So you may or may not have noticed that MannaQuest has not been updating. There are a number of reasons for this. First of call, because my computer is fixed but is not quite
back up to par and I still do not have Photoshop reinstalled, and my CD drive isn't working so I can't install it. Second, because my FTP server went down and is still down,
so I just now found an alternate. Third, because I really have no desire or drive to draw at all any more...I thought being unemployed would give me time to draw, but I've
actually been keeping really busy and the free time I do have has not been spent drawing. Not in the least. And finally, because I've decided the script so far is lousy and
is not translating into comic form very well at all and I AM going to start this whole thing over. I have honestly reduced it back to a general outline and am re-starting
the script. I started posting it before it was ready and before I was ready, and for that I apologize. I am hoping that some sliver of the desire to draw will return to me
in the next couple of months and I can post MannaQuest related art, but for now this comic is on an indefinite hiatus.
Still no computer. Sigh. I did what I could with ink and pencils and then hijacked my mom's scanner and computer...unfortunately she has no image editing
software so hopefully you can read my awful handwriting. What? What do you mean don't I have a ruler? ...Anyways, now for a silly page. Tada!
So I was going to just upload the pencils for this weeks page a little late, but as soon as I tried to scan them in my computer crashed. Why oh why did I keep putting
off backing up my files? Gah...I really hope I can somehow get them. Anyways I currently have no computer and therefor no good way to work on the comic. I will post an
update when I get my computer fixed....sigh.
So I cheated this week and this is just a reworked page from Chapter 1. Haha poor Chapter 1 got all hacked up...oops. Anyways. Eee, bloody! See you next week.
As it turns out, Thursday August 25th did not give me enough time to work, move and get a page done. I forgot how much work moving is and I'm afraid I haven't done quite
as much unpacking as I'd hoped to get done by now and my comic stuff is still buried in a box somewhere... ARGH. Also as it turns out the internet situation isn't
exactly as planned which is also a pain but hopefully I will make it work. I'll try again next week.
So I got no comic page this week. Meant to post earlier, but the bad news is I tried to tell both my jobs I need to leave by August 16th in order to move out on August 20th...
and apparently both jobs decided that means they should pile as many hours as they can on me until I'm gone. So I don't think I'll have any updates for you for the next
couple of weeks...but the good news is, after that I should have more time for comics, yay! Which means I won't have a good excuse to get pages done. HMMM.
Err...anyways, MannaQuest will return Thursday, August 25th. That should give me enough time to work, move, and get a page done I hope.
Hey look it's these guys! Haven't seen them in oh about a year. Page will be finished for next week, see you then~
EDIT 07/20/11: ARGH! I finally had a page all finished and ready to go before the update time and then I just forgot to update. lolfail. Anyways, here's the colored page.
Tried a slight variation in inking style, don't think it's much better though. But I am quite happy with this page. Also the nightmares got a design upgrade and I think
they look quite a bit gnarlier now, woot. More work to draw, but ultimately worth it.
I did warn you guys that this is a page I'd already posted previously, right? And it's just a splash page, too. How lame am I? I think I had previously
posted something suggesting this could be Vian in drag, but I can't quite remember the previous snarkiness. Ah well.
I had hoped I'd be able to tell everyone that since this page was already done, I already have next week's page done...but I don't. Oops! Well, see you next Thursday.
Alright, got the page drawn...I'll try to have it finished before next Thursday, but that hasn't gone well the last time so no promises. Anyways.
Yes, brass handrails would be a tragedy indeed. I'm very concerned about this sudden and unexpected twist!
EDIT 06/30/11: Alright, colors are done. Bleh. The good news is, next week's page is already done! The bad news is, it may or may not be a page I'd already posted
previously. But the other good news is, I've already started on the page for the following week too! Woot! Anyways see you next Thursday.
