Webcomic about a mutt and his friends finding a place in life.
woof! got a few of these i need to catch up on
i’ve definitely spent a lot of time thinking about how to flesh out the backstory to the bandits (way more than i ever thought i would when i first intro’d them as a simple action sequence). i have some ideas that i like quite a bit, but i’d like to see how much i can tell more indirectly than instead of with lots of page time and dialogue. so i guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
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BEHOLD! the ONLY MitM page to bear a signature with the year 2024 on it xD
yeah, that was a pretty busy one for me. juggling my time between a a full-time job and then a part-time job that had me working every weekend kinda got intense. also picked up some occasional side gigs DJing vinyl records here and there, so…it was a year. a good one still. just…hectic.
still kinda going back and forth as to how much crosshatching/shading i’d like to do with my penwork. i like the look, but it definitely takes awhile and a chunk of it kinda gets covered up when i go back and shade with pencil :\
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wait. wut?!
yeah, yeah, yeah. i know.
it’s hard to believe i’m still working on extremely irregular MitM updates in the year 2025. but frankly, i’d have an even harder time putting this project down for good. even when i can’t find the time or energy to finish off a complete page, i’m constantly doodling my characters and thinking of different directions to take the story 😛
anyways, gonna try to give this blog a little more love and maybe consider just posting some other random non-MitM specific stuff here (and maybe some MitM doodles too…)
as for this page? well i’m excited to show off another magic aura look. my art kinda has a hard enough time looking super…consistent…so i thought it would be fun to have certain characters’ magic “aura” look sometimes more similar, sometimes more different. when i first started MitM (WAAAAAY BACK!) i was really interested in lore and world building, and while that is still something i appreciate, i also just love sticking to less hard definitions and more of a vibe. i feel like – when done correctly – it can leave more opportunities for the reader to let their mind fill in the blanks ^^ (and can help prevent longwinded, word-dump expositions…)
also, so sorry!! this page has totally been online for almost 2 years >.<
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Whoops! Sorry, been busy this past week.
Between family in town to visit and just general life stuff, finished this one up a tad late :\
A new chapter! A new look!
I really like trying out new stuff with MitM, and this chapter is gonna be a real doozy! Between new upcoming characters, some all-around new artistic style changes, and a heavy dose of challenging writing; I’m definitely a bit nervous for this one. I think it’ll be fun (at least for me), but it might get a bit messy. Although if you’ve made it this far in the comic, I suppose that’s nothing new 😛
The last thing I should probably briefly touch on is the new lettering. My handwriting is something I’ve never been terribly fond of and the typical lower case sometimes leaves the word bubbles with some unnecessary gaps. So I decided I wanted to give “ALL CAPS” a shot.
Not sure what I think yet. Will report back after a few more pages this way…
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Look at that! A new chapter header!
I was actually fairly fond of the look and style of the last few chapter headers, with the character out in front of a few comic panels. But I’ve technically changed up the look of the headers every 3 chapters so far too, and sense MitM celebrated 10 years it felt right to keep evolving and shifting instead of just staying with the same. (honestly each header has always been slightly different anyways)
The biggest change up to the chapter header this time around might just be the chapter name though. Initially way, way, way back when I started, I was planning on having all the chapters start with “A…[insert title].” I didn’t really have too much logic behind it other than maybe eventually hitting the end of a “volume 1 (or A)” and then switching it up then. I guess I’m also fond of the shape of the letter A, and found it easy to frame a chapter name in or around it. idk.
Anyways, mostly came down to the “10 year” argument again for me, and figured it was as good a time as any to mix things up. So after all that, I have the new chapter header, title logo, and name! But…well…
…it’s okay I guess…
If I stick with this for next chapter, I think there’s a few things I should finesse :[
Also need to break out my coding skills and make sure I can remember how I’ve been adding new chapters to the archive on the website O.o
Huzzah! I can’t believe it!! Chapter 6 is finally complete!!!
