Prophecy of the Circle

….and I’ve brought some footage from my trip to the Tarsin Desert! Got to meet Jacind and everything. ;P

All right, so it was more like the badlands of southern Alberta, specifically Drumheller, but close enough. Tim was wild and crazy enough to pack a couple of costumes along on holiday because, again, we’re both really, really bad at taking breaks, and we took a four hour jaunt across the monotonous prairie landscape to where things get interesting and dinosaur bones are a’plenty. There are more shots of his Jacind cosplay and his Three-Toe Huadiv (minor character from Horizon Zero Dawn) that’ll be appearing over on his Instagram and Facebook but for now, here’s a sneak-peek, including a couple that he hasn’t posted yet himself (I asked and he said I could show you guys, I promise!):

Now I’d best get to responding to messages that piled up while I was gone. I didn’t have a lot of access to broadband internet in my travels, so I fell a bit behind on emails and the like. Ah well, such is what vacation is for. 😉

I don’t take them very often – at least not long ones. I have one coming up in a couple of days. I’m going back to Alberta to visit with my family for a little over a week and to just try to get away from the city and my usual routine and hopefully practice that fine art of actually relaxing for once.

I’ve got a couple of days before I physically go, so in the meanwhile I’m trying to get things ready so there’s content still flowing here and on Patreon – I like making that worth it for the folks who are supporting this venture. Outside of my full-time job, I pour twenty to hours a week in to bring you the comic for free and I ditched site ads in favour of a support model that’s more voluntary for you guys, less predictable for me – but that voluntary support exists, for which I’m just so grateful. Honestly and truly, I’m unendingly thankful to those who are willing to chip in a few bucks a month to keep Prophecy of the Circle running and worth doing. Currently, the site costs and art supplies are negated, which is amazing considering how relatively small and unknown this comic is, and it’s just a good feeling to know that some of you really believe in this thing and want to see it succeed. I always want to make sure there’s some good bonuses for all of you to look at over there, including when I’m not here.

Recently, I opened commissions to help pay for a high vet bill, and the majority of support came from the Patrons and the long-time fans – again, thanks! I’ll probably have to do another run of commissions next month to pay off the last of that vet bill (Aleksi’s surgery is booked for early June, and then we find out the true price tag), but for the support I’ve already gained, I’m overwhelmed and overjoyed. Art is easier when the stress is less, and it’s those little tokens that make it happen.

So basically – thanks! I’ll aim to enjoy my break, but I want to make sure you’re all not left high and dry in the meanwhile. I’ll be queuing up the new content over the next few days, and then I’ll be back in the beginning of June. Toodles for now!

Edit to Add: I also made some changes based off of reader feedback to the way the news posts work, particularly in regards to the Patreon updates and their position on the page/interaction through the RSS feed. First: no, they’re not going away. Yes (see above) there are people who use them and like them, they’re the alternative to site advertising that more than once inflicted malicious code on a reader (that’s a nope), and it would be foolish to not attract any attention to the thing what finances Prophecy of the Circle’s existence. Seriously, shit ain’t free and I’m not rich. But I did concoct a way to make them far less intrusive.

Now, that said, when you do request a feature change, do me a favour and don’t be rude about it. I put up with that enough at work because I have to. I’m not putting up with it on my passion project. That should go without saying – be respectful to your fellow humans, please.

I’ve almost got it back again! I actually finished the initial ten-weeks’ worth of buffer a couple of weeks ago. The trouble with building a ten-week buffer is that it always takes more than one week to finish, so I wind up having to patch the gap of the weeks I use up in order to bring the total to ten again… if that makes sense. So now I’m nearing the end of batch number two, and then I should be ready to get back into a comfortable routine. I just put down the yellow ochre layer tonight.  

I’ll layer more colours on as the week progresses until these are done. I’ve also got a batch of Jamet pages I need to put shading down on, but the goal is to have it all completed by next Sunday.

I’m also still diligently working on the commission for one of my patrons, Rubje (and, as usual, underestimating how much time it actually takes me to paint something). It’s coming along nicely, if slowly. Here’s a peek at the progress as it stands currently  – the only peek that’s going public until this beastie is done. For those not currently pledging through Patreon, I’m posting time lapse videos of the creative process on this piece as I go and they’re in the $3 tier. 

The next watch-me-make-this video for this commission is going to be the longest one yet and while it’s going to be some time until it’s finished, it’ll also be really cool to see. I’m painting in 30 minute sessions and recording each one to be spliced together at the end. You’ll get to see the whole piece come alive.

I might even put the whole process, from pencils to inks to finished, together into one video if we can. I know some of it was initially rendered in 4K and some is in 1080p (my old desktop couldn’t handle 4K software without chugging horribly and my laptop doesn’t have Adobe Premiere on it because my CS5.5 copy doesn’t like to run on OS X Mojave and I can’t afford Creative Cloud). I’ll let the video editing wizard that I live with sort out those details.

Writing is also still happening, but I haven’t been comfortable posting what I have yet. I’ve gone back to working on Alpha Base again and there’s a lot of the story that just needs a lot more depth. I mostly switched pronouns around a lot and then absolutely covered my original draft with notes and mark-up and talking-to-myself “Meghan, what the hell were you thinking” for later re-writing. I suppose that’s the nature of a rough draft, and if you guys at the $10 tier want to see my scratchy garbage covered in notes, I’d be willing to toss the whole thing up there. Just know that it’s a real mess. 😛

At any rate – lots happening in the background! Many things to come.