What? Oh, uh...was I supposed to have an update done already? Oops =X Can I continue blaming the kitten until he is older and slightly less adorable and far less
mischievous and hopefully no longer sick with parasites? Well I'm going to. Kitten, it's your fault. Sorry guys, I'll try to have the update done next week. :\
Even though I had nothing for you last week, the page still isn't done, in part because my mother came to visit and I spend today, Wednesday, my usual day
off of work to spend working on the comic, visiting with her. Here's the original linework though, with some minor adjustments and tweaking.
I move around and re-size the characters a bit after scanning it in, hence the disjointed parts. Since I'm already at week 2 with this page I'll upload the
finished version as soon as it's done.
EDIT 06/07/11: Well... I didn't finish until today. Ah-heh...mybad. You can blame the kitten that I got this weekend. Squee new kitten. :) Anyways here's the finished page
for you. I will say I had fun with the expressions on this page. I tried inking with the pen tool this time, but ultimately I think the improvement in quality does not
make up for the massive increase in time so I think I'll go back to using the brush tool and yelling angrily at it every so often. See you next week!
Well, what have I got to say for myself...nothing! I got nothing. Sorry guys I don't know what happened. I'll do my best to have a full page next week though.
Went through and took some pages out of chapter 1, also fixed the chapters so the site no longer says we're still in chapter 1 and chapter navigation should work now. Yay!
Didn't finish this weeks page on time, so as I stated last week here's the in-progress page and I'll finish it for next week. :)
Hopefully my handwriting isn't too illegible... lol. Anyway, had lots of fun doing expressions on this one!
EDIT 05/19/11: Here's the completed page, only a couple hours late! Whew. See you next week!
Here's page 45! Finally getting into Chapter 2. I re-did those backgrounds a couple times and I think I'm finally happy-ish with it, but I'm afraid they
look a little bit more modern than I intended. Ah, well.
In other news, I've decided that to keep myself from overly stressing out and beating myself up and yet having consistent updates, what I will be doing is
updating every Thursday. If the page is not finished, I will put up what I HAVE done so far, and the finished page will be posted the following Thursday.
So, see you next Thursday!
Argh, this page is giving me major problems. I keep doing the background and hating it. :( It's also been a particularly rough week this week... Page'll be up sometime next week.
Missed the Thursday update, so here's this week's update today. The Chapter 2 cover had quite a bit going on and it took a lot longer than I anticipated!
I think it ended up looking a little too busy, though. Ah, well. See you next week!
Here's this week's update, and the NEW last page of chapter 1. Bleh. I feel like the transition is a bit jarring since I've cut a little bit out between the last page
and this one since I drew page 42 before my hiatus, but hopefully it's not too bad. I need to do some re organizing of Chapter 1 to make it flow a bit better now, but
all in all I don't have to change much so I'm quite happy.
So MannaQuest is back up and running. For the most part, still need to do some tweaking... of course I don't have quite as much of a buffer as I'd like, but let's face it,
if I wait until I DO have a good number of buffer pages I'll just never get back to posting. I do still have some script tweaking I need to do, and I'm a little wary of
trying to commit to a set schedule at the moment, but I'll strive to update MannaQuest every Thursday.
Anyways, here's page 43, finally finished! The next page will be the last in Chapter 1.
I don't know why it's so hard for me to get myself to work on the comic. I did just pick up more hours at my tutoring job and admittedly the new Xbox 360 is eating up a lot of my free time right now. I know I've taken a lot of breaks and missed a lot of updates already but I just can't force myself to work on the comic any more lately...ugh.
I'm tempted to just throw in the towel and give up but I think that might just be my current lack of motivation and desire to do other things talking. So...I'm going to take another extended break. I'm not sure how long this time, but in two weeks I haven't even been able to finish 1 page...it's not a good sing I don't think. :\
If anyone wants to be e-mailed about when MannaQuest starts up again, leave a comment with your e-mail address - it won't show up in the commentbox, it will just get sent to me. Sorry about this. :\
Can you believe I took almost a whole month off and still don't have a page on time? Well, my New Year's resolution is to stop complaining about how much I suck and/or making up excuses when I miss a page and just get it posted ASAP. So without any further whining, here's the inked version and the finished version should be up tomorrow evening or Thursday. Bleh. Great way to start the new year, eh?
