MARCH 2/2 Update: IWBTWR UPDATE, Character Poll Winner, Animation Progress

Hey everyone!! Welcome to the second march update!! I've been healthy and developed a good life and work balance while working in both my real job and my art. Currently setting a baseline for the new comic chapter and working on the animation as well! Lets get right to it.

Character Poll Winner

Dorothy Haze!

Next poll with be out real soon! So If you got character suggestions, please toss them in the comments below!

Also I'm going to start monthly streams on my Discord as well, so please consider joining! It's gonna be a chill stream where you can ask whatever you want, if I don't have backup art obligations I'll do art requests for you too!

if you connected your Patreon account with your Discord account, you will be automatically put into the server

IWBTWR Progress

3 more short comics before I make 1 long form comic.

The short form comics are supposed to enrich the characters, and give a bit a relief between the long winded comics with heavy topics in them.

I also think it's healthy mentally to take a breather from making those long form comics as a writer lol it really burns you out when you see the characters miserable all the time.

Right now IWBTWR is in a transitional phase where Tommy just became the new manager! This pivot back to the store in a sense is supposed to rest the status quo (with a bit of adjustments)

It also give the characters more room to interact with each other in the store environment. I like it because it kinda reminds me of some sort of purgatory. A place where these kids who suck at school fell down into limbo. Hey! I can build on that!

Damn, I wonder what's gonna be hell in this universe?

Zoey as a character

"Zoey's pretty complicated because she represents a different toxic aspect of Asian society, the theme I want to focus on is collectivism and Confucian ideals. That the western perception for Asian problems in Asian society is sometimes misled and that there's actually a lot of nuance in the culture. Zoey's supposed to represent a different social class with her own unique responsibilities."

To add onto this, Zoey's role in the story is enhanced with a more supernatural element. These ideas are supposed to be exaggerated critiques of her place in the world.

Zoey does not directly cause these issues, however she participates willingly as she sees it as an advantage over others.

Though a pretty significant and powerful character, I want to ground her to reality. So awkward interactions like being socially inept at small talk with Jenny is a good place to put her in. Her own arrogance and ignorance though puts her in an advantage, it also puts her in undesirable situations she could've gotten out of if she told the truth.

Lying is also an important part to her character. She does this out of habit, and was trained in a world where it's better to take advantage of others first before they take advantage of you. "I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me."

Concerns

The whole story is still supposed to be grounded in reality in some sort of way, the problems these characters face are supposed to still be a reflection of the real world.

The supernatural element of the story was always there, however I don't want it to overtake too much of the "realness" of the base story.

I'll have to commit to the bit in order to really understand how to balance these two elements. With experience, hopefully I will make the story more seamless. Though I also understand that I potentially may mess up the pacing of the plot, which is a risk i need to take.

Animation Progress

The current idea with the background is that I'll have multiple scenes with different lighting, with jump cuts of different animation throughout the entire day

The security camera, the fridge, and the shelves are separate from the main background, so i can adjust them to being broken or missing

Final output

Currently needs a little adjusting, a bit too orange for me.

As the animation keeps building up, ill be able to showcase more previews and hopefully a short animatic soon.

Ideally I would have multiple shots of the characters doing their own thing, I feel like the animation process I've made for myself is more refined after the Koishi Project.

I just wish it didnt take so much time uagh

That's it for this month! Thank you again for all your support! 

New character poll next week!

See you all in the next update!