I am unhappy.
I’ve had a lot of thoughts about the comic and my level of work lately. I’ve been thinking about my expectations, what it has accomplished, what it has not done, and other random bits of thought that have been floating around in my head. I’ve written some of these out before, probably in a less than articulate way, and it’s probably old hat for me to write yet another one of these “thoughts on my comic” posts. But this is more about me acknowledging my shortcomings and where my feelings on the comic currently lie. I do hope to properly explain to everyone still reading where I’m mentally at with it. Maybe it will help explain this very long rough patch I’ve been going through with it.
Before I begin allow me to be perfectly clear: I’m not going to end this post by declaring the end of the comic or anything silly like that. I’ll see it through to the end and I do want to finish the story.
I’m going to begin by going over the history of the comic and its evolution, looking at my motivations and goals. This might take a while.
The Beginning: Chapters 1 – 2
There were a few reasons I began the comic. The first was I was working a dead end job and had absolutely no prospects for the future. The comic was something I could do that not only gave me some kind of control over something in my life, but there was always that thought in the back of my mind that said, “Y’know, maybe this will take off and I’ll be one of the lucky few to make a living off of it! Then I don’t have to work in this hellhole anymore!” Now, let me make clear I wasn’t THAT delusional. I knew that was not likely to happen, especially with all I had yet to learn. But that wasn’t the point. It was a symbol of hope for me during a very bad time in my life. It was something I could take joy from while convincing a small part of myself that there was always a chance it would bail me out of what had been a downright miserable life. If it could be nothing more than false hope then I was okay with that.
Besides that, however, I desperately wanted to improve my work. I had always been a decent but not all that good artist. I had moments that things worked out but usually my stuff always had problems. Being a comic geek I was big into drawing the Jim Lee way and eventually tried to adopt a style similar to Chris Bachalo. But really, it never worked out well. I wasn’t cut for it. I put a lot of pressure on myself and made it to the point I hated to draw. I quit for a year. I came back refreshed and with a style that suited me more: manga. I was still terrible at it but I certainly made a lot more progress in six months of emulating a manga style than I ever did in twelve years of drawing in the American superhero type.
So the other reason I started the comic was to get better at drawing. It would help me constantly practice while also teaching me how to make comics. But I was concerned about what story to use. I had a lot of ideas (all still tucked away on my computer) but I thought they were good ideas, and I wanted them to have good art so I wouldn’t hurt the storytelling. I knew my art wasn’t going to be good enough for them so I chose a story that was somewhat generic that, if the art hurt the story, who would care? The story was a vehicle for the art. Even if it was a bare bones the point was to write scenes that would give me challenges while I drew. Something to force me to learn.
So to the fans out there I’m sorry to say but the story of Blue Sky wasn’t something I considered one of my best ideas. In fact when I began drawing it I had written up to Chapter 3 but only knew a few things: there was reincarnation involved, there were four “generals” the heroes would fight in order much like Sailor Moon, and there would be a fight against the bad guy at the very end. I was making everything else up as I went along. I barely had a story when the comic went online.
I wrote the first three chapters and drew six months worth of strips (I didn’t have much confidence that I could keep a buffer going at the beginning) and on December 5th, 2005 the comic went online. It looked terrible. To this day I don’t know why many of you older readers stuck with it. I owe you my deepest thanks, but it baffles me why you listened to my pleading that it would get better when there were higher quality webcomics to choose from. But hey, you weren’t the only ones. I advertised all over the place and managed to get about 600 readers to start, which… wow. I was happy with. I hoped to reach a thousand by the comic’s first anniversary and that was a heck of a start.
But again, the comic showed every signs of a newbie. I tried to draw poses without using references. They didn’t look good at all, but hey, I tried! I also tried to draw characters doing things to give some variety in the panels but never took the time to think about what they would naturally be doing, so often they did things that didn’t make sense (I still cringe at the first page Ryuichi appeared on with him holding the rose). I also was trying to emulate Megatokyo’s pencil shading look but could never get it to look right. On paper it looked fine. When I scanned it patches of the image would come out dark, other parts came out light… it was a mess.
I also had the problem of having written three chapters on the fly with no clear direction. Changes had to be made, and soon.
The First Real Signs of Positive Change: Chapters 3 – 5
I needed to know where I was going with the comic. Writing as I went was okay but the story was becoming more and more complicated as I fleshed things out and harder to keep track of subplots. I decided to plot out the entire series. I spent two days working things out until I had a nineteen-chapter plot outline I could work with. Smartest thing I ever did. I took a generic idea and added depth to it and the characters. I’m still proud of what the story will end as, despite how it began. It will never be perfect because of the nature of the comic’s creation, but I think it will have a worthy payoff. Sometimes I wish I could start over and rewrite the first chapters, knowing what I know now.