Anyways, hope everyone had a good holiday! I'm hoping to redesign the site soon for the new year. Also I'm thinking of making the pages a little bigger...they're feeling a bit cramped at times.
No update this week as I am taking a brief break for the Holidays! Hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday. MannaQuest resumes Tuesday, January 11. See you next year!
EDIT 12/17: Got the finished page up! Looks quite a bit better this way, doesn't it?
OLD POST: Boy howdy do I have a treat for you guys! Yeah! May I present to you, a page in it's early stages! Oo and Aa at it's splendor....okay I admit I'm running behind as usual. I thought instead of leaving you with no page though I'd give you the inked version! That way you still get the story and I still get some sleep tonight. Everybody wins.
Anyways this is what a page looks like after it's been inked by hand. The next step is to re-ink it digitally...This way I have everything on paper, and it's easier to draw on paper so when I go to digitally ink the lines are already there for me. Neat huh? I'll put up the colored version later this week.
Here's this week's update! Sorry for the text walls. I think I'm cramming too much text into each page in an attempt to have fewer pages of conversation. Anyway. See you next week!
I was hoping that I'd be able to slam out a page today, but I got called in to work my second job unexpectedly this evening...so I will not have time to do a page this week. Sorry! It was a very busy holiday. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.
Urgh. I've really got to start drawing pages ahead of time. I can't keep staying up this late @_@
Next week I will be out of town for the holiday until Monday night, so the page will probably be late. Have a good Thanksgiving everyone! See you next week.
So the page isn't done yet. Sorry guys :( I've had a horrible headache/dizziness all day and can't make myself stay up any later. This week will update Thursday and Saturday.
So I didn't have nearly as much spare time as I thought I would in DC and I get motion sickness if I draw on a plane it turns out, so I wasn't able to get a page done for today. I know, it was silly of me to think I would, right? Update will be next Tuesday after I recover from a minor case of jet lag. With any luck I will have a sketch for you on Saturday, though.
You can't, Vian? Oh right. We still have to add that one guy into the pile. It'd be silly to have three slavers in a pile and leave the fourth one under a tree branch!
Got the page up on Saturday, just like I said! Only a few hours late. There will be some tweaking to the last couple of pages taking place some time this weekend, as I noticed a few minor mistakes and wanted to change a minor detail or two. And now it is past my bedtime. Next update on Tuesday!
Well, now, I have the page all nice and ready to go, it'd help if I actually put the page up though, won't it?
I quite enjoyed drawing this page. That fight scene kind of burnt me out, being stuck at one angle so I could draw Jade in the
background wasn't as good of an idea in practice as it was in my head. It was nice to get to draw Jade up close, too. :) Next update
on Saturday!
Yay the site is kind of put back together! I'm still tweaking things so the site might be a little up and down. In particular I'm working on making the RSS feed work properly, as right now it doesn't seem to update quite right.
Also I have the new page already done so it will be up for tomorrow. Woo!
It's not my fault guys! I totally had a page all drawn and ready to be digitally inked and colored and at about 6:00
last night I scanned it and was about to open it in Photoshop and the power went out. Alas! And it stayed out until around
10:30, at which point I'd given up on trying to do anything and all but gone to bed. Of course I was at work all day today,
so I haven't had a chance to work on it yet. But now the power is on, I have tomorrow off, and I still intend to get two
pages posted this week. Barring any future 4 hour power outages, there should be a new page on Thursday and another on
Saturday. In the meantime, here is a loverly sketch of the goddess Manna I've been working on intermittently for some time
now. Sorry for the poor scan though, it is quite a light pencil sketch still. Anyway, see you Thursday!
Got the page done like I said, but of course I procrastinated and didn't do any of the site redesigning or sketches like I wanted to. Sigh. I think it's going to take me some time to get back into the swing of things, since I forgot stuff like page size and brush size and font size and all.
