New Horizons.

This is a quick announcement blog marking that as of today I'm going to stop work on my webcomic Felicity. For the foreseeable future.

I wanted to make this a blog post in case any one was interested in why I've decided to do this as it's for a couple of reasons.

Firstly I want to state how great doing a webcomic is, regardless of where you feel like your skill level is. As a comic artist, I've got everything left to learn but everything I do know; I learnt through the practical experience earned from doing a web comic.

I hate that people don't give webcomics the respect they deserve, I have nothing but admiration for webcomic artists who consistently perform and deliver. It is extremely hard work.
It's often done between jobs, for free and usually by one person doing a teams work. It requires discipline and determination- it takes a lot to give up a well-earned night off just to get another page ready for the following week.

So if you're on the fence about creating a webcomic I would always encourage it because the qualities it will bring out in you make the difference. It can bring so much to the table, it allows you to test ideas and tweak them, to evolve and shape a story and to understand where you're going wrong. I may be giving up on my own but it will never be because I don't value them.

Its hardships can be numerous and failure to gather an audience is one of the toughest aspects of maintaining a webcomic.

That's one of the reasons I'm putting Felicity to bed- and I want to say, I've had a handful of readers that I want to thank, they made the difference when it counted, they made some pages happen. But projecting work to an empty room takes its toll, both on a person and the work itself.

The other reason is that increasingly I am shorter on time and I want to achieve certain things in my life that right now, I just can't. Ending Felicity gives me more time. Time I can put into a brighter future- to thoughtful approach and execution. I have ambitions to soar the clouds and having six years of webcomic experience under my belt, I KNOW I have the determination to get there.

A fresh start.

I know I've tread this path before and I have battled with this a few times! But this is for real. I'm no longer held back by that sense of 'having more to say', like I have previously. I feel like the time is right to move on and leave it behind now for good.

Thanks, more than you can know, if you read the comic.
I sincerely hope you come back when I use this time to create the next one.

-Adam

Sketches

Just a sketch dump, need to start doing these again!

Echoes

I've realised something.

I've changed.

My first real attempt at world building was Broken Falcon, a love story in essence- set in a world where the Bad guys had already won.

Wayward is my upcoming story, one I plan to devote myself to entirely- a demonstration of everything my self discovery in art has taught me and a story I hope will mean something. It's got a spirit of adventure and a warm heart but it deals with ugly emotions and a quest driven by guilt. Above all else- in its darkest moments it is never incapable of shining a light. Because there is always hope.

Broken Falcon by contrast, was an angst filled tragedy about two lovers torn apart by a war, a hero fallen from grace and a life barely worth living. I was a teenager at the time, wouldn't you know.  It was a story I kept adding to for years, a story I kept intending to tell eventually. As such, it changed over time and without noticing it- so was I.

When I began to evolve Wayward from idea to story I realised I had a lot of shelved Broken Falcon lore I was probably never going to explore, so I reworked much of into Wayward- as you can see up top; a Young Zepher(Broken Falcons main character)depicted as a warrior of winds- an idea that would later become the foundation to the characters in Wayward.

It's only very recently that I realised how much I have changed as a person. See, I was toying with doing a Five-page Broken Falcon short comic for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY and started to think about what might make an interesting glimpse into that world ten years on.

I drew up a lot of very crude doodles of Zepher as an old man, an example of his race in their Prime. I was interested in the idea of him being an exiled relic of a by-gone age and so I started to think about the lore that remained and how I could give such a short glimpse into that world and still make it interesting.

As it turns out- I not sure it's ever going to be that interesting.
I had a sudden moment of realising I'm not the same person I was, I no longer have a desire to share such a grim and bleak vision of a world. I'm not sure if this is a reflection of me- of some shift in ideals or perspective- I'm certainly not adverse to enjoying stories with similar themes. It was an odd moment for me.
I find the character compelling but perhaps him being the centre of the story is a mistake- it's hard to relate to a character that vile and bitter. I didn't see any way to reinvent him without distancing the story and the character from each other.

These very quick doodles were some of the exploration I had taken into entertaining a new Broken Falcon story before I realised the issue(I was happy I finally found a way to work White into his design, was a long standing goal for me.)

I feel like I've learnt something about myself now, that maybe it's time to focus on what I truly believe in and not entertain anything I do not. In the struggle to become better it's easy to over-think things or stop yourself from taking the scary steps. I think I can shelve Broken Falcon for good now though, there may come a time when things click into place- or I find myself wanting to explore those darker themes again but for now, the character remains a pillar of my journey so far- a friend who helped me a long the way and whose wisdom is still guiding me all these years later. Now unto brighter, more hopeful places.

-Adam