Wow…only one MitM update in September (and on the last day of the month too…) 🙁

So while I didn’t get around to updating the comic much, I ended up doing a lot of other stuff (mostly not art related though). I got a new job (thank goodness), and moved to a new apartment (also equally important). So far these two new steps have been treating me well, which brings me to some news about MitM that I would like to share real quick…

1) MitM IS GOING ON BREAK.
Yeah, I know, it’s basically been on break already, but hear me out. I plan on trying my hand at Inktober for the first time and that will undoubtably take a lot of my time and effort. Because I have not been very consistent with my art recently, I figured attempting a challenge that would require me to be drawing on a daily basis would be a good step back to making MitM a weekly deal once again. Well at least once November rolls around…

2) WHEN MitM RETURNS, IT WILL UPDATE ON SUNDAYS
So the new job has a very consistent schedule, thus my weekends are always…well that…the weekend. I feel that moving weekly update day over to Sunday (instead of Thursday) will help me to have a goal for my weekends and hopefully result in a more regular update pattern.

and 3) …well that’s actually it.

So while this site may be fairly quiet in the next month, hopefully my profile on FA and Twitter will be really active. I might try to compile all the MitM related artwork as a single blog post here though once it’s over (because there definitely will be some) ^^;

Oh yeah, page commentary, right.

Sigh…I messed up a decent amount on this page. Had to edit some stuff in post (digitally basically). Add a word bubble, change another, do a lot of line cleanup, etc. Tried some new stuff too (like the bottom left panel) which came out kinda neat, but I’m not sure how I feel about the panel layout. The angled overlapping ones are kinda neat, but overall I left a lot of empty, blank space in the top right :\

Also it feels weird talking about the comic narrative when things get serious.

“O-oh n-no. Nic looks like – well he might – h-he’s got a h-hole now…in his gut…”
“…”
“…that’s a bummer.”

JUMP to page Page 157

So MitM is going to a once-a-month update schedule, I guess… >.< But seriously, I'll really try to update more regularly guys. I've been working on this page just a little bit every other day for the last month. Working 6 days a week and looking for a new apartment (and new job) just kinda eats up your energy and time. I really hate not regularly producing finished artwork though, so hopefully I'll do a better job of directing my occasional free time towards my pen and paper more often. I decided to post this page today on Sunday because; 1) Well...it was done, and I'm not really a fan of building a buffer of unreleased material for some reason, and 2) To help push me on to work on the next page as soon as possible. Also Sunday's might end up being the best day for me to update on anyways. My work schedule is pretty inconsistent, but I do normally get my one day off more often than not on Sundays.

As for the page itself, I’m still trying out new stuff as usual. The last panel was going to be two separate ones, but I thought, “Why not try the whole, ‘head-spin-around’ thing that some artists like to use a lot.” I looked through several One Piece mangas for some inspiration (since Oda likes to use it fairly regularly it seems). My attempt was still pretty much a flop though, but it was fun to experiment with and I might give it another shot sometime in the future.

Also, HOLY CRAP this scene changed A LOT while I was writing it. I wrote and rewrote how this scenario would pan out quite a bit. Most of the early interpretations involved Levi either outright fighting Ty (the coyote that went upstairs) or stealthily knocking him out. Eventually I came to the conclusion that if Levi grabbed the weapon plans, there really wasn’t a reason for him to stick around (after all, they kinda wanted to lure the coyotes out of the carpentry anyways). Having Dayton stay behind and hidden kinda setup some interesting possibilities too… O.O

ALSO (so many also’s…), apologies if the whole cut to Dakota and Mr. Connors feels very confusing and “straight out of left field” (which is kinda how it feels to me after rereading it myself), but I did kinda want to keep what was happening between the two kinda in a confusing/unknown place. I wanted Mr. Connor’s role in everything at the moment to be “involved, but not directly” without really having to discuss to what extent or why for the time being. Buuuuut, it may feel a little more confusing than I had intended, so…um…yeah, sorry about that. I will address it later though! I promise ^^;

JUMP to page Page 156

Well, well, well.
FINALLY another update >.< Everything aside, it's been quite awhile since page 154 (over 3 months actually), but I really have missed working on MitM. I'd write a long-winded excuse, but those aren't that much fun to read (and I kinda already did one on my FA Account).

I do really hope to go back to a weekly update schedule, hopefully starting with this week’s update. Once again, not really sure I’ll stick with Thursday, but since that was the “usual” day for my updates, I chose it to start back up on it.