With any luck I'll have the next page up next Tuesday for you. :) Thanks for sticking around through the long absence.
Oh boy! That was a long absence. Things have calmed down a bit now, between getting all the trips to Northern California out of the way and quitting my crappy job at the frozen yogurt place. So I've been working on the comic again! I'd like to re do the site design a little bit as well.
Also I've decided not to start the whole thing over! Yet. Part of the problem is that I'm just really unhappy with the fight scene, since I'm stuck drawing it from a certain angle in order to show Jade in the background. But I'm going to trudge on through it and I'll come back to redo the first chapter or two after I've finished volume 1. That's the plan anyways.
Anyways I'll be spending September getting ready to start posting pages again! I'd like to start posting sooner, but I think I need to make myself draw some pages up first and have a nice buffer going before I start posting so right now the plan is MannaQuest returns September 24th! Meanwhile I'll be working on the site some and hopefully posting some sketches every so often. :3 Thanks for your patience!
If you don't want to hear my excuses, you can skip ahead a paragraph or two.
HOKAY. SO. The short version of what is going on is: Having two jobs sucks. The longer version is: Having two jobs really REALLY sucks. Basically all the time I do have off is most often spent at home sleeping and this summer has been jam packed with crazy traveling up and down California because I moved to Southern California and all my friends are in Northern California and keep doing crazy stuff like getting married. Also, one of the two jobs has a completely different schedule every week and sometimes has me working one or two days for four hours and other times has me working 8 hours on weekends and closing at 1am before going to the other job at 8am. Now that the supervisor is back and things are apparently less dramatastic in middle management, hopefully I can get that scheduling fixed.
Ultimately I have decided that it will be best to resume the comic in the fall, after spending half of August traveling all about for a wedding 7 hours away for which I am a bridesmaid. Hopefully by this time, I will have either convinced my manager to give me a more consistent schedule, or I will have gone completely batty.
Okay, start reading again, now it's stuff you might actually care about.
The OTHER big news is, when MannaQuest returns it might start over from the beginning. I didn't want to do this before getting through volume 1 at least, but I have decided to rework the first few chapters into a more condensed version that will be less drawn out. With this decision made, there will now be fewer pages to draw if I go back and start over then if I continue on with the unaltered version. Hopefully now that I have gone from zero experience of comic drawing to 27 pages of experience of comic drawing, I can go back and do it better.
Until September I will be updating the site and doing redesigning and hacking away at code (with a chainsaw! yes indeedie.) and hopefully I will be able to post character sketches and art for the about section and other such lovely goodies as that.
Oh man. I really didn't want to do this, but I wasn't able to make a page for this week either. I've been working it feels like nonstop since I got back from camping last week, and I just don't have the energy for the comic right now.
I know I haven't even gotten all the way through chapter 1, and I really really wanted to do that before I had to say this, but I can't update the comic right now. With the crazy work schedule, thinking about the comic is just becoming too stressful, and this is supposed to be fun for me- not stressful.
Sorry but I'm going to have to take a break for a few weeks. Hopefully soon my work schedule will become more regular and I can resume updating on a regular schedule. Until then, I'll upload a page whenever I finish it, but I don't want to stress out about it and feel guilty for not working on it any more. Thanks for understanding.
I'll let you guys know when I can do a regular update schedule again! If you want to be notified about it without having to check back, you can shoot me an e-mail at azura-at-mannaquest.net or follow my RSS feed.
Don't have a page for you this week. I went to a cabin in Yosemite with my mom and boyfriend and cousin and her boyfriend and his sister and it was awesome, but I didn't have time to draw a page. Sorry. But I did take lots of photos of the woods so maybe I can get some half decent backgrounds done some day. And also I saw a bear!
Anyways, yes. I'll try to get a makeup page for Sunday but I do have a lot of hours to work this week.
Got the page all done for today, hurray! This page actually went pretty fast. And all I have to say about it is: CROTCH SHOT! Unfortunately they're pretty tiny in the background, hopefully you can see what's happening sort of.
