Big and Little

Big and Little

Big and Little were prompts #21 and #22 for last year's Inktober. Who could have taken down a space train miles and miles above some earth-like planet? Why a giant rock monster thing, of course.

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2017.

I had a fairly decent break. I played a bunch of video games (okay, well, two video games), but now we're back to a weekly schedule at least until this series ends.

But if we want to talk about big and little things...

Size matters...

The Rabbit and the Moon was big.

127 pages big.

3,617 hours big.

4 years too big.

Size matters... when you've got limited time and resources.

Don't get me wrong it was fun, but could I do it again? Not right now.

I wrote one continuous story that played out over 4 years. The Rabbit and the Moon takes place over a couple days but it took me 4 years to draw it. That means I don't have the luxury to explore other aspects of the character and of the ideas behind This Mortal Coil.

I want to change that going forward...

Instead of a story -- one continuous string of scenes/events, I'm thinking of introducing a setting where we can be introduced to various aspects of Kamiko's life and use it as a springboard for stories big and little. This way I could have a longer overarching story done in Mortal Coil's high-contrast graphic novel style, but I'd also like to do shorter pieces more akin to 4-komas that can play out as standalone gags or tell a shorter vignette -- a slice of life, if you will.

There's another reason for shorter comics: Share-ability

A long form comic is hard to share. If I share, retweet, reblog page 61 of a story, it may not make much sense and you'll be forced to come back to the site to read more, which is probably not a great way of growing readership. Plus sharing a random page is probably confusing at best. There's something we're at odds with when doing a longform comic in a world where we like to share nuggets of things. Instagram allows you one square image. Twitter lets you have 140 characters and four images. Pinterest lets you do a vertical image without much more context to it. I've got to package everything together and use it to entice you to want to come back here for the rest of it.

A 4-koma style comic would allow me to make content faster. I could share it easier on social media, because it's self-contained, and if you're entertained a little bit week after week it might entice you to come back to This Mortal Coil's website for more.

I do have a concrete form of that idea that I'm brewing, but I don't think I'm ready to introduce it yet.

Mainly cause I'm not sure if it will work and I haven't fully explored how I will do the 4koma yet. From an art side I'm still sketching the characters. The work is still in a nascent stage, and there's nothing to really share yet. Give me a few more weeks with it.

What you may see next after The Galactic Train are a series of 4-komas based on the already established The Rabbit and the Moon storyline. This is something I'm currently acting on since I know the characters and I had some other scenarios I wanted to write for them, but couldn't because The Rabbit and the Moon was so focused on one story.

You may think of these shorter comics as filler, but I think I could still compelling stories this way.

You'll see more of this as This Mortal Coil moves forward during 2017.

Website Update

One thing you may notice immediately as you come to This Mortal Coil is that the website has changed again. I used to have a front page, but I disliked it.

It meant you had to click on something else to read the comic and that's too many clicks.

In fact, I'd always give out the link to the comic page instead of the main URL for that reason.

But now...

I've resolved that issue. You see the latest comic as soon as you come to the site.

It's an "uh-duh" moment for me. I'm glad I finally did it.

My Other Stuff

Another new addition to This Mortal Coil's site are the inclusion of more ads. Ads for my things.

Did you know I had a Patreon?

Etsy shop for coloring pages from the comic?

Or a Lolita Fashion Coloring Book, which I still haven't really talked about on this site?

Now you do, and I need more visibility on those things too.

Oh, and we have a mailing list. Well at least it's one I'm starting. It'll contain information on the coloring book and update you on the comics or serve as a digest. I'm not sure how often I will mail things out to that list or how I want to use it yet, but I am building it from the ground up.

More to come soon as we roll on with 2017...

BTW, if you do like this comic please do share it with your friends. Comment or ask questions below and I'll write back.

Till next week...