O where, o where, is Renton Haw-key, o where, o where can he be?
No time for me today? Here are the highlights:
I explain where I've been
I make excuses and beg you to take me back
I ask if you have any cash you can lend me (kidding, but it feels like part of the theme)
Hey folks!
Been a while since you've heard from me, and there are real reasons why.
For one, I've been doing a lot of background planning on this thing called "a career." See, when I'm not bashing my head against a desk trying to draw, or slinging alienating takes on Twitter, I am actually trying to figure out how to become a real-deal artist.
I laid out a bunch of creative goals for 2021, including:
Finishing Ronin Digital Express season 1.
Revisiting an old short comic
Creating an OGN for newsletter subscribers (hey, that's you!)
But also, critically, some career goals, like:
Do a big website overhaul
Start offering commissions, somehow
Get on TikTok, Patreon, etc.
Turns out, "career" is a loaded upper-middle-class synonym for "job," and figuring these things out has been exactly that. A fuckin' job.
But that's not all.
I've also taken on some commercial work. I'm working with an up-and-coming EDM artist/comic nerd on a series of album covers.
It's a paying gig, and well, those cigars I smoke aren't cheap.
I'll share more when I can, but basically, he wants the jacket of his album to be a comic based on a story he wrote.
It's crowded out other projects because I want to make sure it's really, really fucking good. Unlike most of my work to date, this might be seen by a lot of people, so I don't want to embarrass myself. The art will need to hold up over time.
So far he's been really happy with the progress. So far, I've been myself about it.
But here's what's coming
I'm getting to a point with the other stuff where it's winding down a bit and Ronin Digital Express is on mind again.
I have a really ambitious next chapter with a ton of action in it, but I have to do some design work before I do the pages. Hopefully I'll wrap that up this week.
I have a short chapter update I'll work on in the interim so as to have something available. Hopefully that's wrapped up by end of next week.
Then, I'm going to actually split the big action update in half. The script is mostly action, with a lot of talking in the back half. I'll do action first, and publish the talking as a sort of coda at a later date.
That way, I can get the next, exciting bit to y'all much faster.
I'll also prepare another newsletter post-mortem of the next chapter and include all the behind-the-scenes design work, snippets of the script, and raw pencils so you get a really good director's cut look at the thing.
This is all to say, keep hanging with me as you usually do. I know I'm slow, but I'd rather be slow than bad.
Nobody will remember waiting, they'll only remember the work, so I want it to be good.
So, to recap:
There'll be a short episode coming in a few weeks
A longer action-driven one after that
It'll be a two-parter and I'll publish the second half later
And after THAT, I might have some pretty exciting Ronin Digital Express news.
Something-you'll-be-able-to-hold-in-your-hand, exciting.
That's all for now.
Thank you for your support. It really means a lot.
Be good.
*rent