whey-isolate - Tumblr blog

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The moment I read 2.1.45, I knew I had to draw this lady. Exams can be worried about later.

Also, I realised too late that the little triangles on the chimera's head are probably horns. If Red sees this, I sincerely apologise for the cat ears.

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Happy Webcomic Day! My webcomic White Noise is a labor of love--according to Procreate, this page took me 15.5 hours to complete.* Here's a look into that process!

Some other notes:

The thumbnails are done on graph paper and I script while I do them--there is no separate written script for White Noise. I usually spent a couple hours on weekends as needed thumbnailing, sometimes at a coffee shop or at home listening to records.

I then set up the file in Photoshop, so I can lay in the text and use the template I have with bleeds already set up. The text is rasterized and I shuttle the file over to my iPad via Airdrop.

The bulk of the actual work is done in Procreate, which records timelapses that I sometimes share to my Patreon. I usually spend a couple hours most nights after my day job or on the bus commuting doing this.

Once everything art-wise is done, I shuttle the file back over to my desktop to re-set in the text, add a stroke around the speech bubbles (Procreate doesn't have that took fsr) and do the resizing/exporting for web.

On Sunday mornings I get up, queue the page and write the page descriptions. I don't spend any time on the page descriptions outside of that.

Also, this process goes for the whole first arc of White Noise. I'm done with that arc (which means you can binge the whole thing I'm js!!) and am experimenting with some different methods these days, but my workflow is still generally the same.

*Some more talk about the labor (and burnout) involved below the cut:

This particular page (and most of the pages I did in 2023) took a lot longer than normal because I was heading into a burnout period that I'm still lowkey in/recovering from. It's obvious to me now in retrospect watching the timelapse here and seeing how much noodling I'm doing and how much I'm struggling with the process, but at the time I was just very frustrated generally. When I'm not burned tf out pages take maybe 10 hours max.

2023 was a pretty stressful year--lots of big life changes, uncertainty, pet death, health issues--so it's no wonder it propelled me into burnout, but it just goes to show that even the slowest and steadiest pace is not sustainable forever. I've been doing one page a week following this general process for over a decade! And I stuck to that pace because I knew it was one I could maintain. But even so, by the end of this arc I found myself working more and more slowly, not really looking forward to the work, feeling anxious about being behind, unhappy with the finished work, and extremely annoyed with myself for not being able to give it my all right there at the finish line.

I did stop for a while after the epilogue and took a more or less complete break from drawing for about a month--the longest I have EVER gone without drawing, much less working on White Noise--which did help, but these days my ability to work is...inconsistent. I should probably take another total break, but I'm reluctant. What if my passion never comes back? What if people forget about WN? It's already pretty obscure, and with the general social media collapse, it's harder than ever to get people to read my work. Now that I've left Hiveworks, WN doesn't even get the benefit of being linked to other comics (although objectively very, very few readers actually got referred to my comic that way.) And frankly, I'm also just too proud to go too long without comic updates. I've always told myself, I might not be the best artist or the fastest worker or make a popular comic, but I'm consistent. Difficult to let that go.

This is all to say that webcomics are hard. We do them because we love them, we have stories to tell, we are seized with the human compulsion to create. We spend hours of our time, almost always on top of the paying work that allows us to eat, to make something that we then give away for free. It has consequences on us that the reader doesn't often see, no matter how careful we are about it. If you ask me, webcomics deserve to be valued more.

Happy Webcomic Day! Read webcomics!

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Defense in dresses……. save me defense in dresses…….

I actually did these a while back but never posted them bc I had a fourth I was working on that I never finished. They’re all based on real outfits me and my friends put together for a fancy night out.

Also here’s a no goggles version of Engie in case you wanted to see his freaky blue peepers

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As the world outside crumbles and cracks, your dreams are all you have left

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WITCHCRAFT!!!!!!!!

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the reef guardian 🦈

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A scene from my WIP science fantasy novel Sailor for the Second Dusk... my OCs Sidrah (left) and Nura (right) hanging out listening to the radio and drinking tea and reading... they're besties and crew members of the pirate starship Frontier Sail...

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Visual development for Treasure Planet (2002) by Michael Spooner

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fucked up that three month names start with "j". how did it come to this

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are u ever sick w longing. and i don't just mean romantic longing. i mean longing for a place you barely get to see, longing for friends you no longer have, longing for feelings you might have left behind in your childhood, longing for creativity, longing for a rich and more expansive life, longing for less inhibition. longing for more passion. longing for ur life to be so incandescent w something it thaws all the frost in ur bones. are u ever so consumed w it it rends ur heart in two. do u understand me

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predator animal falling in love with prey animal. You really love to see it.

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Alone in the sunset

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bodega catboy + ratgirl

it's a 2 color risograph print!! available in da shop :^)

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Thanks for the tag!! This is a tough one...

favorite painter? Probably Simon Stalenhag, his landscapes are so hauntingly beautiful and I owe like half of my artstyle to him

favorite poet/writer? Brandon Sanderson for how he combines the wildest worldbuilding with such good characters

favorite singer? Currently Vic Fuentes because I'm in a Pierce the Veil phase. Love it when he screams into the mic

favorite band? I wanna say Pierce the Veil but I've been into 5 Seconds of Summer for way longer

favorite meal and drink? I could really go for some curry pho and root beer

favorite outfit and aesthetic/style? I've really been getting into punk, and I've been making a lot of battle jackets and bootleg patches

favorite item? Oh that's hard, I love all my items... Right now it's my flea market Soviet wristwatch, my film photo print album from home, or the damaged zippo a tgirl punk musician recently randomly gave me

favorite perfume? I don't use perfume but I hang out with stoners a lot and my clothes always end up smelling like weed. So... that?

Passing this on to @pinkninjakitty50, @riftiee, @whistlepaint, @azzayofchaos, and anyone else who wants to join :3

Thanks for the tag @gwenllian-in-the-abbey! Some of these were so hard, haha.

favourite painter? Can’t say I’m much of an art person but I’d say Artemisia Gentileschi

favourite poet/writer? Kennedy Ryan

favourite singer? Ruelle

favourite band? Hoenix

favourite meal and drink? Cheese omelette and hot chocolate. Bit basic maybe but I gotta keep it simple now with these allergies. Otherwise I would’ve said chicken iskender

favourite outfit aesthetic/style? I wear Normcore for comfort but love the look of Dark Academia

favourite item you own? My iPad; I’m on it more than my phone

favourite perfume? I don’t have one but I love the scent of lemon verbena.

No pressure tags: @pebblume, @emilykaldwen, @aifsaath, @richardsthirdnipple, @bohemian-nights, @snowprincesa1, @mercedesdecorazon

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Finally got around to making a ref sheet for my fursona! 🐉

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life gets hard. But so do I

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gentle touches. for purely tactical reasons obviously

[falst and dainix are from @comicaurora]