Hello everyone,

what a weird month it has been. Between commissions and working on smaller private paintings, I am glad to report that KERKA made actual progress in the meantime!

Now, I don't just want to leave you with that little, so lets talk substance:

The comic is at this point a deal bigger than initially planned. This happened less because of content bloat and more as the result of providing a proper story with good pacing. Keeping both print and webtoon format in consideration, I had to plan and write out the story beats and plot points in a fashion that would allow them the "time" they need to really connect with the audience reading KERKA. As a consequence, the "book" version of the comic is currently aimed at 3 books of the first arc, with ~100 pages each. The webtoons would consists of about 17-20 strips/arc. This is a lot of work going forward, but I am looking forward to getting to work on it. I want to provide readers with a reading pace that allows them breathing room, to take in events and ruminate on the developments, as well as take in the world of the hollow strata. 

Speaking of: Story and world building have made a lot of progress as well. Much of it was "clamping down" on the beats and ideas that work the best for the kind of story I want to tell. Over the past year, KERKA went through a lot of general rewrites and do-overs, all having a very similar core idea, but experimenting with different directions, characters, plots and even formats. At one point, it was aimed to be a collection of loosely connected short stories. Some ideas, events and characters found themselves in the final version of KERKA, but many more didn't. Where things are now is the result of a long iterative process of trial-and-error.

Currently, the first book is mostly done in writing, with the whole first arc outlined. Much of the writing work left is literally writing it, preparing a proper script to begin story-boarding from. With the pace things are processing, story-boarding may begin as soon as next week. I will inform you all about the moment the first line of the storyboard is laid down.

I aim to keep the script somewhat "loose" to allow the storyboards to become the main "script" for the final product. Seeing how things will pace out in a visual panel-by-panel, page-by-page format gives a better impression of how many panels you need and how you need to adjust story beats to the visual medium. At least it feels so to me, having worked with storyboards and hard scripts before. Even if the end result is that I will have to redraw and readjust a lot in the story-boarding process, I feel like it will help a lot pinning down how KERKA will work best as a visual story.

All in all, I am glad to report that I am still very much within my schedule, even a little bit ahead. Suppose I didn't get to the 3D asset goal I had in mind, however I prepared a lot more 2D tools and textures to help expedite the painting process.

Now, to some unfortunate news:

KERKA will take up virtually all of my time from here on out. I will keep working on other smaller things at the side, but in order to make good progress on the comic, I need to dedicate as much time as I can towards working on it. With my free time already stretched very thin, I need to make an unfortunate and difficult adjustment. Commissions will be closed, and will remain closed for the foreseeable future.

Note that anyone that has already commissioned me will have their order delivered, but I will not accept new commissions for a while.

You will be informed when commissions are open again. I am looking into livestyle and work adjustments that would allow the allocation of time towards commissions and still leave me with a healthy degree of free time. Until then, as KERKA will become the main focus of much of my time, taking commissions is simply no longer viable. Some jobs already take a lot of time to deliver, and I would not be fair for you if I had to stretch them out for too long because I lack the time to work on them.

And that is it for the update. Thank you very much for your time. We are moving closer and closer to KERKAS production proper and will get started very soon.

Till then

"Fanart" (?) by a discord associate (they don't have a public account ●︿● )