I was definitely a little rusty after the long break, but I decently pleased with this page (especially the top 3 panels).

JUMP to page Page 155

Another late Sunday post due to my usual laziness, but it’s here all the same.

So part of my holdup on this page was actually the top three panels. I spent a good bit of time trying to get the foreshortening and perspective to look good (and it still ended up looking like crap…). Anyways I feel like I’m starting to focus in on how I want to ink some of the shadows a little more. Apart from the previously mentioned poor, starter panels on this page, I think the rest of the panels have a lot more controlled and subtle use of the ink shadowing, and I think that’s what I want to shoot for in the future.

Speaking of honing in on style, I kinda got frustrated with characters’ eyes on this page. For doing a comic for over 150 pages, you’d think I’d know how I like to draw eyes, but no, I don’t. Looking back over the many years and MitM pages, I’ve actually made several changes in direction with how I draw eyes. I’m still not sure if I’ve found exactly how I want to depict them. This page I tried making the pupil more into a fully completed oval.

I also just now noticed that I totally forgot to do this with Levi in the third panel…
Whoops >.< JUMP to page Page 154

Yay! Another MitM page update!! 😀

At this point “Every Other Sunday” has unofficially become the new upload schedule…

I’d like to upload things more often, but I’ve been needing some extra time to work on what’s coming in MitM. I’ve also been trying to work on a few other side projects at the moment as well. I hope something will come together with my side projects and get them off the ground and running before long, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Yup, I’m not even sure myself if anything will come of it, but it’s at least keeping me occupied at the moment.

If MitM keeps up this slower pace, I might finally get around to finish that written side story for the MitM universe as well. That’s something that should actually get done honestly. It’s been on the back burner for just a little too long and it would be good practice for me to just write some.

But what about the comic page posted today? Well this is one of those pages that went through several redraws at the sketch stage. I had a hard time deciding how to pace the page and what shots to give for each panel. “Should I show the bandits now? how about the coyotes? and from what angles?” Fun fact: In one of the early sketches I was going to end this page with two panels from the inside of the carpentry to give an update on what was happening in there. But after thinking about the next few pages for awhile, I decided the pacing would work better to hold off for just a bit before opening that barrel of monkeys.

This page still has some of my usual artwork flaws, but I’m fairly pleased with some of the more difficult parts. A really cool part for me is the last panel. It’s kinda fun (and kinda embarrassing) to compare it with a similar foreshortening attempt with the same character way back on Page 29.

Wow…that was sooooooooo long ago >.< JUMP to page Page 153

What’s this??? Two updates in a row that fall on Sunday?! (not counting the one missed week between…)

So awhile back I seriously considered changing the update day for MitM, but I could never really decide on another day. Thursday updates date back to Junior year in college for me, since that was the day my work load was lightest, but there really hasn’t been a particular reason to stick with that day since then. I’m not officially saying I’m switching to weekend updates, but if this pattern keeps up, I’ll definitely consider it :\

By the way, there is waaaaaaaaaay too many characters on this page >.< They add up to 38 total!
Needless to say, the sheer number of characters (especially the small ones) took a little extra time. I really tried experimenting with some different inking practices to help the tiny, distant characters pop more and become more distinguishable (emphasis on “tried”). Mixed feelings about the inking job aside, I’m actually quite happy with the single shot of Coy :3

I also tried something else with this page. I attempted to give some “background world exposition” as just that, a “background” conversation. I needed to show the bandits get around and up on the roof, but they didn’t necessarily have any interesting dialogue. With Coy and the coyotes, I needed to at least roughly explain why Coy was catching their attention. Originally the page wasn’t going to have this much background details, but because I decided to the actions with a separate conversation, I had more panels and time to have the coyotes talk more.

And just for fun, this page’s “thumbnail teaser” is actually cannon material! If you follow MitM on Twitter or Facebook, you might have noticed I use an altered thumbnail teaser for the link to each page. Normally it’s just a reworded speech bubble that makes a joke at the expense of MitM or breaks the fourth-wall, but this time is different! I patched in what I was going to originally use for the Bandit dialogue, so you can see what they are actually saying to one another. I still hope the page makes sense without this additional material, but it was fun to add for clarification.

Since it’s actually useful for understanding the page, I’ll include it here as well…

JUMP to page Page 152

What’s this?! A SUNDAY update???

As mentioned last week, I’ve been struggling with a little bit of a writer’s block on this chapter. Team that up with my usual laziness and then you have a very late update on a Sunday.

