My Webcomic Journey: Merging Projects and Learning Along the Way

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Hey, do you remember the last time I wrote a blog post when I was at a crossroads?

Yes, I'm talking about that one where I announced the end of Pepper&Carrot at episode 42 (in four episodes from now) and also the start of the Mini Fantasy Theater comic project.

That was months ago, and, oh dear... a lot of things didn't turn out the way I thought they would.

I wanted to give you an update on that, but I changed my mind so many times in the last few months that I felt too disoriented to even feel confident enough to write down a blog post about my webcomic journey.

Now I feel like I'm moving in a new direction, and it's one that's sticking with me. So let me explain.

Mini Fantasy Theater's success

I published 10 "Mini Fantasy Theater" comics weekly from April to July. They were a total joy to make and I was really happy to read the huge feedback they generated.

To give you an idea, the first episode "Morning Routine" has been shared more than 1269 times on the Fediverse. Episode 4 "Accessories" got over 31K reactions on the Facebook page. Later, Episode 8 "Carnivorous Plants" got 11.2K likes on Instagram.

I never got that kind of metric with my episodes of Pepper&Carrot or my illustrations on social media, ever. So I was excited that I had finally found a way to expand my reach to a new audience. It also felt rewarding to think that I was finally on the right track.

So I was, and still am, pretty happy and confident with this webcomic format:

  • The format suited proprietary social media algorithms.
  • Scenarios were easy to produce, I got a big package in advance.
  • Episodes were fast enough to produce, once I was motivated with an idea I could start and be sure to publish it the next day. Amazing.
  • The audience responded positively, the comments section was interactive, and Mastodon turned out to be my favorite place to publish first because I could quickly edit and hot-patch my little bugs.

Designing the website, translation system and infrastructure

In July, I decided to take a break from production after the release of the 10th episode of Mini Fantasy Theater. Ironically, episode 9 and 10 were about Art Block, see episode 9 and episode 10.

Still, I had 10 comics finished and I felt like I had a strong base to start designing the project's website.

But the website quickly grew bigger than I expected. I was somehow convinced - and with good reason - that I had to make it better than Pepper&Carrot from the ground up. Convinced that a better core system, a better way to share sources, and a better website would solve all the difficulties I have in maintaining Pepper&Carrot.

I had a lot of intense brainstorming and trial and error during July, but despite all my efforts I ended up designing a translation system that was pretty close to the Pepper&Carrot one. The attribution database? Pretty close to the Pepper&Carrot one. The project needs it's own font directory? No, let's just reuse the Pepper&Carrot one. And almost the same pattern for the "contributor documentation", the patronage system, the about page, etc... etc ... ... ...


Video: The Mini Fantasy Theater website (not finished)

The Turning Point Revelation

And then, I could finally see the obvious pattern: I was just making a clone of Pepper&Carrot from scratch.

It was different in appearance: a different format, a different name, a different release schedule, but at its core I was just reinventing the wheel and it was so similar to what I already had.

This revelation completely blocked me and I put immediately a pause on the Mini Fantasy Theater website.

I was looking for answers, and I knew I needed time to put words about why I was so bugged to make a duplicate of Pepper&Carrot.

Unraveling my thoughts

Luckily, summer was here, and the time of family visits and summer vacations gave me an easy excuse to put all that aside and forget a bit.

I just spent a lot of time drawing in my sketchbook and on my home DIY to-do list: I installed a stove, cut firewood, and built a shed for it. At least, I made huge progress on getting a warmer house for winter, less dependent on increasingly expensive electricity.

Thanks to this side-step, I was able to take distance and put better words on why I had this block on the Mini Fantasy Theater website.

I think now that Mini Fantasy Theater was just my way of getting away from Pepper&Carrot. Pepper&Carrot probably felt too big, too complex, and too hard to manage at one point, and too rigid to find any creative freedom in it.

With Mini Fantasy Theater, my hope was to create a webcomic project that would be free of all of that. But building the Mini Fantasy Theater website, the scripts, and the translation system only reminded me that I was just recreating the same structures, leading to the same difficulties.

Worst of all, in a hypothetical world with Pepper&Carrot and Mini Fantasy Theater website and infrastructure side by side, I was on the verge of having to double my maintenance time budget: with almost all the mechanics under the hood being duplicated.

