The Execution of EXECUTION

I am immensely proud of Exiern.

That said, I know it isn’t perfect. I read all the comments and I know readers have pointed out some of its shortcomings. They’ve also missed some that I’m very conscious of. I suppose that this is the point where I could try and excuse them for reasons, but I’d much rather learn from them.

For as long as I have been writing Exiern, the process has changed very little. Each month I write a couple pages to send off to illustration (usually between 6 and 8), and these script pages have been written based on two things; 1) what has happened so far? and 2) what needs to happen to keep things moving towards the events I see in my mental outline? 

I then approve the lines, and then the colors, and then a few days before the page goes up I put in all the dialogue and fix any art issues I didn’t notice before. There’s usually a few weeks between when I wrote the page and when I put the dialogue down, and this time lets me stew on the character interaction, and the dialectic between the art I have and the emotions I wrote.

Many pages have been improved by this. I have really enjoyed that process. It has produced some great work that I am very proud of.

But it is time to change it up.

I won’t go into too many details just yet, but part of the planned changes will be to start writing Exiern in page batches of 20. This will allow me to better plan things out, focus on the underlying themes of Exiern, and get more jokes back onto the page. This will also allow me to open up a new income stream for Exiern, republishing the material in small collected editions to things like Comixology - but the pages will always be posted to Exiern.com first. A new income stream may be enough to increase our page production on Exiern.com.

This will require some changes. 

Some of these changes have been slowly worked on behind the scenes for some time. I’m very excited about them. Others are still in the process of being hammered out and may be unpredictable in their result.

Something that is almost certainly changing is how often Exiern will be updating through the end of the Execution storyline. Starting next week – which was a Tuesday-only week already – we will most likely switch to Tuesday-only updates. This is to preserve the buffer we still have until the new comic creation process is fully under way. I wanted to make sure I didn’t drag out what Typhan-Knee was going to do to Coriander, but the remaining resolution may only play out on a weekly page basis.

What is NOT changing are the Patreon bonuses. Neese and Dark Reflections will continue to update as they have. Panel Preview will return/continue. I don’t think there is any alternate art coming at this time.

My hope is that, when we return to Typhan-Knee, we will be able to go back to Tues-Tues/Thurs updates at the very least.

Now, something else I’ll need to look at changing are the Patreon Milestone Goals. It has been pointed out to me a few times that these goals no longer reflect what is going on with Exiern. They especially won’t after these changes, so I’ll be updating them to reflect it. 

But, what I’d really like to ask is, what more would Patreon donors like to see?

Patreon is absolutely necessary to the survival of Exiern at this point. So, while I consider how best to update it, what is it you donors want?

I’ll say upfront that I do NOT want to do something like Early Page Access. In my opinion “Exiern Is For Everyone”, and although non-Patreon readers would get the pages eventually under such a system I’m afraid of a Haves and Have-Nots split in the readership upsetting what I think is an incredible Comments Community.

I mean, why on Earth would I want to potentially disrupt the community that argued for over 50 comments over whether or not I should have included “shish” in the title of a comic page? Exiern’s community is amazing and I will do everything I can to protect it.

So, aside from that, what would you like to see done in and for Patreon?

As always, thanks for your readership and support,

Scott

P.S. Another version of this will be posted on the Exiern website in the next few days so that non-donors will also have the chance to chime-in. Patreon donors got it early.