Plans for Season 3 and the Website

Season two has been very interesting for  Thirteenth Child Studios, leading me to some thoughts on the Thirteenth Child Studios website  and what I could be doing to maximize the potential of season 3.  First,  allow me to announce the plans for Thirteenth Child Studios Season 3:

Season 3 Projects:
Here are projects I have definite plans on providing in 2019.

Odessa: More Than Dust will continue running as the patron exclusive story for Season 3.
 I think it has a great deal of potential and is the strongest project I  have at the moment.  I plan on releasing the first chapter to the  public as a preview shortly after it is finished, but the rest of the  story will remain exclusive to patrons until its completion where upon  it will be released as an ebook (at least) for purchase.  Naturally, I  plan on sending copies to my patrons for free as thanks for their  support.  It really does mean a lot to me.

Action Hat: Big Trouble in Little Everywhere HD Remaster Deluxe Gold Edition  will take Reading Days’ place as the Monday comic strip open to the  public.  As the name implies this will be a remaster of the original  Action Hat comics, which you may recall were intentionally drawn as  poorly as possible.  The new collection will also contain several new  Action Hat comic strips.

Project Aether remains in the drafting phase, but  should be ready for story boarding very soon.  This is written with  intent for publication as a graphic novel, not a web comic.

Patron Rewards: Cards I plan on sending out monthly  illustrations on artist trading cards to patrons pledging a certain  tier as an extra thank you beginning in January.

eBooks (and maybe print books) of Thirteenth Child  and Reading Days will be created for Amazon and Comixology.  From the  start, both Reading Days and Odessa have been drawn with this end goal  in mind. 

Season 3 Objectives: 

Action Hat: The Animated Series I’ve mentioned this  before, but I am becoming more keen on the idea of doing (very) simple  animations to promote the series.  I aim to get at least one of these  done in the first quarter of 2019.

Under a Crimson Star: The Thirteenth Child I’ve  begun revisiting Thirteenth Child in the form of a novella.  It is a fun  opportunity to revisit some concepts and themes after a few years of  reflecting on it and changing elements here and there and explaining a  few other things in more detail.

Beta is likewise being written like a novella at  the moment.  This is a science fiction tale of a corporate assassin  being liberated from life long enforced obedience after combating a  mysterious entity.  I still plan on drawing this out as a graphic novel  one day, but I want to try writing it all out as a book first to see how  the story evolves.  Beta is rich in metaphors and the like, so this can  prove very beneficial for the story.

Action Hat: The Great Deathpectations RPG was a lot  of fun to touch up as a patron gift this year.  I’d like to flesh it  out further and do the same by the end of the year.

Future Plans For This Website
On a different note, I’ve been thinking about the Thirteenth Child Studios website for some  time.  The traffic going there is not at all what it used to be.   Perhaps I could be doing more to bring people in, but I feel a  significant factor is that people do not consume web comics the way they  used to, by bouncing around a number of sites.  Most hits I get on  comics like Reading Days come from Twitter and LineWebtoon, hardly any  come from the website.

That leads me to conclude that I may be wasting my time and money  there.  I’ve been considering closing the site down and focusing on  Patreon as a central platform for my content.  As a result, most comics  would be consumed either there, or as an eBook.  As you can tell from  the Season 3 objectives, I plan on focusing on eBooks anyway.

I will give the website a few more months before I commit to its  fate.  I’ll give it the best shot I can with another redesign (the front  page still uses comicpress despite no longer hosting comics), but this  is likely to happen.  I think it is what is best for the comics.  It’ll  also give me a good opportunity to rebrand into something like  “SergeXIII Studios” as I won’t be anchored to this URL anymore.