Abyss, and I wondered - would someone reading that draw the same conclusion about me? For context (although you can read it here anyway), in that diary entry I say that I thought the manga was deservedly criticised for featuring gratuitous fan service. But am I commiting the same sin? Is the fan service a core part of the work? Would it be the same without it? Is it part of a certain genre / otaku tradition that I simply don't get?

Frustratingly, I think a lot of people on my Twitter feed probably would be of that opinion (i.e. that my reaction is chauvanistic or prudish). I can play devil's advocate with myself and find ways to justify it, say; "oh, but this is all part of how Tsukushi creates a sense of indifference towards the physical form, that is essential to the manga's themes of self-destruction and metamorphosis" or "ah, but here Tsukushi is trying to juxtapose eroticism with disgust, which is a core part of his brand of highly engaging body horror" or similarly "Tsukushi is challenging our sensibilities, pointing out the overlap between our heavily sanitised and fictionalised ideas of sexuality, and the violence and raw physicality of biological sexuality".

I think those all might be true to an extent, but they're also basically untrue - which is to say I just made them up without a whole lot of cognitive effort on my part. I think that highlights that these issues are rarely as clear cut as online discourse would make them seem. If you want to sanitise your favourite otaku media by removing the ero content - go ahead. If you want to block anyone who implies that same content might be included in bad faith - go ahead. But in either instance you're taking the intellectually easy way out.

Tsukushi is clearly an intelligent and considered author. But he's also (to be blunt and have some fun - sorry) a big sweaty middle-aged Japanese dude with a neckbeard, whose main demographic are primarily male otakus who are not exactly patrons of fine art. So whilst we have to have a certain amount of respect for his creative decisions, it seems ridiculous to me that we shouldn't also be able to say "hey, maybe this isn't entirely in good faith, and maybe the work would have been largely improved without it".

Or, to put it more simply, there has to be a *line* somewhere, or else literally any creative decision becomes permissable. Even if drawing that line might invade the sanctity of a cultural space that we hold very dear.

March 4th

Someone asked me what my inspirations were for SLEIG. It's kind of a hard question, not because SLEIG is especially inspired or complex or whatever, but just that inspiration is really a nebulous thing that feels very organic to me. My answer was something like... Philip K Dick and Sebald as literary inspirations, Tsukumizu and Mozocry as art/tonal inspirations, The Midnight Gospel from TV as kind of a vibe, OFF the game, as well as Yume Nikki in some respects (and heavily inspired by the vibe of many of the Yume 2kki soundtracks), a lot of Radiohead and Modest Mouse musically, and Jacob's Ladder as a very significant influence on a plot point that hasn't made it into the comic yet.

That might not be very interesting or intelligible, but it's curious how different media and stories soup together to make something more than a sum of their parts.

I've also been thinking I should study more, but it's always my belief that studying for the sake of studying is a good way to burn out. For me at least. Specifically I really need to get bolder and more dynamic with expressions and poses. So I'm working on a little social project that will hopefully give me (and others) more of a fun and organic reason to do that.

FIELD NOTES: Job hunting... ;_;

February 22nd

Pretty tired, not much to report - lost a couple weekends to working and February has kind of slid by in a blur. My motivation for making comics has been going up and down a bit - I'm feeling really pleased with my art lately, but I'm kind of bummed out by the more social aspects. I've met some really nice people and some people have been really kind to me in their reception of SLEIG / other comics. But I feel disconnected from everyone regardless, not solipsistic by any means but kind of isolated. I think some people are happy like that, or work well like that, so fair enough. I think for me I'd really feel better being more embedded in a community. But what community, and where, and how? I wouldn't be the first person to encounter that problem I guess - it's the modern human condition, the consequence of a big yawn expanding the intellectual and social distances between everyone, ending up with isolation and alienation in a dark country dotted by millions of tiny signal fires, each one separated by a vague uncrossable unknown.

Okay, that's a little dramatic and also low-key just paraphrasing Saint-Exupéry. But there's a sense in which it's true, and I find myself spending more and more time thinking about how to fix that or at least make some positive response to it. How do like-minded people find one another and organise themselves in some way that's organic and on equal terms? Is it really something we just abandon to chance?

