The Farewell Tour

Here's a story we've been kicking around for a little bit! We wanted to share some of the art we have in the works about it but thought we should start with a little rundown on what this project is! Some of you may (or may not??) have seen a bit of the art we're gonna share here that's been floating around on our socials.

The Farewell Tour is going to be a chunky scifi graphic novel about Jax, a runaway rockstar bee-type alien who is trying to escape the limelight; and Raddley, a beefy lizard bounty hunter who captures him.

Its got some action, a whole lot of funky Space Antics but at its core  it's a bit of a love-story as these two fall for each other and pick up  the pieces of each other's rocky pasts. Being a rockstar isn't all its  cracked up to be and bounty hunting isn't something people get into  unless its all they know.

We are definitely promising ourselves this... isn't gonna turn into a series but it's definitely... got a whole lot of plot and gonna be a pretty hefty a graphic novel. I keep saying 'it'll be the next chunky 'On a Sunbeam' thickness or like 'Be Kind My Neighbour'-- don't tell Tas-- that stresses them out so much LMAO. But I'm a sucker for really good pacing.

We are still developing the final style and the final look-and-feel of the book at the end stage.... yes I am already thinking of printing even at this stage in the game as it will also help pace the book & story and give it the final vibe & look&feel. I like to think of books as art objects and vessels that also help the reader really fall into the story.

I'm the one that usually deals with thumbnailing too so I'm still personally working out how many panels we want on a page, is this something we want thats really Dense and gives way to some older styles of comic making? What kind of 'finish' will this have? (Greyscale vs tones, vs strict black & white). This part of the process is extreeeemely exciting! Everything is so nebulous and raw trying to figure out characters and motives.

Admittedly, a little peek behind the curtain. We've text-roleplayed this story already. Doing something like that is really interesting since it helps me get a better grasp of Tas' character in the process and how they would write Raddley in reaction to whatever bullshit I'm throwing at her with Jax. I think its part of the collab process I forget to mention sometimes. It doesn't always yield great results because in an RP you can really dump Everything into it as you go with no real stress on the plot. So figuring out what darlings to cut and where to pair down can be... Difficult. (Paint the Town Red was also an RP before we turned it into a comic and it being our first story we've been struggling the last few years with tone & energy & direction until recently when we knocked the 'card pyramid' down and built it back up again. More on that in a proper PTTR post though!)

This one we went into the RP with a better direction and honed in our motives and where exactly we wanted the plot to go. I we were both... uhm... emotionally gutted by the ending for this one so that's how you know it's gonna be a kicker. I can't wait to get more of this moving along so you can all experience this story and its emotional crux with us.

Get gutted by a bee & a lizard LMAO~~~

That leads me to say that uhh this particular graphic novel is definitely intended for Adults and will have Adult content (hi NSFW tier backers... h-hope you like... aliens....) It will have a few Strong Themes but what's a Windy & Wallflower story without dipping into some meat & potatoes along the way.

We're looking to keep it to black and white (page-design-wise) but will be sharing a bit of our development process and misc doodles on here for you guys to see our thought processes behind how we create our stories! Some of those doodles will be in colour since these characters are also from a tabletop campaign (we're just pulling them out of their original state and into a story) so we have their colours down but the final GN for both our wallets & our sanity is gonna be in greyscale or B&W for sure. Its a bit weird sharing this process AS we're doing it since we tend to just work and come back with a retrospective later but I think this will be fun and we hope you like these two as much as we do!!

I think that's all I can think of rambling about for now! If you have any questions/want to pick our brains about it I'm always open to replying to those, ofc keeping in mind any big outstanding spoilers! You can ask anything and I'll try to answer the best I can OR make a whole other rambling post about it later hehehe.

(also this apparently needs saying but Of Course Its Queer. Its weird to think we have to specify at this point bc everything we do is Queer but we've been asked a few times before. This ones Very Bi & well.. pretty honkin trans... though its a bit weird to call this one T4T because its... aliens and Gender in Space feels really funny to arbitrate but that's the ~vibe~ we have going with them and will come up in their backstories and such... more about that as we post doodles you'll we what we mean ;)