00:00:02.07

Delphina

Hello and welcome to Screen Tones where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about getting back on the horse if you need to get back into a project and it's been a while. I'm Delphina, use she/her pronouns and I make the webcomics Sombulus.

00:00:24.34

Rae

And I'm Rae. I use they/them pronouns and I make the webcomics Overlord of Ravenfell and On Empyrean High.

00:00:33.55

Star

I'm Star, I use she/her pronouns, and I make the webcomic Castoff.

00:00:38.09

Miranda

I'm Miranda. I use she/her pronouns, and I make the webcomic Into the Swell.

00:00:43.90

Delphina

Okay, so you got hit with life, TM, and you haven't worked on your comic in a while, maybe. And now you're trying to get back into it, but you're having trouble getting things going again. This is your situation. And I think it may take time, but it's never too late to get back on that horse and rebuild your confidence again. You know, it's 2026. It's the year of the horse. We're going to do this. So let's talk about how that works, like emotionally, practically, all that good stuff.

00:01:17.96

Delphina

So I'm just going to throw out the question, what is your experience with getting thrown out of your groove? You don't necessarily have to get into the specifics if it's like a really sucky life event or something like that, but just like the emotions, how are you feeling when you're reflecting back on your project?

00:01:38.04

Rae

Okay, for me personally, a lot of times it is sucky life events or just life is throwing way too much at me. Like when I was doing Overlord of Ravenfell, I was working like 45 hours a week and going to school full time.

00:01:55.60

Rae

And that just wasn't really sustainable in the long term. Also, sometimes I realize that the story isn't really connecting for me, either because I've grown beyond it or for other personal reasons. Some of my stories started off as collaborations, for instance, and growing apart from the people who helped me start it can really make me feel disconnected from that work. But overall, it sucks. It's like, oh, how can I do this? And sometimes if you have an audience, you're like, oh no, I have all these obligations and you start stressing about it and it makes it even worse. It just kind of snowballs into feelings that you're not even sure how you can even start tackling it.

00:02:50.71

Delphina

I definitely hear you there. And I'm glad like you called out the math of working like, how many hours do I actually have in the day? How many hours am I working? Because sometimes you feel like, oh, I should be able to do this. But like when you do the math, I'm like, where, where, where would that go? So it's important to try to keep an eye on that sort of thing. I think I'm going to throw the question to you, Star. Have you had an experience like this? And how did it feel for you?

00:03:20.92

Star

I have 100% had an experience with this because as I've talked about in previous episodes, Castoff was not my very first comic. I actually had a comic that I ran for about three years beforehand called Psy.

00:04:12.73

Star

I started Psy right after I finished high school, like literally the day after my high school graduation, I was like, I'm bored. I'm just going to do a webcomic now.

00:04:23.09

Star

And I ran that webcomic for like three years. What ended up happening was I got about three years into it. And I made all the mistakes associated with baby starting their first big project. And then I had to start working on my senior film.

00:04:39.48

Star

And that took—basically all of my free time was going towards working on my senior thesis film. I was closed up in the animation building at SCAD for hours and hours every week.

00:04:54.20

Star

Just trying to get this thing done. And I ended up having to take, you know, I was doing that. I was taking other classes, just the combination of working on my senior film and also all my other projects. And also I was a club officer in multiple clubs. Just a combination of all those things made it just like the comic has to take a backseat.

00:05:11.61

Star

And so I ended up taking a hiatus on the comic for like six months. And then when I came back to it, I think I did like one page. I made an announcement on DeviantArt, which was the primary location I posted. And I was like, comics back from hiatus. And then I never posted again. And the reason why is because I had scripted pretty far in advance.

00:05:33.66

Star

And I had gotten about like eight chapters under my belt at that point. I looked back at all of the mistakes I had made. I looked back on the three years that I had worked on this comic. I was not proud of the work I had done. I looked at the scripts that I had written. I was not excited about them. That time off of the comic just...

00:05:54.82

Star

nuked my interest in it. It nuked my passion for it. I came back to it with fresh eyes and I hated everything I had made. Not like hate, but just like feeling very discouraged. And I was like, I don't find joy in this anymore.

00:06:12.06

Star

And so I ended up just shelving it. And that was a very hard choice to make, but ultimately I do think it was the right one for me.

00:06:21.75

Rae

Yeah, when that happens, sometimes you just feel like you've painted yourself in a corner and you have nowhere to go that you want to go with a comic like that.

00:06:33.14

Star

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what happened. It's like I had scripted the next several chapters and there was going to be this whole arc that the characters were going to go on. And I'm just like, I, this is bad. I don't like this anymore. Because part of the thing was, you know, I was in art school. I was learning how to write and tell a story. And I came back to it and all I saw were the flaws.

00:06:52.60

Star

Because I had learned in those six months, how to tell a story more effectively. And it was just like, I was just looking at all my mistakes and being like, am I... proud of this? The answer is no but I’m like but I still have to work on this. But I have probably less than 100 readers and this is not sparking joy in me and I’m not earning an income or anything on this and I’m just like I can't do this anymore. I don't want this to be the thing that I spend my time on. And so ultimately that first comic was shelved. I graduated college, spent six to nine months in a very deep depression, completely unrelated.

00:07:36.86

Star

I eventually came out of it when I got my first real person job that was not in food service. And a couple months later I started Castoff and then that's where we've been. So that is the rest of that story.

00:07:52.86

Miranda

You cast off everything for Castoff.

00:07:55.23

Star

I did.

00:07:57.12

Delphina

Oh, we tied it in.

00:07:57.57

Star

I

00:07:59.76

Delphina

Yeah, it's interesting. The story about coming back, posting one page saying we're back, baby, and then like never doing it again.

00:08:06.42

Star

We weren't back.

00:08:08.12

Star

We so weren't back.

