Cat Nine

HD + Textless | WIP

Reminder that cats are tsundere, Myan included, but dere (most of the time) with her dad. And excuse Tammy, she couldn’t help with Myan being adorable here! I bet most of you wouldn’t mind getting licked by an onee-san Tammy though. Oh that reminds me, I gotta depict her as an onee-san in the future like the other girls… somehow Myan was the first to be depicted like that.I wonder when I can stop the Filipino language notes, at least with the more common words I’ll be using? Well, I better keep them in just to be sure.

I’ve also started to time myself whenever I’m working to give me something to track and improve upon, and geez, it’s already been a decade! I gotta take this comicking thing a little more seriously. If I can finish a page in a single day for 10 hours at most (8 and below is ideal), that’d be great for everyone. We’ll see if posting these will help since I already do feel a bit motivated, and you guys can rightfully claim I’m slacking off, I’ll post the stats below the patron mentions starting from now on, or just somewhere below for bonus/fan art. Whenever you see the times for these stats, these are the things that I do in detail:

1. Writing and thumbs: Writing the dialogue and drawing the thumbnails for the page/art. Kinda hard to time myself here since I can do this while doing other stuff like during my walks.
   • Rereading some of the past pages so I don’t miss some important info. I’m writing by the seat of my pants, and I can’t remember every little thing after all!
   • Sometimes I already have an idea for the page’s title and alt text in this step.
   • I have to adjust the dialogue a lot to fit the comic’s limited space. Perhaps looking up synonyms for shorter or more fitting words.
   • Make some super loose drawings (here’s for the current page). Quick and easy to draw/adjust, or scrap entirely if I’m not happy with them.
   • Proofreading and more adjustments. I might even keep adjusting the dialogue until I actually finish the page. If I’m happy enough with the dialogue during this step, I proceed to…
2. Sketching: The actual drawing, and the most time-consuming part!
   • I sketch and lineart on my Cintiq 16 I setup on a nearby table, so I gotta move my plastic garden seat around. At least I upgraded it with some cushions.
   • Included in this step is looking up references, and doing some quick character designs for new or background characters.
   • I finish drawing each panel left-to-right.
     • First panel is uploaded to Patreon for $1 patrons. After each panel finished, I upload the progress to the patron-exclusive channel for $3+ patrons in Discord. *wink wink*
   • Redrawing stuff if I have to. I try to minimize the amount that I have to redraw by really making sure in the thumbnail stage, but sometimes it can’t be avoided especially if I change the dialogue.
3. Lineart: Well, it’s basically just tracing the sketches.
   • I also draw in the dialogue here, like with “lick lick”.
   • Upload the lineart for patrons.
4. Flats: Coloring in the base colors. Not that hard and time-consuming in most cases.
   • I move my seat back in front of my computer, and to using my old Intuos4.
   • Since I can zoom-in and out easily with they keyboard now, I can do other stuff better like correcting or smoothing lineart since they’re more noticeable, and my drawing hand will be slower but more precise.
   • I kinda just magic wand/marquee (Auto select in Clip Studio), and just fill-in the colors. It’s not perfect though, so I have to zoom-in regularly to fill-in the missing spots.
   • My color palette only has the hair, skin, and eye colors, so I have a separate file containing colors for their clothes, or for other characters. Or, I open up past pages/art to pick the colors I’ve used.
   • I also figure out the color palettes for new characters, if any.
   • Upload the flats for patrons.
5. Final: I didn’t want the stats listed below to be too long, so they’ll all be under Final.
   1. Coloring and detailing: Adding in the shadows and highlights.
      • Yep. Highlights, shadows, as well as other lighting.
        • I either use separate colors in the palette for the highlights and shadows, or just use the screen or multiply blending modes. I usually just screen/multiply now for faster coloring.
      • Detailing for stuff like Haliya’s tattoos, or water and wind effects.
      • Coming up with patterns or something abstract for panels with no drawn backgrounds.
      • Checking the art and writing for the final time.
   2. Posting and scheduling
      • Export the .jpegs and .pngs of the now finished comic. Patrons get the HD and textless versions too.
      • Thinking up titles, copy-pasting the dialogue for the transcript, and writing the alt-text and these blurbs below the comic. Maybe think of some interesting polls.
      • Checking if my patrons are actually still RAWRs ($5) or KitTens ($10).
      • Previewing the comic’s webpage, checking to see if everything’s fine.
      • Post/schedule them here and in social media/other websites. I use Buffer for social media, and PostyBirb for deviantArt. My computer has to be turned on or asleep to use PostyBirb, so damn you dA for charging people to schedule posts!
        •  Use the first panel for making a comic preview for Instagram since my comic’s format isn’t really a perfect fit over there.
        • I set up Zapier to automatically post to Discord.
      • After it gets posted, I check it again.

• Yugo Ryan
• Red Marine
• Rothiem
• ZeroKelvinKeyboard
• Fishmeistercod

• MCWildcat

Writing and thumbs: Didn’t time myself, but maybe an hour? | Sketching: 5h 37m | Lineart: 1h 12m | Flats: 39m | Final: 3h 15m (actual coloring was about 1h 11m) | TOTAL: 10h 43m