I’m a production artist at heart and by trade, of course I do my fair share of design as well, but production art pays the bills mostly. So it’s no surprise that one of the things I hold dear in making the comic is producing! I like to set and hit deadlines and I try my best to do this at any cost. But I also love to look at great artwork. I love to produce great artwork and stories as well. Sometimes, though, producing great stuff and producing stuff to get it done don’t really mix. Sometimes the system breaks down and you find yourself producing anything just for the sake of producing.

Such are the state of things right now. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I’ve been doing on the comic. I really like where the story is heading and where we will find the gang by the end of 2013. But I haven’t been having as much fun getting down that path as I was.

I was beginning to equate it to burnout. I mean, I really busted my ass over the holidays. I was buffer things up and just producing comics like a mad man for a while there. It was all worth it too. I enjoyed a great holiday season with family and friends and kept the comic updating. I was really proud of myself. But after the exhilaration of hitting the deadlines and getting back into the grind of daily life, just producing on time hasn’t really been enough for me any more.

Don’t misunderstand me here, I always try to make my comics look the best that I can and as funny as I can with the time that I have to do them and I’ve grown a lot as an artist along these lines. But I’ve hit a plateau. All creative people hit plateaus many times in the courses of their careers. Plateaus are those times where you just seem to be filling the status quo. You’re just trudging along, making stuff the way you do because you know it works. You know it’s safe. But sooner or later I always get tired of hanging out on this plateau. Going seemingly no where.

But life is crazy. The day job is busy. I have a wife I want to spend time with and we’re thinking of starting a family which is gonna be off the chart nuts. I gotta find a way to get off this plateau and have a life without feeling constant pressure to produce. To hit those deadlines. To just get something up!

Of course I always push myself too hard. Too fast. Too far. I always will. It’s just my nature to feel like the best thing that I’m gonna do with my work is the next thing I’m gonna do. But in order to grow I need to feel like I have the freedom to explore. To think. To have fun.

So, the moral of all this is that the comic update schedule is changing. Ugh, just typing those words gives me a pit in my stomach so I figure I’ll be working myself too hard  just so I don’t feel like too much of a loser for not hitting MWF updates. But I am also going to give myself the freedom not to HAVE to hit MWF updates. If I feel like I need a bit more time on a comic or an idea I’m gonna take it. And I think the comic will be better for it. I think I will be better for it too.

Now before the 15 of you regular fans that I have decide to leave for greener comic pastures I want to assure you that I will do my very best to continue to hit MWF updates and if I don’t I promise to do my best to have a great looking comic up as many times as I can that week. When I get past this plateau and learn new cool things I’ll probably settle back into a definitive MWF schedule again. Until I hit another plateau. It’s gonna happen. We might as well accept it.

To wrap things up, thank you all very much for reading the comic. Spreading the word and making me feel like I have a cool product going here. I promise that this slower period will make for much better comics and other cool things in the future and, of course, nothing has changed as far as where the gang is going to be a year from now. We’re all just gonna stop and smell the flowers from time to time a little bit more on that path