00:08:09.43

Delphina

I feel like that has happened to me so many times where I'm just like, okay, the thing is over and I am ready to go. And there's kind of this euphoria attached to making that I'm back statement that like, you know, people are going to be excited. You know, people are going to be happy and, and you want that feeling, but you haven't actually examined like, okay, but do I want to come back? And at the end of the day it sounded like maybe you didn't, maybe this wasn't like the project that you wanted to come back to. So it's hard. It's really really hard. I'm gonna throw it. I know. yeah. I'm gonna throw it to you, Miranda. What's your experience here?

00:08:46.76

Star

Yup. And we do it anyway.

00:08:55.40

Miranda

I've done a few hiatuses, but they were never that long. So my big thrown out of the groove was due to a positive life event because I had a baby.

00:09:06.36

Miranda

But I was able to plan for it.

00:09:06.85

Delphina

Yay.

00:09:09.85

Miranda

And so I wrapped up my first comic and I was at a good stopping point. And so for a while, I didn't really have the itch to get back to comicking because there was a whole lot else going on and it was wonderful and crazy and chaotic. But eventually things calmed down and I started to feel like I wanted to get back into comics. And when I did start feeling that way, I felt kind of...

00:09:40.86

Miranda

I can't think of the word for it, but I feel like futile is the closest that's coming to me, because as much as I want to and wanted to get back to comics, I didn't have the time. And I had this big life event that I now had to kind of adjust my life and my schedule around. And comics, they don't take priority over my son.

00:10:11.10

Miranda

Surprise, surprise. So I have to fit them into where I can. And it's really, really hard to find that balance. And so the urge has been growing for like, I've been off the horse for, I don't know, two years, ish, maybe. And slowly, like working on pieces, I definitely had an idea before I had my son that I was going to do a second comic on. I definitely am one that like if my ideas marinate for too long, they go bad and then I hate them and have to change them, even if I have a ton of scripting or whatever done. So I've been kind of in a reworking my story loop and it's kind of because I don't like the story anymore and I wanted it to be different. And it's also kind of a, well, if I'm working on the story, then I have an excuse to not actually be drawing it.

00:11:19.10

Miranda

Because the drawing part is the hard part to get back onto the horse of, for me, it's a hard horse to jump on. But I feel like if you are out of the groove, it's not because you stopped wanting to do comics.

00:11:41.98

Miranda

That seems to be what's between all of us. Like and we didn't fall out of our groove because we wanted to stop making comics. And so you still have that desire. And so it's just kind of sad when you can't fulfill that desire and it has to take a backseat, whether because you don't have the emotional bandwidth or the physical time or whatever the case is. So.

00:12:09.56

Miranda

How does it feel? It doesn't feel great, but that's why we're here. So we can talk about getting back on the horse.

00:12:16.57

Delphina

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And like you said, like, sometimes it's a good thing. You had a son, like, that's amazing. And there's a lot of fun stuff that— there's a lot of hard work that goes into that.

00:12:29.17

Delphina

But it's also, you know, a fun moment and bonding with your family is super important. And of course, you want that time with your family. But where's the other time going to come from?

00:12:40.38

Miranda

Exactly.

00:12:42.63

Star

I feel like there's a very silly joke to be made here about like, yes, I made this webcomic, but I also made this human boy.

00:12:48.40

Miranda

Oh, I joke that he's my favorite OC all the time.

00:12:51.48

Star

Yes!

00:12:51.52

Miranda

And my husband doesn't really get it because he doesn't get what OCs are. But yeah, I'm like, I made this. He's literally an original character that I made. So yes, he is my favorite.

00:13:03.05

Delphina

OC, do not steal because that is kidnapping.

00:13:03.11

Star

Love that. Do not steal my son!

00:13:07.78

Rae

That's kidnapping, I think.

00:13:11.67

Delphina

Oh my God.

00:13:12.40

Star

Oh, amazing.

00:13:12.76

Delphina

Best OC. But yeah, it's frustrating. I know it's happened a couple times during life events for me. Sometimes it's happy. Sometimes it's sad. I got a new job.

00:13:23.71

Delphina

I really needed a new job. I have a, you know, I finally... got out of underemployment to like full employment that's supporting me. And of course I want that; of course that's going to take a priority, but you're absolutely right that that desire doesn't go away. I still want to make comics. And it's a bummer. Because even once I feel like I've gotten like my work stuff done and and I feel like I have some time, but I start forgetting what I've done before, like how I did it, where I put my files the last time I worked on it, what was going through my mind, where to go to next before I got pulled away. And none of those things are huge obstacles on their own. But they build up and they start frustrating me and nobody wants to spend their spare time being mostly frustrated. So it's very easy for my brain to bounce off of that and say, let's do something less frustrating. Let's play a video game. Let's do something else.

00:14:27.89

Delphina

Because there's no decision making there. I don't have the hard work to do. And to Star's point too, it's also the nature of stepping back from the thick of your work and maybe looking at it with more experience and maybe it's less new and less shiny. The passion has dulled a little and you've got some hard work to do or decisions to make, whether it's revising it or jumping into something else. And yeah, that's frustrating. It's super, duper frustrating. And I just, I empathize with anybody who's in that position for any reason. But I do feel like there are things that we can do.

00:15:12.31

Delphina

Maybe we have to be a little more deliberate about how we structure things versus when we first started and we were purely passion driven, right? You have this like,

00:15:24.86

Delphina

comic and it's eating all of your brain energy. It's giving you so much—it's so fun to like think about and draw it and do it. So, of course, it was easy then. And now it's a little harder. And now we kind of have to rethink how we approach things and how we slowly get back into it. So I'm just going to throw it to the group. What are some exercises or practical tips that you can

practice to get back into drawing or writing or thinking about your comic. I'll start with you, Rae.

00:16:04.18

Rae

So I think sometimes you just need to try to learn how to fall in love with comics again. Sometimes it's changing how you work, changing the story, or even switching to one of your backburner projects. I kind of feel like a lot of people's backburner projects can sometimes become their main project simply because you allow yourself more freedom with it and more experimentation. So it becomes more like you in that current iteration than the project you might have started as your main that you were obsessed over it being like a scene or catering to this audience or such. It's where backburner projects are often more for yourself.

