The end of Pepper&Carrot and my next project.

Published on 30 march 2024

edit: published on 30 March: NOT an April Fool.

Hey, I feel like I'm at a big crossroads and this is an important blog post, but you probably already guessed that from the title.

It took me a long time to think about it. It still takes up all my brain bandwidth at the moment. But now that I have a clearer picture, I think it's time to share it with you.

The end of Pepper&Carrot

I am planning to finish the Pepper & Carrot series relatively soon. But this change will not happen tomorrow or next month, I still have four more episodes to release before I get to my planned "~The End~". And as you know, it may take a while, especially since the episodes will be difficult to write and draw.

So why tell you about it now? Because it may affect many of my decisions about the project, and I wanted every contributor, supporter, and reader to be informed about this new goal. It might give a more understandable perspective to actions I'll take and things I'll write. Also, I can't keep this project to myself forever. :-)

I never liked it when a series 'goes on forever' and Pepper&Carrot will be 10 years old in May. It made me think a lot. I also always had a special admiration for authors who knew when to end their series.

I also want to write an ending while the project is still alive. I don't want to end this project when it starts to decline or is on the verge of being forgotten. The numbers are still good: more and more readers, supporters and all metrics are still progressing on all channels. Thank you for that. I can't tell you how grateful I am for the success you've made out of Pepper&Carrot, with all its spin-offs, the community, the contributors and everything else.

I'm counting on you to stick around until I finish the series, because I want to finish it well, and I'm already putting a lot of energy into writing an ending that I hope you'll like.

For this massive new quest, I am asking for your support. Most of my donation platforms (especially Patreon, Tippee) are set to trigger a payment "when the episode is released" and not "monthly". An extra budget to help me release the next four episodes will be welcome (I plan to end with episode 42 and finish with an ultimate 'book 5'). You can find the multiple ways to patron me on this page.

Thanks if you can take part in this ending, and of course thanks if you took part in the previous episodes!

Also, I wanted to tell you that I'm going to keep drawing Pepper and Carrot in a way, because...

🥁 (... drum roll)

Introducing: Mini Fantasy Theater

I couldn't talk about the end of Pepper&Carrot without telling you what comes next. And that's been the hardest part of the last month for me: re-evaluating everything I've done over the last 10 years, learning about it, and building a confident vision of where I'm going next.

I'm planning a webcomic project called "Mini Fantasy Theater" (MFT for short).

This project will have a lot in common with Pepper&Carrot and will be built on the same basic core values:

Made only with Free Libre and Open Source Software
Released under a Libre Culture license
Open Source: layered source files available
No paywalls, no advertising
Made for the web first
Supported by the community.
Share knowledge and tools: Making of, tutorials, scripts and brushes.

You already know two characters from the MFT lore: a young witch and her cat. Because the MFT project was simply the project at the root of Pepper&Carrot. But by the time I drew the first pilot, the first two characters of my first strip had become a success, and I just decided to carry on with them. I wrote a few lines about it in the first pages of the Pepper&Carrot artbook.

The format for the MFT project: short comic strips, humorous, fantasy, following a small (possibly recurring) cast of characters in the world of Hereva (the same world as Pepper&Carrot). It will evolve depending on how the strip works, with your feedback. Of course, Pepper the young witch and her cat Carrot will be part of the characters.

So don't be surprised if you see more experiments, worldbuilding, character designs and tests coming as I write the end of Pepper&Carrot. I already reserved the domain https://www.minifantasytheater.com .

It's also a challenge to start a new art project in this era of unethical AI art, pay to win social media, algorithms with cryptic rules that serve the interests of their platforms, search engines that only return commercial partnerships and AI pollution. But now I'm confident that I will find a way and bring interesting answers to the table.

That's it, and I'm very curious to see how you react to this. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!