But I digress. I had ensured the comic would have a solid direction, which would free me up to focus on the art. Which, really, was the whole point in doing all of this. I had drawn about five pages of Chapter 3 when I realized my pencil scans were not going to look better no matter what Photoshop trickery I used. Realizing I needed to make a major change I stopped shading my pages and instead drew things as outlines – for example, instead of shading in Sayuri’s hair I would simply draw the outline of it. I then inked the pages, cleaned them up, and scanned them. Once scanned I shaded them by Photoshop, using a small pallet of greys. This was my first major change in the art since I began and one of the most important ones. It greatly improved the look of the comic and, as I was told by someone, helped them tell the characters apart.
The art was still spotty. I was constantly growing as an artist and picking up little things here and there, and I was expanding what I could do by each chapter. Indeed, if you go back and look you will see how the art jumps from chapter-to-chapter as I learned new things. I still had no real style yet but it was slowly beginning to form.
It was also Chapter 3’s omake that I first began playing around with coloring. I had just started the coloring with greys so having to work with a variety of colors was a little scary for me. I wanted to make sure I had the grey shading thing down before I jumped into coloring the comic but I still practiced here and there on random pieces of art.
Speaking of omake, it was one something I realized had to change. The omake had been three single page gags, like traditional omake. The problem was they weren’t funny. It isn’t my strong suit. I can usually pull off humor in the context of a story but stand alone gags? Wasn’t working.
The omake changed with Chapter 5, a chapter that would be significant for my progress was an artist. It was this chapter that about halfway through I settled on a style and characters weren’t looking half bad, for the most part. There were still issues here and there but it was the first time I felt I was making significant progress. I could draw things I never felt comfortable drawing before and I was doing far more with my art than I was ever capable of. I also didn’t feel like I needed to redraw every single page like the previous chapters. The omake also became far more important as it changed from gag pages to short storylines meant to flesh out some supporting characters. Rieko got the first treatment. Up to this point she had been shown to be this ruthless bitch who tormented Mai for no reason other than pure possessiveness. In Chapter 5’s omake I showed WHY she was so possessive. She became more relatable. I would go on to use this to give other somewhat not relatable characters like Shinji reasons why they were the way they were. I used it to show that Jao could actually fear something: his own death.
I am proud of those omake. The writing worked, the art worked, it all meshed well. They made me feel closer to being at a professional level than at an amateur one, and they expressed things about the characters I had no room in the actual story to do.
Chapter 5 was a great moment in the comic’s development.
Getting Fancy: Chapters 6 – 7
The art was coming into it’s own, the story was ramping up, things were looking good! But as I’ve stressed before this is a comic designed to teach me so it was time to focus on other things.
I was comfortable with how the characters looked and the art in general but panels were often flat. I was drawing the same thing, over and over again, with no variety at all. My backgrounds were also lacking as they were often afterthoughts while I focused on characters. So with these chapters I began putting more emphasis on taking my time with backgrounds, using reference material, and drawing dynamic poses. My gosh how I’ve struggled with dynamic poses over the years.
The splash page featuring Tokyo Tower was the best example of this. I spent a lot of time drawing that, far more than on any multi panel page filled with characters. I didn’t rush it. I tried my best to make it look right. And personally I don’t think it came out all that bad.
I also began playing around with shadows. A LOT. Jao’s heavy shadowing began in these chapters and, frankly, it suits him. But my main focus was dynamics. I wanted it to look like characters were moving, not standing around like they had been for five chapters.
If you look through the pages of these two chapters, especially Chapter 7, you will notice most of the pages have at least one unique perspective I had never tried before. I was experimenting A LOT in these chapters and it didn’t always work. When it did work, though, I couldn’t help but feel proud at how far I came. Look at any page from Chapter 3 and compare it to any page in Chapter 7. There’s no denying the progress. It was also this chapter I began playing around with randomly drawing characters in chibi or more cartoony forms, which helped add some personality to it. In truth, though, I did it because I was growing bored drawing the characters the same way and wanted to change things up.
There are things I would change in these chapters but that’s true with all of them. The fact is I’m most proud of these two chapters. I learned just as much from Chapters 6 and 7 as I did from the first five combined.
The Next Step, Spin-Offs, & Signs of Trouble: Chapter 8
Chapter 8 picked up where Chapter 7 left off, with my art being pretty solid and me being pretty happy about it all. Family problems began popping up, though, that at first didn’t affect the comic but soon took their toll. My aunt died of Alzheimer’s. Later that year I lost my grandmother, then a month after that my grandfather. My job suffered a blow due the business losing a supplier. Things were a bit rough.
At first I was unable to get 100% completed pages online but was still able to get partials. It was only occasionally I would have to update like this so it wasn’t a very big deal, especially after having never missed an update in 2 ½ years.
But like I said, stuff started pilling on. It was becoming harder to make updates on time. By the end of August my job had lost yet another supplier and cut me down to five hours a week, essentially making me unemployed. I wasn’t able to gain any readers before the missed updates and began bleeding them after, and I was beginning to have some harsh realizations and regrets about the comic I could not deny anymore. I’ll get to those in a bit.