00:16:54.81

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely.

00:17:18.39

Rae

I do think that starting small, like doing little doodles of your characters, maybe like doing tiny stories or a slice of a scene that you can't get out of your head is a really good way to try to get back on the horse in a small way without the obligations of doing like, oh, I'm going to have this schedule that I'm going to post two times a week and pretty much like just try to get back into it all at once. Start small and build yourself up and make sure that you're enjoying what you're doing.

00:18:04.06

Delphina

Absolutely. I think breaking the work into smaller, less thinky pieces so that like you can actually complete something, I feel like that's a huge thing because you're looking, when you've done a lot of work and then you've gotten out of your groove and then you're looking back, you're like, wow, that was so much work that I did. And there's almost a pressure when you look at this very large body of work that you need to get back into it right away.

00:18:34.90

Delphina

But like, you kind of have to remember that work took you a couple of years too, probably longer than that. That didn't happen overnight.

00:18:47.70

Delphina

And likewise, getting back up to speed isn't going to happen overnight either. So just being a little more aware of that and coming up with smaller pieces that—smaller horses, ponies, like not the big horse, just the little horses and working your way up or, you know, figuring out what kind of horse is good for you. I'm going to throw it to Star. What kinds of things do you practice or exercises or your tips could you recommend to get back into the groove?

00:19:19.93

Star

First of all, I just want to say that I love how much the word horse is coming up today. I just think it's funny. It's like, we yeah, we're talking about horses. This is a webcomics podcast. Look at our beautiful horses that we've made. This is a metaphor.

00:19:33.11

Delphina

Some horse enthusiast is going to go after me and say, like, you don't ride ponies. Oh, my God. What are you doing?

00:19:38.71

Star

Oh my God, you idiot.

00:19:40.75

Star

The horse girls in our comments are going to be like, Oh my God, your metaphor is shit.

00:19:42.81

Miranda

Oh yeah.

00:19:48.47

Star

But yeah, gosh, I have a lot of thoughts on this subject because like this, the hard part about offering advice for this sort of thing is that it's not universally applicable.

00:19:58.97

Star

Something that works for us. might not work for you. And something that works for you might be so anathema to us that we just can't even comprehend it. I think the important thing to take away from this discussion is that you have to figure out what works for you and that is going to take experimentation. And If you are not comfortable experimenting with different ways—

00:20:24.73

Star

This is going to sound harsh, but this is me being like the mentor putting my hand on your shoulder—If you can't take the time to figure out and learn about how your brain operates, you will not last long.

00:20:39.96

Star

So we can sit here and give you as much advice as we can, but the ultimate thing is going to come down to you and what you're willing to do and how much experimentation you are willing to do.

00:20:39.96

Miranda

True that.

00:20:51.05

Star

That said, here's what works for me. I hypnotize myself.

00:20:55.93

Delphina

You hypnotize yourself.

00:20:58.13

Star

Not actual hypnosis.

00:21:00.38

Delphina

Oh my God, I was going to ask about that.

00:22:00.13

Star

When I find that I am not—okay so I can actually speak from very recent experience with this. Not with Castoff but with another project that I’m working on. I've mentioned it before, I’m working on a novel in my spare time just for funsies because webcomics take too long and if I did two at once I would die.

00:21:20.28

Star

And I tried doing National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, back in November. I got burnt out about halfway through. And I have, we're recording this in January, I have not gotten back on the horse, as it were. There's a couple of things just kind of mentally pulling me away from it. And I've been doing a lot of journaling and trying to figure out like, what exactly is stopping me?

00:21:40.79

Star

But, you know, in an effort to try and get up on the horse, if we're continuing this metaphor—

00:21:49.85

Miranda

Of course we are.

00:22:02.24

Star

—haha, it is that I am basically trying to force myself to have like that excitable brain rot about my OCs. I'm listening to their playlists when I go on walks. I am just like, I'm writing down all of my ideas. I'm just like, I'm just going to draw them in my sketchbook over and over and over again. And I'm going to force myself to be excited. And I realized, okay, maybe that's not working perfectly because I still have not written a word on it since November.

00:22:24.86

Star

And so now what I'm going to actually try later this weekend, my goal is to... I realized that I'm kind of tripping over the medium because this is my first time writing prose. I'm used to writing comic scripts, which are very different from writing prose. And I find that I want to be able to hash out a scene without having to redo a whole bunch of work every single time I want to rewrite something. It's basically writing prose for me is like going to the sketch phase without doing thumbnails first. And I feel like I'm wasting time because it's like, oh, wait, something like this would work better. So I'm going to try.

00:23:03.32

Star

And basically just like re-experiment with the workflow a little bit. I'm going to try and write a novel like a comic script and then adapt it to prose. And we'll see if that works. Jury's still out, haven't started that yet. But I do think that there is a lesson to be learned there that maybe just part of your process is...

00:23:23.06

Star

holding you back? Maybe there's part of the process you don't enjoy. Would changing the way you draw it or write it, kind of take that out for you? Is there a way that you can make things easier for yourself? I think there is value in self-examination of what exactly is causing you to not enjoy this thing. And if you can pinpoint exactly what it is that's causing the problem, you can figure out how to work around it. But again, circling it back to what I said at the beginning, you have to be willing to experiment and self-reflect and figure out, like really critically examine your process and figure out those little tidbits.

00:24:03.26

Star

And I think that will go a long, long way more than just listening to what people on a podcast say works for them and trying. I mean, there's value in that, but there's going to be more value in seeing your own process, examining it, and then figuring out exactly what the problem is and hitting it from that angle.

00:24:22.42

Delphina

I love that advice. I think you should listen to everything we say, try everything we say, and then try 10 things we don't say. Do whatever kinds of things you think like, hey, I should try that.