Now to go to bed for tomorrow is my first day of working both jobs and it should be interesting and exhausting. Next update next Wednesday!
Here's the page for Friday, still need to do the shading. I am so far behind and it makes me sad. I was hoping I would be better about this and actually have buffer pages. Hah! Who am I kidding, right?
Anyways. This page was really complex and fun to draw, but it obviously took a long time. There's a lot going on! And I tried to make the backgrounds better, but I think they look the same, lol. Oh yeah and before you ask, panel...3.5 I guess it is: YES they are moonwalking. Duh! :3
Edit: Page is done. That guy in the background doing nothing is probably the same helpful guy from page 10.
Well, no surprise, I'm running behind again. And unfortunately I have to work tomorrow so I can't stay up too late working on the page. As I said last week, missed updates will now just be put off until Sunday. If I manage to get it done earlier I'll post it earlier! Thanks for your patience :)
Here's the makeup page! Did I say early Saturday? Because I really meant really really late Saturday. Derp. In the future if I miss an update I'll just move it to Sunday.
Anyways, I'm much happier with this page than the previous page, especially the expressions and poses. I'm getting a little frustrated with my inking abilities (or lack thereof) though...I think the shading would be easier and look nicer if my lines could just be more detailed. Anyways. The next few pages should be fun and challenging, we'll see how I do!
Here's Tuesday's late page! Friday's page should be up either late Friday or early Saturday. Sorry about that.
I'm not entirely happy with this page, the pacing seems off. I'm still learning! But yeah if anyone wants to send suggestions/criticisms my way I really do appreciate them. Note that I've forbidden myself from going back and redoing pages at least until I've finished volume 1, or I'll be redoing pages all the time and we'll never get anywhere, but criticism can always be applied to future pages. :)
I'm going to have to put off today's update. Sorry...I'd work my butt of and just try to get it up late tonight but unfortunately I've got a terrible headache and it's just going to have to wait until later.
Sorry! I'll try to get the page up for tomorrow night.
Edit: So you might have noticed the page isn't going up tonight, haha. It is almost done, but I've decided to upload it on Friday along with the page that was supposed to be on Friday- thus a double update! Woo!
I'm behind again. Wah! Here's today's page so far; shading soon to come. We'll blame it on the new job. Although really it's the fault of Harvest Moon 64 and Portal.
Anyways. OH MY who could it be???
Edit: Finished the shading! Sorry that took so long I was at work all day. Next update Tuesday!
Here's today's page! How to bring the hero out in any man, am I right? Vian looks so dramatic with his fish. I tried a new inking style, as well as adding in some highlights and a different way of doing hair. I think it looks quite a bit better! Also I brought back the gradient I originally planned to do with Jade's hair- I left it out at first for simplicity's sake but I think it looks better this way.
Argh. Figures I'm ahead one week only to get behind the next...I'm ahead on drawing pages though, so that's a plus!
In other news I finally got a job offer after like...5 months of not hearing back from anybody! And figures I actually go and get THREE job offers all at once. So it looks like I will have a job soon...upside? Being able to pay for food and rent. Downside? Less time to do comics. We'll have to see how it goes.
I finished this update yesterday. Go me! Let's see if I can keep this up. And yay it's daytime now! Also I know the horse looks funky. I drew it so many times and looked at so many photos but it's still funny looking. I tried D=
I was so proud of myself because I had this one all drawn out and ready to go a whole day ago! But I procrastinated on coloring it anyways. I am an incurable procrastinator. Anyways, shading will be added tomorrow.
In other news, I've now added a comment box on the bottom of the page! Post your comments/compliments/criticisms/complaints or whatever else you want, I'd love to see your input. :)
Super special Sunday update! Presenting you with a bonus page--- I mean the make-up page from a week ago. THERE now we are back on track. I'm still tweaking Narthessos' design a bit, but I'm pretty happy with it. Also trying making the font a bit smaller, does it look good?
ALSO Manna Quest is now equipped with an RSS feed! Hurray!
