Just so I don't clog up the description of each comic with making-of info irrelevant to the reading experience, I'm going to record some thoughts on how the last comic went and what I should do differently in the future.

First, the delay. I thank you all for your patience while also wishing I didn't have to do so. This page took 3 days to sketch, 6 days to ink, 5 days to color, and 1 day to shade. Each time felt like I had to settle for "good enough" until I moved onto the next stage, only to keep cleaning up issues from previous stages. There have been several points where drawing wasn't fun anymore, and it felt more like unpaid work than a labor of love. At least a couple of days I'd get about 15 minutes' worth done instead of 2-3 hours. I've been getting more isolated from other people and afraid to unload or unwind with anyone, afraid to ask for help, afraid to spend any time relaxing or admitting to relaxing, or even drawing just for myself.

2 weeks is still my goal for new page releases. Just because I've failed for this page, doesn't mean I can't try again for the next page. But I've got to figure out ways both to maximize how much time I spend on drawing each day, and to put that time to good use. The biggest obstacles were figuring out what placement the "camera" should go for each panel (I spent 1 sketch day doing nothing but fiddling with a 3d model of the ship in CSP), drawing different body parts accurately in anatomy and proportion (1 inking day was nothing but 2 hyena captain poses, another just for the opossum, another just for the pheasant wings), and figuring out how to draw their clothes so that they looked natural to the world but not too complicated. I'm not sure I succeeded with those three tasks, but I ultimately had to keep myself from "quilting" too much.

Shading is the easiest and most fun part for me, even if at my worst I sometimes muddy things with fuzzy desaturating shadow-clouds. For the sake of time, I held back from shading everything, mainly on the backgrounds and just enough of the characters to add volume.

I have a strong vision for the comic in my head, and though I'm not a good enough artist to exactly capture that vision, I still want to give a good effort. Scaling back will be necessary if I want any hope of finishing phase 2 in a timely manner, let alone this first scene that doesn't even feature any familiar characters or any TF. There WILL be TF eventually, but it will take a while to get there, and I continue to appreciate your patience as I try to figure things out further.

What I need to do in the future: focus on getting each stage down to 2 days maximum. Do a rush job first, then clean it up the next day, and move to the next phase the day after. This may result in some ugliness, but hopefully the worst aspects get cleaned up as I move along, and I don't get stuck in an endless cycle of cleanups and adjustments.

My apologies for taking so long to get started on Phase 2. Despite my best efforts, I've never been able to stop putting the comic on temporary hiatus, or regularly breaking promises on when I'll have the next comic page ready (seriously, March?). I also owe you an apology for taking so long to write a journal. I should have written this a couple months ago when it became clear how long it would take to work on it.

In an ideal world, I would draw this comic fast enough where I can upload a new page AT MOST every two weeks. I would manage to do this while also balancing my efforts to work, sleep, eat, relax, draw for myself, and draw for others. I may not live in that ideal world, and instead live in a world where I need to divide my time efficiently and prioritize my own mental health. At the same time, I don't plan to end AFCAH anytime soon -- I've got at least 3 more Phases to draw -- and I need to find a way to work on each phase so that it comes out more regularly, especially given that Phase 1 took 11 years to finish, and Phase 2 will likely have at least twice as many pages.

I'd like to say exactly when I expect the next page to be posted, and how long the pages after that will take. The first page is far enough along I could finish it in July without changing my current schedule, but I can't answer how long each subsequent page will take. I've been suffering a recent slowdown in my productivity lately with other art projects (see my primary account Rimme for some of them), and I'm doing my best to overcome them without heading back into burnout. I will at least devote a tiny portion of time every day to AFCAH, and record my progress, so I have a good idea of what I take the longest with. With those rules in place, I can at least get a page out once a month, and hopefully get it fast enough to my ideal target.

I thank you again for your patience, and look forward to launching Phase 2 soon!

Sorry, I've had some scheduling difficulties over the past few days, so the next comic page will be delayed until next Friday, the 21st.

Hello, I just want to let you know that tonight I'm going to start drawing the next page, page 7 out of the 8-page interlude.

One of my goals for 2025 to try to release comic pages on a consistent schedule. Looking over my release schedule over the past 2 years, I've had times where I was able to produce a new page in 7-8 days, but the usual norm was 10-12 days. Going forward, I'd like to try releasing a new page once every 2 weeks, since that seems to be the best balance between only working on AFCAH, and going months without updates.

I should have page 7 posted by this Monday. Thank you all for your patience!

-- Rimme