00:24:30.94

Star

Yes.

00:24:37.82

Delphina

You know, give it a fair shake, give it a couple days or a couple weeks or a month or, or whatever, and see if you can get anything out of it. Because there's so many ways to work.

00:24:48.80

Delphina

There's so many ways to like, be able to work in things. And even if you did something one way before, doesn't mean you have to go back to doing it the same way again. Everybody's time is different.

00:24:58.96

Delphina

Life moves on. Maybe you're living in a different space where you have a different desk and that's suddenly changing what you want to do or how you want to do it. So try different things.

00:25:11.61

Star

Exactly. I definitely also think that there is just—I had a train of thought and it's gone. Damn it.

00:25:18.55

Rae

It just crashed.

00:25:18.76

Star

ADHD! It completely derailed as soon as I opened my f— mouth. Gosh.

00:25:23.57

Miranda

Well, because it was a train, not a horse.

00:25:24.92

Star

No! No! Betrayed by the trains. I should have just gotten my saddle.

00:26:00.44

Delphina

Okay. Yeah. But I definitely feel that it's just so, it's so tricky to, to self-examine yourself sometimes and really look into your heart and like both emotionally and like your physical space.

00:26:15.91

Delphina

I feel like that's another thing that changes over time that a lot of people don't necessarily think about. How is your physical space affecting how you want to work?

00:26:27.47

Delphina

We're going to have a whole other episode about that. I think.

00:26:30.84

Miranda

Physical spaces coming soon.

00:26:33.24

Delphina

Yeah, so I'm going to throw it to you, Miranda. What is your like what kinds of things are you doing practice wise to get back into the groove, onto the horse, into the saddle?

00:26:49.46

Miranda

Into the groove, onto the horse. So I agree with everything that's been said. Self-reflection is so important. You have to figure out what's holding you back. And for me, it's very much a I'm out of the habit and I've struggled to find the time to make it work. So generally, I feel like it's a good idea if you haven't been doing this for a while to start small. Don't expect to go right back to where you were pre-loss of groove. Some people might be able to like take a really long break and then jump in and be back to their comic creating speed

00:27:31.61

Miranda

like nothing happened. I am not that person. I don't know how normal that is. As in, I don't know how many people are that way, but it's certainly not me. So I need to build the habit again. And to do that, I need to start small. And one of my favorite exercises, that works for me, but I recommend it for any—I feel like it's a pretty good exercise for anyone who's just struggling with the starting process.

00:28:01.34

Miranda

Because for me, starting is kind of the hardest part. So I tell myself I just need to work for five minutes and it's five minutes. It's totally doable, even if you don't get much done in it. And so I start that five minutes and sometimes it'll be five minutes and then I'm done. And I'm like, yeah, I don't I'm not feeling it today. I don't want to do anything else.

00:28:24.09

Miranda

But other times I'll get started and I'll get into what I'm doing and be able to keep going beyond the five minutes and actually make some real progress.

00:28:35.32

Miranda

But I feel like I don't work well if I'm like, I need to do 30 minutes, I need to do an hour of working on comics every day, because that is really hard for me to get an hour to do that.

00:28:52.28

Miranda

One of my New Year's resolutions was just to create something daily. I know goals and stuff are supposed to be measurable or whatever, but just setting myself a “I need to make something every day,” no matter how small it is, whether it's comic related or not, just do something that requires creativity. And with the goal of, I want it to primarily be my comic. But generally, as long as I'm using those creative muscles, I feel like it's becoming easier for me

00:29:26.84

Miranda

to take the time to do something creative like work on my comic. So far I've missed a couple days, but it's doing great for me. Just start small, break whatever you're doing down into bite sized pieces and don't feel like you need to go straight to making five comic pages a week if that was what you were doing before, which if it was, that's awesome and good goal to work up to.

00:29:56.31

Miranda

And then what Delphie said about your files and stuff not being organized. That really hit me because I am very much a—I need as easy of a gateway to this process as I can.

00:30:10.81

Miranda

I could spend so long settling on canvas size, brush I'm using, where I'm drawing, where I'm saving the file—like I can spend way too long doing that and figuring all that out. So condense your process and make it as easy to pick up and put down as you can. Like right now I'm only using Procreate on my iPad, because it's less intimidating to me than Clip Studio Paint. And I've kind of got my brushes set. So I go in and I can pick it up and put it down and take it anywhere with me. And it's just a lot,

00:30:56.43

Miranda

it's a lot easier for me to start on than Clip Studio Paint right now. So just find what makes it easier. Find what's holding you back as it were. And, just make it doable for yourself. Don't set super lofty goals and deadlines. If that doesn't work for you, maybe you're a deadline person, it could work for you. But just,

00:31:26.10

Miranda

Like everyone has said, you got to figure out what works for you. And that's some of the stuff that has worked for me.

00:31:35.67

Star

I have things to add to that last statement because yes, absolutely. There is so much value in making the thing you want to do easy to access for you.

00:31:50.01

Star

I have a story and I promise it's relevant, but it's not going to seem relevant for the first few minutes. So a couple of years ago, I hated vacuuming because every time I wanted to vacuum, I had to lug the heavy ass vacuum out of the closet.

00:32:05.37

Star

I had to undo the cable. I had to find an outlet close to where I wanted to vacuum. I had to plug it in. I had to finagle everything to make sure I wasn't going to suck up the cord. I had to get all the stuff off the floor and then I would vacuum, but I could only vacuum in like a very small amount of space.

00:32:20.58

Star

And then if I wanted to vacuum somewhere else, I had to pick it up and I had to gather up the cable. had to find another plug and I had to do another thing. What helped was not just brute forcing my way and forcing myself to vacuum more frequently. What helped was getting a cordless vacuum cleaner.

00:32:39.86

Miranda

We just got one and it was life changing. I felt that whole story in my bones.

00:32:43.07

Star

Oh my god.