Figures I procrastinated again. Didn't quite get this page finished but it's past my bed time so here it is for you! I'll add in shading and sound effects tomorrow. I'm still planning to get an extra page done some time, probably after Friday's update.
Edit: Finished! Fun fact: nightmares have magic fire manes and tails that don't actually release any heat, so they can't burn things. It's an illusion! Anyways next update Friday.
WHEW. Finally finished this stupid page. Turns out designing characters and their armor and their mounts on the fly is a bad idea. Anyways, look! Characters besides Vian! :D
Next week I'm going to try updating Monday Wednesday Friday to make up for the missed page this week. But I don't want to make any promises I can't keep (again), so no promises!
So I managed to get the page done before taking off, yay! I'm posting it early since I might not have computer access tonight. Anyway here's Vian...being kind of emo. Also more font experiments, I think I like this one better than the last. Also, Tuesday's update might be a bit late since I'm not going to have time to work on it this weekend- it's Picnic Day at my alma mater!
Here's the page for today! I'm trying out a new font, not sure if I like it or not. Also I'm going to be out of town the rest of the week, so I might not be able to get an update for you on Friday, but I'm going to try my best.
Whew! Sorry this one's a bit late, I procrastinated (again) and this time I didn't already have it drawn. OOPS. But I did get it done, so here you go! Next update Tuesday.
I'm recoding some parts of the website, trying to make it sleeker and easier to edit and utilizing php. Links will probably break in the meanwhile, but I'll try to get the website redone quickly.
Edit: Whew! That was quite a programming-filled day. The site is now all shiny and easier for me to manage, yay! Tell me if anything looks broken, I might have missed some things. My next task is to up the quality of the pages and fix text bubbles. Oh, and draw more pages of course. :)
New page is up! Run, Vian, run! Also I added Vian's dad to the cast page. YAY there's more than one character there now. Hope everyone survived April Fool's! Next update on Tuesday.
Wow. So I was almost completely done with today's page except for shading one panel and adding in the font, and when I switched to the program I used to add in the font it still had an older version of the page open and automatically saved. So that means the last 5 or so hours of work just got saved over. Maybe I can get an update up later today, but for now I'm way to bummed to do all that work again.
Edit: Okay a sat down and hacked away for a few hours and now it's done. On the upside this proves to myself the dedication I have to this comic! Pages may be late but they will not be skipped unless absolutely necessary. Hah! Anyways after coloring this page TWICE I don't want to look at it any more. Bleh.
So no page yet, unfortunately this weekend a combination of being sick and traveling to my mom's got in the way of me finishing the page quite in time. But it should be up later today!
Edit: Splash page is up! Sorry it's late and not particularly exciting either, lol. Next scene starts on Friday!
And here's the first real page! This didn't take nearly as long as the cover, which is good. I think I'm pretty happy with this style of doing things: it looks decent and doesn't take forever and a day, so I'll probably be sticking with it.
Anyways, meet our hero, Vian! Woo! Next update on Friday.
Okay, so I didn't get 5 pages done. I way overestimated my productivity capacity, hah. Fortunately I did manage to finish the cover and get it posted while it's still March 5 (barely!)
Yeah, this took me forever to finish painting! Whew! After all that work I was sad to make it so small.
So I'm not off to the best of starts, but the good news is, most of the pages won't be as detailed and shouldn't take as long as the chapter covers. And hopefully I'll get a good rhythm going after the first few updates. But yes, MannaQuest has now officially begun! Look for an update next Tuesday.
The website is finally up and running! I'm still working out a few kinks, but most of the site should be working. There are no comic pages as of yet, but feel free to look around the site! Be sure to check out the "About" section for lots of information about the world of MannaQuest.
Also if you notice anything awry in the site, please e-mail me (remove the *s) about it and let me know! Broken links, broken images, typos, whatever. The site has been tested on Firefox and Internet explorer, but I'm not sure how it will perform in other browsers.
The first set of 5 pages will be posted on Friday, March 5, 2010. After that MannaQuest will update with one page every Tuesday and Friday.
