The Long Game

Hi everyone!

While we continue to move steadily towards the end of year, I thought it would be a good time now to reflect with everyone on things, before being too caught up in production again:

Progress Report

As of this post, not only have 4 additional pages been added to the overall page count of Meater Showers: Swole Mates (2022), a few major story structure and pacing fixes have been added to its mid-section (transitional pages 6-8) and it’s ending (pages 15-16). I will continue to share more progress previews over each weekend, so please stick around!

Backstory

The start of October was a bit rough - my workflow had been disrupted after my HDD had to be replaced with a new SSD, which subsequently led me to realize that an important software I use for my work could no longer be activated. To add to my low-key anxieties, I was notified by email that my home would not be realized anytime soon as major construction delays had been officially announced. I’m not sure how relatable this piece of information is to most of my supporters, but the housing situation in Singapore is quite unique due to an inconvenient scarcity of land. My original projection was that I only had to tank it through another year without a home of my own, but now that seems to have been stretched out indefinitely.

The thing that I’ve found most affecting in this pandemic, existential crisis aside, are the constantly shifting goalposts and general lack of stability. Various little things came gnawing at my heels and brought things to an uncomfortable crawl.

I’ve only been able to share now primarily on the account that I’ve since moved away mentally and emotionally from the events that had affected me early October, and been able to regain some relative momentum to barrel forward. I feel that by sharing this post today - I’ve arrived at acknowledging my pains, picked myself up and thus able to move forward. (Also I managed to get a copy of Adobe CS6 from a friend, thank god for that!)

Next Phase

At this juncture of production, it would be vital for to take Meatier Showers: Swole Mates from its ethereal draft form into its clean-up and inking phase starting November. As it currently stands, I am personally quite happy with how the second draft looks. The 4 pages are still in its rough placeholder sketchy phase, but the layout and compositions are mostly there and good for cleaning up.

After some deliberation, for the purposes of this project, I felt that it would be in the best interest of the project to have all 16 pages fully inked over the course of Nov - Dec. Having the line art is crucial, so that in the event of any emergency, I would still be able to hand over pages to my art assistant, Donryu to hold the fort.

Expectations

Patron supporters can expect to see the first full-colored page of Swole Mates delivered near the end of Dec 2021, and continue to enjoy early-access to new comic pages a month ahead of the general public. In Jan 2022, the first page of Swole Mates will be released in grayscale for the rest of the general public. This initiative is to kickstart the launch of Swole Mates as an official “new” project for 2022. If all goes according to schedule, the pages will be released monthly, over the course of the next 16 months all thru Apr 2023. As with the Meatier Showers 2020 project, patrons can expect a heavily discounted ebook promo code for Gumroad, upon completion of the project.

For now, I will be preparing myself for the marathon in these coming months. Thank you for continuing to support my passion and making this project possible.

Snares

Oct 2021