00:32:46.10

Miranda

I felt it. And the cordless vacuum is—it's life changing.

00:32:50.74

Star

Now it's just like, whenever I see a dust bunny, I can walk to where my vacuum is.

00:32:51.36

Rae

As...

00:32:55.34

Star

I pick it up. I suck it up. I put it back on the thing and it empties itself into the little receptacle. You just, you have to make it easier for yourself. And this also can apply to artistic pursuits.

00:33:08.33

Star

If you want to be making comics, if you want to, I can speak to this because I started journaling about a year ago and I just recently completed an entire year. I did not miss a single day of journaling at night.

00:33:21.16

Delphina

Wow.

00:33:22.12

Miranda

That is impressive.

00:33:23.90

Star

Thank you. And I am riddled with ADHD. So the fact that I even made that happen is kind of a miracle in and of itself. The trick is that I made it very, very easy for myself.

00:33:34.94

Star

I worked it into my routine at a time when I had nothing else going on. And I was consistent every single night where it was like every evening, I would wind down for bed. I would take a shower, brush my teeth, go turn out all the lights. And then I have a shelf right next to my bed where I keep all my journaling stuff. I have my journals. I have my little rack with all my favorite pens on it. And it is within arm's reach when I am laying in bed.

00:33:59.51

Star

And so all I have to do is turn on my lamp. I grab my stuff without—I don't even have to get out of bed to reach it. And I just spread it all out on my bed and I do my journaling and I put it back and I go to sleep. And that is my routine every single night. And if I was keeping my journal, like in my office or my studio or whatever, I probably wouldn't have done that because it's like, you'd get cozy in bed and then realize, oh man, I want to journal tonight, but I don't want to get out of bed because it's in the other room.

00:34:29.37

Star

Just keep it Just keep it close to you. Make it as easy to access as possible, whether it's physical, mental, just make it easy for yourself.

00:34:40.34

Star

Even if it looks silly, I have a shelf next to my bed that's just for all my journal supplies. And maybe that's not a normal thing that well-adjusted adult would do.

00:34:51.38

Star

But whatever, I just spent an entire year doing daily journaling and that has been so good for my brain. So I like my shelf and I can defend it. If it's going to be, you know, just like bringing your iPad with you wherever you go somewhere so that you will always have your stuff available. If it's making sure that you have all your stuff like on some sort of cloud-based program so you can always work on scripting if you find yourself in line at the grocery store or whatever and you have an idea for something, you can just really quickly type it in there. Making your things easily accessible goes a long, long, long, long way towards making it easier to jump back into things.

00:35:31.75

Miranda

100% agree. And also I have a shelf next to my bed for similar purposes. So I feel like it's a normal adult thing to do.

00:35:40.72

Star

Yippee!

00:35:40.92

Miranda

Going up by the fact that two of us have it.

00:35:41.62

Star

Validation!

00:35:44.44

Star

Two out of four.

00:35:47.30

Delphina

I mean, it's your house. You could do whatever the hell you want. Like—

00:35:50.31

Star

My rules!

00:35:54.55

Delphina

Honestly, like, there's no rules. I mean, back in the day, there's rules about, well, you have to have, like, a space for entertaining guests and you have to have a living room and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, now we have home offices.

00:36:06.88

Delphina

Now we have all kinds of stuff. Like, the rules have changed. Just do what you need to do. I feel like I need to get a cordless vacuum.

00:36:15.73

Star

Get a cordless vacuum!

00:36:16.39

Miranda

You do.

00:36:17.90

Rae

Get one.

00:36:19.16

Rae

And get a lightweight one. Because that really helps. Like, I have the same problem and I recently got a commercial version of a very lightweight vacuum that has a filter that you just, it has a little like lever that you go—and it just gets all the dust out.

00:36:42.95

Rae

And I don't have to get messy trying to yank the filter out or anything.

00:36:48.98

Star

Yes.

00:36:49.93

Rae

And that makes me more willing to vacuum because it's easy. I don't get dusty.

00:36:57.08

Star

I have the kind where it's like, it sits on a base and when you put it back on the base, it automatically empties the little compartment into like a little lower storage and then a light will blink at you when the lower storage is full and then you can just dump that into your trash can. It's so easy.

00:37:11.38

Rae

Just got to make it easy to adult and do some adult things.

00:37:17.11

Star

And it's like, there's ways that people, there's like the normal way to do things, heavy air quotes on that. But it's like, we don't need to stick with what society deems as normal. We're out here making f— webcomics, sorry, webcomics. And I wasted so many years of my life trying to do things the way that I thought I was supposed to do them.

00:37:54.33

Star

And figuring out, oh, no, there's actually ways that I can do things that will make things easier for me. And there's no police that are going to bang down my door and put me in handcuffs because I have a shelf next to my bed that makes it easier to remember to do my journaling.

00:38:13.05

Star

It's fine. You're allowed to do things. You're allowed to make things easier for yourself, is I think the one big thing that I want people to take away from this part of the discussion. You are allowed to do that and you should be encouraged more.

00:38:28.76

Star

So this is me encouraging you. This is all of us encouraging you. Make things easier for yourself. Do what you need to do. Figure out what you think would help and then experiment with it and do it. And if it works, then great. If it doesn't, figure out something else.

00:38:40.50

Star

Be flexible.

00:38:42.68

Delphina

Absolutely. I feel like that's a big thing to me too, just being able to get things the way I want them or

00:38:55.96

Delphina

Just do a little thing. And like I said before, even if I did things one way once upon a time, I don't have to do them the same way like year after year after year. I'm allowed to change my process. I'm allowed to experiment with other things and see. You never know what you're going to find like once you start

00:39:16.63

Delphina

trying other things. So I think that's pretty important. And I also really resonated with what Miranda was saying about making a little time like every day or something where you do something creative. And it doesn't necessarily matter what it is, just that you're making the pattern. For me, it's kind of like a rhythm, a song. And so even if you miss a couple beats, you can get back into the song. You can get back into the rhythm of it if you know what it's supposed to be in the first place. So if you know that most of the time being able to do something creative is...