February 7th

Working on the next chapter of SLEIG. As part of this edit, I cut the 2nd and 3rd chapters on ESP and Trout respectively, and I guess also the omake chapter. Again, on the whole I seriously don't condone going back and revising or redrawing stuff, but sometimes... I don't know, I guess because I'm still early on in making comics, my skill and style improved super rapidly, and so it was just too much of a clash to have stuff from the relatively recent past be so out of sync with my current stuff. Also, I feel like SLEIG is probably already quite difficult for a random reader to understand or get into, so I kinda want to cut the fat and make it a bit snappier and flashier. SLEIG (as most early comics inevitably are/should be) is very style over substance anyway.

I also made the mistake of going massively heavy on 'tell' over 'show'. In my defence, I was fully aware of this at the time. My philosophy was that it's okay to emphasise 'telling' over 'showing' as long as the 'telling' is done in a way that's fun, and isn't just loads of bland background information. I think I pulled that off - even though basically everything I made for SLEIG was just K monologuing about the setting, I think she did it in a way that was entertaining in itself, illustrated by her doing wacky stuff and the information itself being pretty strange and (hopefully) interesting (versus, you know, 12 pages on the history of the gnome republics or whatever).

Still, even if it kind of worked, it's still not a good approach, so I'd rather amend that error since I have the chance. It's my hope that if my stuff eventually gets popular, I'll have the confidence to just say "whatever" and leave my past work alone. I feel like the pressure to do that will also be reduced now that my art is a lot better than it was.

Anyway, that's enough agonising over SLEIG. From now on I'm going to a punchier 8-page format that's more plot driven (that is to say, I'm now getting to the plot I originally wrote, but that was blanketed under a load of initial exposition). I'm almost done with thumbnailing and it's been fun, I'm doing some weird stuff with panelling and introducing a character I really like.

Work on my VN is chugging along slowly but surely, by integrating it into the SLEIG setting (tangentially) it feels like one cohesive project. I've also started doing some sketching and research for my next comic, which will be a historical yuri epic. That concept alone should be a bit more marketable than SLEIG - again, please vomit and/or flog me for using that word, but I'm trying to be honest and open with my thoughts here, even if they're kind of reprehensible. I love SLEIG, but I'm only human, and it can be a little demotivating writing stuff you know has quite a narrow audience. If I can work on something that I care about, but has wider appeal... I'm only human! ;_;

January 22nd

Something pretty irrelevant but I wanted to jot down: some of my most nostalgic video game memories/spaces concern non-functional areas within games. For example, clipping into empty prop houses/shops only meant to be seen through a window, or areas only put into a game as scenery or to fill space. Obvious examples are nondescript scenic locations in WoW-of-yore, especially hidden areas only meant to be seen on a flight path, a few of which could be accessed through some cliff jumping. The ones that stand out to me though are the Demon Doors from Fable 2 and its DLC. Each one was a sort of hidden pocket dimension gated by challenges of varying difficulty. Normally the material benefit to the player was a chest or something in the world behind the door. But the little worlds themselves were often beautifully crafted, clearly the passion project of whatever level designer was tasked with designing them, wonderfully atmospheric and pensive visions of idyllic and eerie landscapes, empty and forgotten and curiously suspended in their eternal seasons. To this day I can still vividly recall the impression of those worlds, and they had a magnetic and hugely compelling quality that I find difficult to explain. This applies to the aforementioned locations in WoW and other games too, but to a lesser degree.

I think the reasons for this is that for more functional areas, there's a sense in which they have an ending - once they've served their purpose (talking to their occupants and killing the mobs), it's quite easy to parcel them away in your head as dormant and finished. In contrast, non-functional areas have this haunting eternal quality, that they were there before, and will always be there, unconcerned with their interaction with the player and happily occupying their place in some nestled imagined reality that did not need to be perceived, and once perceived cannot be neatly resolved or concluded in the same way. Isn't that interesting? I think that's the best I can do to describe the feeling, but it feels really compelling to me, and seems to to some extent satisfy my curiosity about why I find myself unable to let go of these virtual spaces despite the passage of years (and despite the games with which their associated not being that good or memorable to me otherwise).

FIELD NOTES: My talk went well - yay! I've also updated the site with a shorter edited cut of SLEIG, removing chapters 2 and 3. I might tweak these and then re-intergrate them as some people have been really nice in saying how much they enjoy them. But this new cut works quite nicely, both with updated art and with less exposition. From here, there'll be... two more chapters? And then I'm gonna overhaul the format a bit. Also I'm gradually shifting towards resuming work on the visual novel. My motivation for this is continually the other people making art adjacent to me who are just killing it.

