I’ve been getting a lot of pokes from people about what’s going on with Shifters. I normally write a monthly update in the forums, but a lot of people don’t read those, so I’m doing this so people will see it. This is the long detailed version.
A lot of personal stuff has been going on in both Che’s and my own personal lives. Che (our esteemed colorist for those not in the loop) is in her second year of commercial animation at university and is busier than ever. Despite having moved closer to her school, she’s still had to pull her first series of all-nighters to get projects done. To make matters more fun, student loans are not going to cover everything she needs to cover over Dec/Jan, so she’s having to take paying commission work to make ends meet. Sadly this means she can not afford to donate her time for free for coloring Shifters as we had planned. This means if I want her to colour things, I have to a) wait for Christmas break, this begins in Dec., and b) Pay her a page rate to make it worth while to her. Otherwise, she has to take commissions and paying work instead of working on Shifters.
As for me, I’ve had a number of family and some personal issues come up. I had an operation in October and I’m just healing up enough to be feeling more energetic. But I’m now dealing with my mother’s declining health (just got the news she has a mass in her lung. Doctors are investigating), and other family issues (my family is dysfunctional to begin with never mind now with my mom’s health problems) which I expect to get more intense towards Christmas. I’ve also had to take paying work to make my own ends meet from unexpected expenses which of course displaces hobby time. I’ve also been trying to switch to manga studio 5, which, along with new tablet has had me on a bit of a learning curve and makes pages longer to produce. It doesn’t help that currently the pages feature some very difficult to draw action scenes.
I have managed to get some pages done, and will continue to work on getting pages completed. I’m working on getting all the line work complete for the last part of the chapter. I would like to have Che color these as to not totally change colouring styles at the end chapter. (she’s also WAYYYY faster than me at colouring), but I have to pay her to do it, which is going to probably be about $200 to get all the pages coloured to complete the chapter.
Going forward for the next chapter, I suspect I’m going to have to colour it, and I’m trying to figure that out how to best handle it. MS5 has a lot of good features, which I hope to put to use, but I’m just kind of terribad at colouring in general, so we’ll see what I can find that I can do that’s sustainable. Right now, I can’t promise any kind of schedule, but I’m hoping that maybe if I can get this last batch of pages to finish this chapter done to give to Che, we’ll get those ready to go out as updates, and I’ll have some time to get a bit of a buffer done for the new chapter over December for release in the new year once I figure out what the hell I’m going to do. The pages are somewhat easier to draw, so it will hopefully be faster than all this action and backgrounds.
Now, I did say that there was stuff you could do if you want to help. If you want to help, I could use some help with the money to pay for the colouring. If you would like to give a one time donation towards the $200 I need to pay her to get the pages coloured, you can donate to my paypal at shadowsmyst@gmail.com. If there is extra, I will use it to either buy more coloring, or “hire myself” sort of like I would a paying client to work on the comic. I don’t know if anyone gives a crap, but I can livestream it if people are interested in it to make sure I stay honest about working on stuff.
I also have a Patreon, but I don’t have particularly high hopes for it at the moment. I just thought I’d give it a go, and honestly I didn’t know what to do, so suggestions welcome. http://www.patreon.com/shadowsmyst
For those who donated in the Chepretiation thing a while back, we have not forgotten you. Just so you know.
Also, please tell your friends about Shifters if you like it! Re-tweet, re-share, re-blog! Word of mouth is the best way to show your love of the comic.