Finding a way

But a little time and distance did wonders, because I was finally able to study, identify and face those difficulties. I soon realized that I still had a lot of options open to me.

Also, many of the good ideas I had from Mini Fantasy Theater's infrastructure, creative freedom and release step were not lost, I could backport them to benefit Pepper&Carrot. All in all, this Mini Fantasy Theater experience was an eye-opener to see what is essential and what is not to protect my productivity and creative process.

I could just merge the Mini Fantasy Theater episodes into a section of the Pepper&Carrot website and keep everything on a single website, maybe just behind a new menu. And also the project could just use the same repositories as Pepper&Carrot without too many duplicates.

Facing up to the dragon difficulty

I then looked back at the big writing effort around the idea of making an 'ultimate ending' for Pepper&Carrot. I was in my 5th rewrite and it was taking shape, but it just felt "not in the spirit of Pepper&Carrot". It took me months and months and a lot of rewrite, which is why the 5th version...

I started to ask myself: why do I insist on writing a plot? Why make the story center around revenge? Why it always end like a Shōnen in a epic fight?

I probably did this because I felt a little trapped into making episodes that justified the "lore" the project had accumulated on our wiki. But I don't want to tell a "good versus evil" story. I don't want to have a plot or a conspiracy that my character has to unravel.

I just want to make fun of that through the character of Pepper and Carrot; both lost in a fantasy world that doesn't work as expected. I want to use this device to expose this false "good versus evil" dichotomy. I want to show that our usual training and enjoyment to read plot, conspiracy, and drama in fiction may not be the most useful way to exercise our brains in our recreational time.

So I took a big breath of creative freedom, a new white page and started a 6th rewrite from scratch and got something much more fun, original, upbeat and bright. This version was a complete departure from the 5th Shōnen's plot-driven ending with long fighting episodes against Wasabi. I could write a funnier Pepper, questioning her world and dealing with her fantasy of wanting to be in an epic story, while her reality is more or less as boring and complex as our reality.

This rewrite also has a consistent ending for book 5 and better reuse the new characters already introduced for this future book: the Phoenix of episode 37, Brasic, Fritz and Vinya of episode 38. All in all, it gives a more philosophical growth curve to Pepper.

A vision that lasts

I then traveled to the signing in Norway with this mindset, and it was a great experience because I kept the bright vision of Pepper&Carrot in all my signing sessions and got a lot of positive feedback.

This vision has stayed with me ever since!

So, Pepper&Carrot is still my dream project and I am grateful to have renewed my passion for the series. I don't need to refactor it deeply, I don't need to open a new series. Sure, having a short format at hand is now cool for sometime publishing quick comic strips. But that's all.

Future plan

I have deleted Pepper&Carrot episode 39 beta "The Bedtime Story" and closed the thread three month ago. This 11 page episode was pretty far along and had about 120 hours invested in it. But it was also confusing and very far from the spirit I have for Pepper&Carrot now.

So I'm going to start this episode 39 from scratch − again. But sacrificing some bad steps to keep the series high quality is worth the effort, I think. Even though it is heartbreaking to get zero income for all the work that has been done and is almost ready to be published... But quality comes first! In the upcoming production report on my blog, you will hopefuly read more about the making of this new version of episode 39.

As for Mini Fantasy Theater episodes, I'll take the time to merge them into the Pepper&Carrot site and create new ones from time to time. They'll be fully translatable and use the same repos and group as Pepper&Carrot for the technical part.

I may soon start refactoring both Mini Fantasy Theater and Pepper&Carrot to make the merge easier, porting the best technology I found recently, and de-duplicating the tools and libraries used in Backstage. These changes will probably come with an update of the Pepper&Carrot website, but all this will be an ongoing background task with a lower priority than getting back on track with the production of new episodes.

So that's my roadmap for the end of the year. I really want to participate in Inktober this year, but I know that with such a challenge, I might as well invest all the time I can into making this future plan a reality. So, no Inktober 2024 for me.

Thank you for reading and thank you to all my supporters for sticking with me despite the time this whole process takes.