00:39:59.22

Delphina

something you can do every day or every x period of time then do it. I like to touch a file once every day so I have my computer up perpetually. I’m always sitting at my desktop because I work from home so I'm always here. But I've got to open a file in Clip Studio. I've got to draw a couple lines or edit a couple lines of text. And I just need to make that time, that five minutes or whatever it is to touch the file.

00:40:34.74

Delphina

If it goes further than that, that's great. But at least it feels like I’m maintaining the rhythm. I'm connecting. I'm keeping it going in a way that I feel like I'm making progress because half of this is just morale, right? Half of this is just, gosh, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I’m frustrated. I’m confused. I don't know where my files are anymore. I've just been out of it so long. What if I can't get back into it? The self-doubt starts creeping in, but like, there's other things that like,

00:41:14.58

Delphina

Just getting yourself back to that is something that always gives me a little more security. And like making regular check-ins with friends too, like asking them what they're up to. Getting them to talk about their work and having an exchange where you talk about your work as well is something that I also find, if I make a rhythm for that, if I make a habit of that, then I get to kind of feed off of their enthusiasm for their work and I get to help them if they're stuck in a similar situation. And we're encouraging this culture of being able to talk about our work. And the more we talk about our work, the more we think about our work and the more the Katamari in our brain starts to roll around and pick things up from what they say or the way they view your work. So that can be super valuable too when you're trying to make time to think about it and reignite that passion, get excited about comics again, like Rae was saying.

00:42:22.39

Star

Absolutely. There is so much value in having other people around you who are excited about the same type of stuff. Literally, as soon as we are done recording this, I'm going to go to a local comic artist meetup because I went outside and talked to people and found out that there is like a local...

00:42:41.34

Star

it's not like an official organization or anything, but it's just like, hey, we live in this city, we make comics, let's just like meet up once a month and hang out and eat food and talk about the kind of stuff we're making and just like draw on our little sketchbooks or whatever. And just the...

00:42:55.29

Star

The feeling of camaraderie that comes from being around other people who make the same stuff you do, who are actively making stuff, not just talking about it. You have to find other people who are actively making things because there's only so much value in talking.

00:43:12.69

Star

There is value in making things. And I feel like a lot of people will gather around like other people who are aspiring and have never drawn a comic page in their life. But it's like, you got to find people who actually do the thing and talk to them. And you will be amazed at how much it will inspire you just to listen to other people talk about the stuff they're passionate about. Example A, you're here.

00:43:35.85

Delphina

Absolutely.

00:43:37.40

Rae

Exactly. I also think that it helps if you have friends that are familiar with your work and not just your comic work, but your overall like work and stories and such like, and maybe some of them are going, why aren't you doing a comic about this? You seem a lot more passionate about this.

00:44:01.88

Rae

And that could make you go, huh? Why aren't I doing a comic about that? Because sometimes we get into that sunk cost fallacy of this is the kind of story I want. But maybe you don't want to make it. Maybe you just want to read something like that, but you want to actually make something else.

00:44:23.93

Miranda

I have an example of that because I've been—this comic idea that I've been stewing on for the past like two years. The characters were both female, which is fine. But it occurred to me at some point that maybe I like drawing and creating male characters more in my romances. And I mentioned it offhand, just like on a Bluesky quote. And then Krispy in Discord was like, tell me more about this because... ah

00:44:57.66

Miranda

Yeah. And so I talked about it with them in our Discord and realized why I like this. And so I changed my story and my characters. And like immediate, like immediately the level of excitement I felt for my story and like my desire to work on it—

00:45:20.82

Miranda

It bounced up significantly and it just took talking to someone and just getting those thoughts out that you might not voice to normies, quotation mark or whatever. Just having the community to bounce ideas off of and share the creative journey with is so important.

00:45:48.38

Delphina

There is so much power in somebody going, tell me more about blank. Or how would you feel if something were, if this one thing was different? Anybody who like just kind of...

00:46:04.48

Delphina

challenges you, like that's a person that you keep talking to. That's a person that—and you should also try to be that person for other people to. Like just taking an active interest and like remembering their character names, remembering like the last time you talked about this. You were mentioning X. Like, how are you still feeling about that? That is so powerful. That is the way you unlock that enthusiasm in my experience and really start thinking about it. Because I feel like if you've been on social media for a while or if you've been in a large Discord or something like that, you almost feel like every time you talk about your comic, you're just standing on a soapbox. You're just saying the thing like here, here's the marketing thing that I have to tell you about my comic and like you're not getting like the one-to-one engagement with people who are really invested but cultivating that kind of community can be so valuable. So if you're seeing a friend or something talking about their comic.

00:47:10.39

Delphina

go and do a response or say wow like I really love this character like tell me more about them. Try to cultivate that because that's just that's the energy we need right now for sure.

00:47:24.31

Miranda

I just got to plug our Screen Tones community Discord because I feel like everyone there is so good at this and so good at workshopping ideas, whether it's a writing idea, a character idea, or an art idea. I see so much communication like this happen of...

00:47:42.90

Miranda

How does this come off? And people like asking the questions to make you think about what you're creating and help you to try to think outside the box or have that breakthrough that you're needing. And if you're not a member of that Discord, you should join because it's fantastic.

00:48:00.76

Delphina

Absolutely. It's such a great community. I love all the conversations that happen there. And just so much like good in-depth conversation happens there. I just, I don't know.

00:48:12.96

Miranda

Mm-hmm.

00:48:14.42

Miranda

Which I feel is surprising for a Discord. So I don't know. I love our community. It's my favorite.

00:48:22.17

Delphina

Yeah. Join our Discord. Okay. So, so like... Any other advice that you have to somebody who isn't sure if they can get back to where they were before? Should they even try? What's the threshold here but between like coming back and trying to get on the horse or just giving up? What is your advice in that area? I'll throw it to you, Rae.

