#va comic

[sixteen6stars]

[vampireacademysims]

Well, I guess it's time to address the situation... or the lack of situation lol This is gonna be long, be warned. There's a TL;RD at the end if you wanna skip the wall of text. To start, thank you to the two anons who took the time to read the comic and prod me about it and the new people who started following this tumblr in spite of the Hiatus warning. Altho this place has been collecting dust for more than a year now, I'm still around, updating my side reblogs tumblr, so it's not like I dropped from the face of the earth.

The truth is, at this moment in time, I've feel out of love with making this comic. It was always a lot of work due to me being a perfectionist. I never used any extra rendering apps, all you've seen here is raw sims images and a lot of work on Photoshop, so much so it gave me a muscle contracture on my right shoulder (because I did all my work in bed with my laptop/drawing tablet in my lap. I never said I was a smart person lol) that still flares up from time to time because I learned nothing. Then the VA fandom was already quite small by the time I started doing this in 2015 and I never really advertised this in the fandom anyway. I always got the impression most of the fandom didn't like the OG comics as it was and most of the people that followed the comic were sims 2 fans because, well, it's made with the sims and the images were pretty (forever holding in my heart the people you said this <;3) The recent "Vampire Academy" TV series (it was just in names, honestly) was the final nail in the coffin of my motivation. After information had leaked I was already disappointed in it, but after actually watching it, yeah no. Only plus to it was the surprise to see it was partially filmed in my country, in places where I have been myself. And lastly, and probably most importantly, I struggle with motivation a lot. It happens to us all, I am sure. It's no secret that I hated to panel, if I'd start all over again I'd just post the big images like many of you telling stories are doing now, it'd be less of a stress for me, but alas, I can't change formats now. And I said many times I was doing it mostly for myself, because I did love the comics based on the books, but doing it for yourself only gets you so far until you get bored. And I got bored. I'm actually surprised my hyper-focus on it lasted for as long as it did. I haven't been to Photoshop for editing - I used to make photomanipulations and other kinds of editing - for way over a year, so it's not only the comic that stopped.

I still have 7 pages to end chapter 6 in various degrees of editing, Veninorchid and Esotheria-sims have seen them, so they exist lol I will eventually finish editing them - it's mostly a Romitri flashback - and post them. But after that, I will have to decide how to proceed. Spending less time editing would help, but lowering the quality of my pages, the only thing people like about it, really doesn't sit well with me, because yeah, perfectionist.

So at the very least the remaining pages will be posted in early 2024, I might go back to it slowly, a little bit everyday so I don't burn out or put stress on my shoulder. But after that, it's up in the air. It's not like I've been staring at the walls during this time, I had other things taking my goldfish-like attention. I got interested in home bookbinding, which made me dig out old unfinished stories I once started and I've been trying to finish them and later try to bind them, because why the fuck not lol And on my reblogs tumblr I had this set of pictures about a Regency little story that people really loved and I'd like to add to it, but then again, all the editing it'd need *cries* I feel tugged in so many directions I fear I'll end up doing nothing lol

So the TL;DR is, I got bored with the comic because it was too much work and resulted in physical pain, I lacked the motivation and other things got my attention meanwhile. Chapter 6 will be be finished eventually, but after that it's up in the air. Cross my fingers that I get my mojo back while editing those pages. Still, a thank you to all of followed and are still following, sorry these were not the good news you wanted to read just because I made a post. You support up until now was what kept me going in the past, I can't thank you all enough.

[gphoenixsims]

Hopefully one of the last times I’ll have to edit in that coat *throws confetti*! It was troublesome having to pose an extra sim with the coat so all could fit nicely for every.single.scene.

[vampireacademysims]

Comic Making Woes

Is this a process all writers/story tellers and comic artists go through or is it only me? My internet search history now looking like it belongs to a psychopath, featuring things like: immobilization techniques, self-defense techniques, how to get out of a bear hug, staking through the back, can you kill stabbing through the back, stabbing angles, heart’s location in the human body, body trauma, fight sequences.... Yep, I’m stuck in a fight sequence that takes place in a single page. Problem is finding a flow from the last panel to the last when the book only says ‘there is a fight‘. It should be simple enough to make people hit each other, but my brain just goes off on tangents like: height, weight and body strength make a difference, do both of the fighters know fighting techniques?, what would those techniques be? Street brawling? Krav Maga? Are they used to fight? Only one of the fighters has a weapon how the other reacts? Do layers of clothing interfere? How hard would it be to stab through a real leather jacket? And then what I can still remember of my practice of karate ages ago makes my brain have opinions, my brain goes off on how I’d counter (or get pummeled by) a certain movement if I was in the fight, but there’s just so many factors to consider... I gotta keep it grounded and not make it look like Dragon Ball Z fighting lol Goddammit it Richelle Mead, I really could use a bit more description here! (altho the fault is mine really, I’m extending a paragraph to a whole page because I wanted the cool fight points...) Can you tell that I’m overthinking? I shouldn’t really be taking this so serious, but I stupidly am. My brain hurts. How can 4 panels be killing me like this? I’ve been making poses non-stop since last Saturday and if I manage to resolve this fight page, there’s only 6 more pages to finish and I really hope to start posting in December again. Seriously, how do writers and comic artists get out of stuff like this and keep their sanity? I just needed to vent a little and give Veninorchid a rest from my complaining, bless her soul :)

[vampireacademysims]

On the Tumblrpocalipse...

Everyone is aware of the shit storm by now, everyone I know has been hit one way or the other. From the 131 posts I have on my main blog, I’ve only had 4 flagged, which have already been cleared, so not too bad. So I’m planning to stick with Tumblr for now, to see where this is going from here. It’s not like my the VA comic will ever have porn scenes and, if I ever do take liberties with it, I can always blurr the potentially offending panel and offer a link to the original version somewhere *shrug*, it will be available on the full chapter download anyway. Like some people said about their own, my blog is small and doesn’t garner much attention or traction in the Tumblr world, there isn’t much of an urgency for me to migrate elsewhere. I see people creating Dreamwith/Blogger blogs in droves, but I don’t know if I’d have the energy to start all over again XD I mean, I used to post my comic too on Deviantart - which I’ve been a user for 13+ years - but got no traction/interest either. If anything, I’d like to post in some comic dedicated website, but since this is not hand-drawn, I probably can’t. Now, my problem is my reblogs tumblr. I have over 56.000 reblog posts there, with about less than 60 being my own original posts. I have a good idea of what was probably flagged but how on earth am I going to find my crap to put up for review between the sea of reblogs? The images in question are from like February 2016, I don’t really want to swim through thousands of posts to get to them, isn’t there an easier way to pinpoint stuff? I’m all for a witch hunt on hardcore porn pages and porn bots and pedophilia crap, but this, as it is now, is just ridiculous.

[gphoenixsims]

Sometimes I think my hands will fall off... These are most of the poses I’ve make for my comic, plus one or two extras I had laying around. Being able to make my own poses (as crappy as some turned out), was the only reason I want ahead to make it. Now I am very late in uploading new pages (3 already! *cries*), I’m having a bit of a hard time figuring some new poses I need to make (which always takes forever!) and Photoshop AND the Sims constantly crashing and it’s that time of the month :( (and I got distracted with watercolors, the Oscars and trying to get my sleep pattern back to being awake during the day and getting to see a bit of sun... but mostly rain, because it rains like crap these says), Soon I hope to be back on track. ?