I (mostly) know what I want to do with this chapter, but I’ve been having a hard time making the dialogue and sequence of events flow smoothly. And sadly for me, this chapter is only just about to get more complicated >.< I found looking at this page beside the last page was kinda amusing. The third panel almost exactly mimics the 3+4 panel from last page (probably a little too much...). I always tend to put off background/setting panels till the very end of inking since they take a good bit of time and small linework (and partly because I'm lazy). While that is what happened to the last three panels on this page, I was fairly proud of how they came out, especially the first one. Also totally realizing now that I should have made the window more noticeable on the second to last panel. I wanted it to kinda blend in, but probably not that much... ^^; OH! Almost forgot! I can't believe I haven't talked about the word "kyote" that I've been using on the last few pages. Drake refers to coyotes as "kyotes" and I chose that spelling to help emphasize how he pronounces it. If the normal pronunciation for coyote was "ky-o-tea", this version would sound like "ky-oat" (which is a pronunciation I was pretty familiar with hearing while growing up in Montana). My idea is that kyote is supposed to be seen as more derogatory towards them and is often used when speaking poorly of that group. I don't envision it necessarily as harsh as several of our real-world racial slurs, but it's not exactly kind and inviting either. JUMP to page Page 151

Hooray!! We hit 150 MitM pages!!!

…and after leaving the cliffhanger of the last page for a holiday break! Yeah, that was my bad… ^^;

I really enjoyed the holiday break, but I honestly should have finished a comic page at least last week. Actually, this page was halfway finished last Thursday, but I was stumped on how I wanted to draw the top two panels (and I lacked the proper amount of motivation), so I just put it off to finishing this week.

Looking back at the previous page, I feel like the last sentence from Dayton should have been worded differently because, as it stands, it kinda sounds like he doesn’t know who is brother is. Which is true (because he doesn’t have one) but it was meant to come off more as, “But I don’t have a brother???” Basically it was supposed to be a poor joke that the bandits had misunderstood Sam as Dayton’s brother (instead of cousin), but the execution was a little flubbed and the joke wasn’t really that funny in the first place, blah blah blah, etcetera, etcetera >.< Also I may or may not have a problem with the direction of some of this chapter's logic. This is a chapter that had been planned for years, but now that I'm here, I keep changing its direction at the last possible moment. I'm having a hard time feeling like the plot of the chapter was being interesting or believable, so I've kept trying to redeem it while attempting to build of off what's currently been finished for the chapter. As you can guess, it's been a little frustrating attempting to redirect the plot down what I hope is a better road. Levi's final line on this page wasn't originally going to be there, but I had some free space at the bottom of the panel, so I decided to slightly word my disbelief of the plan being discussed. Last quick thing about the page worth mentioning is the second last panel (bottom left panel). Is it a little overly dramatic? Easily, especially considering the fairly boring word bubble contents, but it was fun to try out a heavily inked/shaded panel ^^ JUMP to page Page 150

Hmm…how do the bandits possibly think Dayton can help them out? Drake (as usual) ain’t too wild about the plan.

Hey! Christmas is only a few days away!!

So I’m gonna be gone, traveling to spend the holidays with family next week, so I can’t guarantee an MitM comic next week. I’ll see what I can do, but I probably won’t have access to a scanner even if I do finish a page.

I also normally do a holiday sketch, but I’m not really sure what to do for a drawing (and I still have the same issue of maybe no scanner). Who knows, inspiration may smack me against the head and I may find out I have tons of free time to draw, so maybe something will show up.

But in case you don’t see me till next year, I wish y’all a pleasant and safe holiday season ^^

JUMP to page Page 149

And it was beginning to look like I would only update every other week instead of weekly, but no, I was just a day late this week ^^;

Frankly not wild about all the middle panels, but what’s done is done. And yes, if you’re wondering what Dayton is doing in panel 4, he’s just waving to some random dude (or dudette) that just happens to be roughly where the viewer would be. Yeah, after it’s done and all, it’s definitely one of those things that just seemed better in my head. Also that panel transition from the previous panel is pretty rough in my opinion. Probably has something to do with having the bandits in such a different pose…

Also, can we have a “hooray” for more “needless bandits antics”???

……hooray.

I feel like the story is finally getting somewhere though, but the problem is that the closer I get to landing on a solid story, the more sketchy the landing ends up looking >.<; But keep your fingers crossed, and things might actually get interesting for once in MitM! 😀 JUMP to page Page 148