00:48:51.45

Rae

So I'm like Star and I think that some serious introspection is probably something that you need when it comes back to getting on the horse. Like what makes it hard to work on the comic? Is it internal, external? Maybe it's something about the actual process. Because like if it's external, sometimes a change of routine can help break that up. Or maybe you need to work on mitigating your stressors or dropping certain things to allow more breathing room. Like I've seen some people that go, oh, I can't work on my comic. And then they spend like 20 hours playing a video game. And I'm like, you could probably cut some of that video gaming down to work on your comic just a little bit.

00:49:39.10

Rae

Or if it's part of the process, maybe you can cut out or repurpose something in the project that makes it easier on you. Maybe you need to combine or cut some scenes or stop inking or stop coloring. Not every webcomic needs to be colored.

00:49:57.12

Rae

Experiment with what brings you joy instead. Like I know some people that paint their comics and it takes a lot of time, but that's what brings them joy. Or I know I don't really like inking. but I found that some of my so cleaned up sketches can look just as good as ink. So that's what I'm going to be doing for my next project. But if it's internal, that's where it really gets difficult.

00:50:25.37

Rae

You might need to reconsider if that project is something that needs to be retired or maybe something that you can somehow change in a way that brings you joy. Sometimes it might just be a hump that you need to get over, like a certain scene that might be necessary, but you got a soldier through it in order to get to the really rewarding part.

00:50:49.72

Rae

But I have seen some comics that just drained all the joy out of art in some people, yet they keep working on it because of some sunk cost fallacy that they have, that they feel obligated to try to see it through. And I genuinely think that it's usually better to retire that project when that happens so you can move on to something that you actually enjoy.

00:51:18.62

Delphina

Those are really good. Like just having that sort of look inside yourself, really feeling out the different aspects of what you're going to try to do or what you've done before. And if it's still vibing with you, I think we've all kind of had that experience, talked about that experience like. Am I really excited about this still? Like, cause it's okay to walk away too. This is a hobby for most of us. Like do, do what brings you joy for sure. going to throw it to you. Star.

00:51:50.97

Star

Yeah, so I made a little mental note. I remembered my train. My train of thought, it's back, it's railed again. I don't know how that happened, but it did, it did a sick flip out in the wilderness, and then it came back to the track.

00:51:56.70

Miranda

The train has railed again.

00:52:03.86

Miranda

The horses probably dragged it back to the track.

00:52:06.84

Star

You can lead a horse to water, and you can use a horse to bring a train back to the tracks. This metaphor is getting off the rails.

00:52:15.19

Delphina

That is definitely how horses work, I think.

00:52:20.06

Star

This is how life works. It's horses all the way down. Anyway, so in that time between shelving my first webcomic and starting Castoff, I did not just jump back.

00:52:36.22

Star

straight into cast off immediately after. I was just like, I haven't made comics in over a year because I, you know, I had started my hiatus in my senior year of college and then It was almost a year just in college that I didn't work on it.

00:52:55.29

Star

And then I graduated and then I was depressed for like six months. and then when I finally started coming out of that, I was like, I miss making comics. And then there was still another like six months before cast off actually started.

00:53:07.70

Star

But I did not just jump from A to B. I actually in the interim was like, I feel like I have forgotten how to make comics. I don't want to jump into something huge right away.

00:53:21.26

Star

I'm going to just try and get my muscle memory back. I'm going to try and get my workflow back. I need to experiment and figure out what I'm doing so that I can jump into this more effectively when I'm actually ready to start like doing my bigger project. So I used the characters from Castoff, but I just wrote a random little short story about them, like going to a city and like my main character, like hearing live music for the first time and having emotions about it. And then there is a chase sequence and then it just ends with like this nice little scene around a campfire. It's not canon anymore because I've changed a few things, but you can still find that comic online if you dig around for it.

00:54:04.73

Star

But it was about like 20, 25-ish pages somewhere in there. It took me a couple months to make. But I learned so much just from doing that one random little short. It's like I took all of the lessons I learned from my first webcomic and I was like, okay, I...

00:54:26.36

Star

did this and I have learned xyz things about myself and my process while working on this that I can then apply to when I start making Castoff for real the biggest one was make your comic pages a lot bigger because I made those original comic pages kind of low res and small and you can tell because the line art's are real chunky. But yeah, and I'm just like, that there is value in warming up. There is value in doing stretches before you go jogging. There is value in doing something small before trying to tackle something enormous.

00:55:04.47

Delphina

Yeah.

00:55:04.66

Star

And I think it's like, even if you were like a f—, oh sorry, I keep saying bad words in this show. I get passionate and they just come out of me.

00:55:15.48

Star

But I think it's like, yeah, you could be an Olympic level ice skater. But if you then take like two years away from ice skating, you're not just going to jump straight back into doing a competition your first time back on the ice or rather you shouldn't.

00:55:33.23

Star

Ease back into it. It is okay to ease back. And also, if it helps, you don't have to publicize your easing back into it. You don't have to post it.

00:55:44.76

Star

You could just make some random little side comics and then just not show them to people. Again, you are allowed to do that. It's fine.

00:55:55.22

Rae

Yeah, I'm actually working on Overlord of Ravenfell right now, but I'm not posting it anywhere because I feel like as soon as I post it, that's an obligation.

00:56:05.94

Rae

So I have just slowly been picking at it on my own time and making sure it's to my preferences before I do anything with it.

00:56:20.54

Miranda

On the other side of that, I've been posting every—I'm really slow right now, but I have like two panels in the latest iteration of the story. And I've been posting my work in progress of these panels on Bluesky.

00:56:40.18

Miranda

Just to feel like I like, I don't know, I feel like it's less of an obligation and more just of a, hey, I did this thing and it counts as something, even though it doesn't seem that much to me. I'm going to share it as if it's more than I feel like it is, to kind of motivate myself, I guess. But I'm not posting it in any type of official website capacity at this point. But just sharing the work that I've been doing has been kind of motivating for me. So on the other side of that spectrum.

