Month: September 2015

A Serious Query for Followers and Friends: 

If my comic, Forging Arda, were to update on a regular basis, would you become a backer to help support me? Rewards would include things such as sketches, textless, large-format comic pages, wallpapers, live-streams, and even things like original hand-painted paper dolls or figurines. 

HELLO I MISSED YOU ALL SO MUCH ❤
 I apologize for my extended absence from Middle Earth! I have been away for several reasons, mostly due to my pursuit of income and stable mental health, but also because I’ve been sticking my toes into the shallow ends of other fandoms. Which is good! But I have unfinished business to attend here! 

To those who have no idea what I’m going on about, my little Silmarillion webcomic, Forging Arda, has been my pet project for several years now, and was the reason I started this blog in the first place.
 The comic started out as a six page exploration of Sauron’s (née Mairon) beginnings as a maia of Aulë, his relationship with his duties and creator, as well as the seeds of doubt that will lead him into the service of Melkor. 

After its initial six-page debut, I added new pages at the rate of… one a year.
I cannot stress to you enough how badly I would like to change that.

The situation: I have dozens of pages of finished script and notes, pages full of thumbnails panel sketches, stacks of folders full of reference material, and importantly, the time and the renewed mental energy to pursue this project thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. I’ve been polishing my trade skills in the last couple of years; I’ve made a concerted effort to improve my art and my writing, worked with deadlines, different types platforms, clients, and styles. My next goal is to get myself to some live drawing sessions and art classes in Seattle to really solidify the foundational skills that I didn’t get drilled into me as a self-taught artist. I’ve made some very significant improvements in my mental health during that same time span– and this too is an ongoing process, with non-trivial obstacles and pitfalls, but the progress so far has been very inspiring. I’m ready to go forward and tackle a big project. 

The dilemma: The big project keeps getting moved to the back-burner because of conflicting priorities.
 I have a very unstable source of income right now. For the last several years I’ve been surviving on support from my family and the money I can pull in with art commissions. To put it bluntly, if I stop doing commissions, I can’t pay for groceries. 😦
 Doing commissions has taught me SO much, and I am grateful to the point of bursting to you guys for supporting me and being so generous while I learned and grew as an artist. The problem with this is: while I’m reliant on doing art commissions, it means I very rarely have time do literally anything else. If I’m drawing, I better be drawing for money, and if I’m not drawing for money, I need to be finding new clients.  

Starting a Patreon would help me bridge that financial gap so I can start committing the time and energy to my comic that I need to finish it, while providing regular new content for everyone, and a lot of cool stuff for my backers so I can give back some of the love. ❤ But I’ll only be able to do this if I know I can get the minimum amount of support I’d need to cover expenses–
honestly, just $50 a month would be enough to get me started. 

So without further preamble: Would you be willing to spend $1-$10 or more per month to support me creating sexy dark lord comics on a regular basis?