How about some fun silly stats (partially because I was curious myself):
It stands at a whopping 41 pages total, that’s 2 more pages than Chapter 2 (which used to hold the record for the longest chapter). There are 545 word bubbles (you know, give or take like 10ish in case I miscounted. I ain’t about to do a word count though). It took 6 years to complete (yikes!), and the page-to-year spread looked something like this…
So in review, I never want another chapter to take that long >.<;
Setting aside the time it took to finish, I actually think the length wasn’t too bad though. Chapter 2’s length definitely bugs me. Chapter 6 has a large selection of different characters in jumps between, a lot of dialogue that advances plot and motives, and a fair share of action later on. Chapter 2, on the other hand, dragged out to its length largely because I had trouble figuring how to wrap it up :[
I do think the most notable art quality jump mid-chapter happens in 2 though, so I guess there’s that.
Anyways, now! Onward to Chapter 7!!
After all this extra time, I “totally” have the next chapter’s title already figured out…
*cough cough* O_O
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Surprise! A second update! WOW! :O
Really pushing hard to finish this chapter off swiftly since I’ve dawdled for so long. Almost there! Just like Dayton said,”I promise” xD
Had a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the smoke for the middle panel. I actually rather like how this page came out!
…minus…well…that 6th panel. That one was a disaster. There’s so much wrong I can’t even begin to discuss it >.<
Anyways, I also tried to dust off some rusty coding skills and make some small edits to the actual website. It’s probably due for a more competent fixing, but at least changed a few minor details that were bothering me. The server still gives me a PHP error message, BUT everything looks like it’s working, so I don’t want to touch it, haha. Although for some reason my cast page has been buggy recently (but I swear I didn’t touch that one at all!) >:[
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Huzzah! Another update strikes again!
Been thinking pretty seriously about making Saturdays my “official update days” for MitM. I know at some point way back Thursdays were when I updated, but it was never super easy to find where I said that…
So I’ll try to be better about that and place it more promanitely on the actual site and here on the blog. Anyways, this feels like the first page in quite some time with a good chunk of dialogue. I suppose you only really have to go a few pages back and you’ll find a few with a similar amount, but those were actually drawn so long ago for me, haha >.<;
Also definitely decided against the double line panel borders. Those were taking WAY TOO MUCH time to draw and required a bit more planing when it came to wrapping around stuff. I think I like the extra boldness that the big black borders give anyways.
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Hello everyone.
Not really sure if there’s anyone out there actually still reading, but I’m back with some more MitM pages, believe it or not! xD
Today’s date, May 23, 2023, marks the official 10 year anniversary of when I posted my first, finalized page online.
I originally started brainstorming, writing, and coming up with concept sketches way back in 2012 and eventually produced 5 pages in early 2013, that were later reworked into a 4 page spread that I would submit as a project for one of my art classes in college. After the class was finished in May, I posted them online and that’s when it feels like it really started ^^
As of recent, MitM’s been pretty silent (honestly since 2019), but it’s something I still regularly think about and random doodles of the characters populate my numerous sketchbooks all the time.
Remember how I mentioned I was testing the waters with a new inking style? (no? oh…well I suppose that was like 6 months ago…) Anyways, I’m leaning in the direction of something more akin to crosshatching. I like the boldness of the pen brush I used in the past, but there were several occasions that I felt it “muddied” the picture or would obscure too much detail. Want to at least try this approach for a few more pages before I make any hard decisions though…
Originally, I had considered having healing magic look fairly straightforward (and boring!), but I wanted to shake things up and choose something a bit more abstract/surreal. Sure, maybe it doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I felt that was more interesting than just “touch, glow, now you’re healed! it’s a miracle!” 😛
Hope y’all are well, and hopefully it’ll be much, much, much sooner than 6 months before another MitM page comes along xD
…
>.<;
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Hey hey! Another MitM page!
If you’ve been creeping around on the main website, you might have noticed I posted this page about a week ago. I’ve just been neglecting to sit down and write the blog blurb (so I’m here to fix that!)
As I’ve mentioned before, MitM is primarily there for me to experiment with some art/writing ideas. So with this page I played around with some of the inking on the last couple of panels. It’s…okay. I like how the first few “pop” more. I feel like my inking sometimes comes out too heavy though, so I’m trying to find a good middle ground.
Also playing around with quickly, digital-coloring the small teaser thumbnails. What d’ya think?
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