00:57:19.64

Delphina

Different strokes for different folks, I feel like, because there's also, there's the accountability or like the process of posting to social media and being able to say, I did the thing, I did the thing. You can look back at all of your posts and see, okay, I did a thing every week. That that is something that is tangible and it is happening.

00:57:42.07

Delphina

But I also understand like, if you're feeling socially pressured or if you're feeling like, maybe the posting about it or the talking about making the comic is taking the place of actually making the comic. Then maybe it's more valuable if you don't until you actually have something substantial or you you're taking your time with it. Because I know I also feel like I've teased things before. I've been like, oh, I'm working on the short story. Look at the characters from the short story. And then something pulls me away from it. And I feel like crap because I look back. I'm like, I was promising these people the short story.

00:58:22.55

Delphina

I never did it. Oh, man. That's a bummer. And like you just. So, yeah, it all depends on how your brain kind of handles it and how you choose to interpret things. I feel like.

00:58:39.64

Delphina

Yeah. Did I throw it to you at Miranda?

00:58:43.47

Miranda

No, but I will catch it. Or I'll steal it from whoever has it currently.

00:58:46.86

Delphina

I'm throwing the horseshoe in Miranda's direction.

00:58:47.44

Miranda

Oh, gosh. I don't know if I can catch a horseshoe.

00:58:52.32

Star

Oh, be careful.

00:58:53.30

Miranda

Yeah.

00:58:53.50

Delphina

No, okay.

00:58:54.23

Miranda

So I don't stretch before I go jogging. And that also applies to every other aspect of my life. So,

00:59:05.82

Miranda

It is probably a really good idea to start small or like start with a small project, but that's not where I find my passion applies itself. So I'm jumping into my full long form comic and that's fine. That works for me because that's where I feel passionate and I don't feel passionate about making a smaller comic, but that is very good advice if that's what works for you. So much of this is so subjective. But I feel the biggest advice is, don't feel like you need to get where you were before.

00:59:41.82

Miranda

It's not to say that can't be a goal, but you should never feel like you're failing because you're not to where you were before you fell out of your groove and off the horse and derailed your train. You're not failing.

01:00:01.01

Star

Alright.

01:00:03.17

Delphina

All of those things at the same time. Wow.

01:00:05.21

Miranda

Yeah.

01:00:05.93

Star

This train is full of horses and they're all wearing shoes.

01:00:09.68

Delphina

Who let the horse drive the train?

01:00:11.90

Star

Who let the horses out?

01:00:14.11

Miranda

This is why we, this is why we should never mix metaphors on here.

01:00:40.46

Miranda

But yeah, so don't feel like you're failing if you're not immediately or even quickly getting back to where you were, whether it's how fast you're creating,

01:00:53.98

Miranda

the level at which you were creating like your art efficiency or whatever, you've grown and you've changed and it's okay for where you're going and what you're trying to get to, that standard,

01:01:09.50

Miranda

of work, production, whatever, to change with you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but you're not failing if you don't immediately get back to where you were. And I feel like that, especially if you have completed a project or did something that was pretty great and then took a really long break, it might be hard to kind of push that as your standard away from you and pick a more achievable standard. But, or even if you want that to be your goal, give yourself some more bite size, like break that down into more short term goals so that you can still feel like you're achieving something, even if you're not immediately back to where you were before. It’s worth trying, but life changes, you change and you might not get exactly to where you were before and that's okay.

01:02:16.38

Delphina

The years start coming and they don't stop coming.

01:02:19.11

Miranda

Yeah.

01:02:19.31

Delphina

Yeah. So I definitely agree. And I definitely feel that, especially as I'm in my 40s right now, it's like I can't do things like I did in my twenties. It feels different. I'm in a different part of my story. I you know, I, I had to take a break mid-story. So I didn't even have the benefit of trying to get back on the course after I've wrapped one thing up. So, the middle story. There's a special kind of hell that you go through in the middle of a story that you don't see in the beginning of a story because beginning of the stories are easy. You're setting things up. You're trying to get all the characters on the board, but then in the middle of the story, you have to figure out what to do with them. And that's a different kind of challenge. You should acknowledge that and give yourself some grace for sure. And I feel like...

01:03:08.70

Delphina

One of the things that I always come back to, the thing that I repeat in my head is I've done it before and I can do it again. And it might look a little different, but I know I can do really cool things. I have the proof that I've been able to make really cool comic pages that resonate with people, that I'm proud of after the fact. And that part of me is in there somewhere. And it's just a matter of finding a way to access it again and finding a way to make it a regular part of my life. And as long as I keep believing that, as long as I continue to experiment with my space or my schedule or different things, I know I can get back there.

01:03:57.17

Miranda

I really, really like that. I've done it before and I can do it again. That's great.

01:04:02.79

Delphina

Yeah, you have. We all have. And I feel like that's the important thing, just knowing that whatever happens, whatever kind of messes up a groove that you've had or a process that you've been proud of, that's always, always, always going to be addressable as long as you don't give up.

01:04:28.79

Delphina

I think that wraps it up for us. I think we've had so many horse play times, okay we can kind of do that. But really. wishing everybody the best of luck because this is legitimately a tough position to be in and the fact that you're even trying is beautiful. So anyway thank you so much. I have been Delphina and you can check out my work at sombulus.com.

01:05:01.37

Rae

And I'm Rae, and you can check out my work at EmpyreanComic.com or Overlord of Ravenfell on Webtoon.

01:05:10.96

Star

I've been Star the entire time and you can find Castoff at castoff-comic.com.

01:05:17.91

Miranda

And I'm Miranda and you can find my work at MirandaCakes.art.

01:05:23.57

Delphina

All right, now we're riding off into the sunset on our beautiful horses that are also trained.

01:05:32.27

Delphina

Why are they trained? We don't know.