It's warmer here now, and I've been buying some plants for the spring.

January 15th

I finished drawing chapter 4 of SLEIG! I also broke one of my rules, which is never go back and re-draw stuff. Well, I went back and re-drew stuff. There were just so many glaringly weird looking pages in the earlier chapters, and all they really needed was some tweaking and polish. Mostly it's just some instances where I really should have flipped the canvas, as proportions were a little uneven. I also changed the pupil style from a cross to a more traditional dot, which is less wacky but just looks a lot better I think. I also went harder with the line weight - it's interesting, I think originally I wanted more uniform and scratchy tkmiz-style lines, but these days I'm leaning more into the Mozocry style with characters delineated by heavier lines, and I think that works better with my style.

Then, once I had crossed the line of re-drawing, I figured some editing would also be good, and I have some ideas for a more concise cut of the earlier chapters. I don't want to invest too much time or mental energy in it, since I absolutely don't view it as some great project. But still, once you've invested time in something like that, it can sometimes be worth taking a bit more effort to put it in good order.

FIELD NOTES: It's cold here, and I've been busy with some stressful work stuff which is always a little depressing. I can't really say what I work on without doxing myself, but I'll be presenting to a couple hundred people in a few days. My girlfriend works in our public health service and she works crazily hard, so the energy in our house is a little down. At the moment I'm reading Beautiful Fighting Girl by Tamaki Saitō and a book on the WW1 Christmas Truce, but I'm also very gradually reading Normal People to my girlfriend to help her fall asleep sometimes.

January 5th

I'll try this out as a project this year since I think journalling can be good, because inevitably a certain % of thoughts and ideas are basically lost to brain entropy if they're not written down. I feel optimistic for this year, creatively I have a bunch of ideas I really want to make, the enemy is always a huge sense of urgency and impatience for completing them. But there's just no way to do them all at once, and so I'm trying to foster a kind of ruthless pragmatic approach to tackling them. It feels horrifying to think I might have to wait until like 2025 to create an idea I have now, but then is two years really so bad?

I turned 30 at the end of 2023. Naturally there's a load of bullshit stuff wrapped up in that as a milestone, which I'm affected by as much as anyone. Fortunately these days there are a lot of extremely admirable reference points for people who debuted in their early or mid 30s. Not that I'm so arrogant as to call me posting stuff on social media anything equivalent to a 'debut', but you know what I mean - I take this seriously and want to spend the rest of my life doing it in some capacity, so I think it's fair enough to talk about it in those terms.

My first priority is definitely finishing SLEIG - it's been a great first comic to cut my teeth on and I've learned a lot, and my art has changed massively since the start around this time last year. I want to keep the characters and the setting, and so will probably redeploy them in a semi-sequel that carries on some threads whilst starting new ones. Anyway, first, I'll complete the remaining two or three chapters.

After that, I really want to jump back in to experimenting with visual novels. I had a load of fun script-writing, programming and composing some music for a sketch last year, but I realised you really need to focus on one medium at a time - 'side projects' in totally different formats to your main project are kind of a cope IMO. The VN will probably be called 'The Desert Out There' and will feature some new characters in the SLEIG setting.

After that... it will be another comic, but I will need to think carefully about which direction to go. It's a little gross, but I'd like to try and make it a bit more 'marketable' next time, so I'll have recourse to use other avenues for sharing it, other than just posting it on Twitter (although I have found posting comics on Twitter really rewarding and fun so far, so I'm definitely not knocking that). In my heart is a story I feel a deep affinity towards, about a cute angel and the ocean, so it may well be that. But then again, it's so hard knowing which way to go, and there's always the temptation to do something more straightforward and serial-y, especially since like 99% of the manga I love fall into that serial format anyway.

Of course, a lot of this anxiety is AGAIN the product of that inescapable sense of urgency, and the fear of the drudery of experimenting and waiting and iterating. So, I'm going to do my best not to listen to that and just follow my heart.

Well that entry was kinda long and introspective, but I'm allowed one of those as a mission statement for 2024.

FIELD NOTES: I went to a beach for new years. The beaches here in Wales are really beautiful, very lonely and pristine. I may lose my job this year (university work is mostly on fixed-term contracts, so what can you do). That would suck but I'm going to do my best to hang on.