But first, I made two significant changes during this period, one of which was the spin-off comic Blue Sky: Summer Song. I had come up with ideas for two spin-offs focusing on Kikyo that would be released as books only. Considering my dwindling audience and need for money quickly I decided to try a subscription service with it, also figuring if I had a weekly deadline I would certainly get the books finished. The subscription service was an immediate failure but still had enough interested people that I began the comic, updating every Tuesday and Wednesday. I thought I had finally got caught up so hoped I could handle drawing comics five days a week. I was wrong.
Summer Song was a big change because it marked the first time I did my comics in full color. It was supposed to be a unique selling point on the subscription service… something the main comic didn’t have. But near the end of Chapter 8 I decided to color the main comic, too, because… well, really, I would have to at some point anyway so why not now? So Blue Sky went full color.
As much as I still enjoyed working on the comic (and I was having a lot of fun with Summer Song and still am) I was beginning to lose some of the energy I once had for it. Gaining readers was no longer a factor (at over 500 pages at this point not many people would jump into it, especially with about 200+ pages looking terrible) and it was hard for me to not notice some of the faults of the story thanks to the lack of planning during the comic’s first three chapters.
I might be the only one on this but adding honorifics was beginning to bug me. I felt and continue to feel it looks tacked on in my comic. I desperately wished I could go back and remove them but the dialog of the characters is already established. It feels like it takes the reader out of the story, though.
Makku was a huge mistake. I joke about hating him a lot but I really truly do. I created him thinking the comic needed a mascot. I then, before realizing how I would end up writing him, gave him a significant part in the ending of the series. I’ve written myself into a corner with Makku. He doesn’t show up often anymore, although that’s more to do with the other character’s having important things to do than with me writing him out. I do try to give reminders he’s still around but I cringe when I write his dialog. Huh. Maybe I’m subconsciously keeping him away after all.
I’ve regretted not taking the time to work out a more solid timeline. If you actually look at it things don’t quite fit right, even with time frames being vague. It’s sloppy writing, though, plain and simple.
I also began to have a dislike with how I’ve written the whole thing. I don’t know, maybe I’m being too hard on the story. It was never meant to be a masterpiece like Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind. It was always meant to be a generic formulaic story.
I think the problem is I stopped making significant progress. There are still things to learn, yes, but at least in my mind I no longer need to learn. The comic, 3 ½ years into a six year run, has for the most part served it’s purpose. But because I spent more time focusing on art than story over these past several years I have something that is decent but severely flawed and there’s nothing I can do about it. I always knew what the comic was but never thought I would be ready to move on until it was over. And as much as I love the comic and enjoy working on it I really want to apply everything I’ve learned to something new so I can do things correctly, right from the beginning. I’m done making an okay story. I want to make an excellent story.
So I stopped doing omake. I stopped doing extra projects, such as redrawing the archives. I’m scrapping plans to do the sequels I always planned (I even got as far as character concept drawings). The only extras I’m still doing are Summer Song and Winter Song simply because I want to make those comics. I’ve accepted what Blue Sky is, where it’s headed, and what it will always be. As much as I love the characters (and I do love the characters) I want to put them to bed and work on something else. All the extra content is only going to delay what has already been a very long project.
I think this is why I’ve enjoyed Summer Song so much. It’s a tighter story without the baggage of the original. It has benefited from the mistakes made with Blue Sky and although it isn’t fair to compare an 86 page comic to one that will be nearly a thousand pages, it’s better. There are parts of Blue Sky that are better than Summer Song but overall? Summer Song has been more fun lately.
Trying to Get Back On Track: Chapters 9-11
And that’s where I’m still at. I’m having a hard time mustering up the energy to work on pages. It’s weird because once I DO get working on the comic I enjoy it a lot. What I’m lacking, though, is the enthusiasm I once had. I used to stay up until 4am to finish a page, sleeping for six hours, then got up and immediately went to work. I don’t do that that much anymore because everything that originally motivated me is no longer a factor. The only factor left is me wanting to finish the story.
So let me clarify a few things: again, I’m not going to end the comic until it’s natural conclusion. And despite my complaints I DO love working on it. The point of writing all of this isn’t to give you an excuse why the comic is late all the time. I’m tired of giving you excuses on a weekly basis as it is. This post is to help you understand where the comic fits in my life right now and why. It’s also written for me, so I can see exactly why the fire I once had has dimmed and see if I can figure out how to reignite it.
I will get things back on track. I don’t know how long it will take. It’s been over a year of half finished comics and delays, which I swore would never ever happen. It’s a hard thing to fix because stuff always comes up and life gets in the way and interests change. I am trying, though.
Just please bear with me while I find my passion again. It’s there somewhere, waiting. It will be a glorious day for all of us when I find it again.
[