32 comments

link Vincent Cantin   - Reply
greenCoder@functional.cafe

The readers who are also fans are also multitasking between the 3.

link Oblomov   - Reply
oblomov@sociale.network

(extra space between [our wiki] and the (link) in parenthesis, in the Facing up to the difficulty section)

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@oblomov 👾 Oopsie, thank you! Fixed.

3 ★

link Vincent Cantin   - Reply
greenCoder@functional.cafe

> I was just making a clone of Pepper&Carrot from scratch.

Chassez le naturel et il revient a la carotte.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@greenCoder Ha oui, c'est exactement le sentiment. On se change pas facilement. 🙃

link jfml - Jonas Laugs   - Reply
jfml@mastodon.art

Thank you so much (again) for such a cool blog article, I love everything about this from realising that you're just redoing the infrastructure to not wanting a boring good-vs-evil story. I always enjoy you articles, thanks for writing them!

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@jfml Thanks for reading and for your kind words!

link Pierre   - Reply
PierreC@eldritch.cafe

Merci de partager avec nous tes recherches et tes hésitations. J'ai eu parfois mal pour toi devant les moments de blocage et d'incertitude que tu racontais, mais je trouve ta méthode et ton exigence remarquables, et très inspirantes en tant qu'exemples de démarche pour mes propres projets créatifs. Bravo d'avoir su creuser le sujet pour éviter de créer un site en double et donc t'éviter un burn out à devoir entretenir deux sites au lieu d'un !
Je suis ravi que "Pepper & Carrot" continue et j'attendrai patiemment les futurs épisodes. Très bonne continuation 🙂

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@PierreC Merci vraiment. 😊

link Rowyn   - Reply
rowyn@mastodon.art

RLB: This part resonated with me. So much of the fantasy genre is action/adventure and focused on climactic battles. Even though I, as an author, want to tell smaller stories with little fighting, that's not what I've been feeding my muse all this time. So my muse keeps coming back to stories centered on violence. I have to steer it away, repeatedly, if I want to do anything else.

🖼️ a0b5568a54786fc1.png 

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@rowyn Thank you

2 ★

link Rowyn   - Reply
rowyn@mastodon.art

💖 you're welcome!

I'm also so happy that you kept wrestling with your planned resolution for Pepper & Carrot until you found a way that suited your vision of the comic. Pepper & Carrot is such a delight and I love how little it relies on the tropes of combat / violence / good vs evil.

link Mathieu Perona   - Reply
MathieuP@mastodon.gougere.fr

@rowyn Could a fantasy story climax with two small guys throwing a piece of jewellery into a volcano? Come on, that's never gonna work.

link Nartagnan ⏚   - Reply
nartagnan@mstdn.fr


Merci des infos, et bravo de pas juste céder à la facilité ou de juste t'obstiner.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@nartagnan Merci de voir tout ça. C'est jamais évident d'annoncer qu'on revient sur ses pas et qu'on se plante. Mais c'est vrai que j'ai glaner un paquet de précieuses infos au passage. Je m'en veux simplement de n'être pas assez rapide d'esprit pour résoudre ce genre de nœud de parcours avant qu'ils n'arrivent 😅

2 ★

link Nartagnan ⏚   - Reply
nartagnan@mstdn.fr


Oui, alors ça je crois que c'est LE super-pouvoir que tout le monde aimerait avoir, en fait, s'il était dispo 😅

Moi, les nœuds, je les esquives : je fais rien et *tada*.
Donc bon, à choisir, je te remercie de prendre le risque de t'emmêler le cerveau, et de défaire consciencieusement chaque nœud pour nous offrir un résultat propre et pas une soupe pas cohérente voir amer, loin de l'envie de base.

link Christopher Di Biase   - Reply
dibiase@noauthority.social

glad to hear you're getting though the creative block you've had. You have a very nice art style and knack for story telling, both in a four panel comic and longer form. Keep it up! :)

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@dibiase Thank you very much!

link LonM   - Reply
LonM@vivaldi.net

Thanks for this insight into your process, I'm looking forward to the final few chapters (and whatever projects come next)

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@LonM Thank you!

link Séverin Lemaignan   - Reply
severin@hci.social

so glad to hear that Pepper&Carrot will be with us a little longer! Thanks David 🤗

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@severin Thank you!

link Stemy   - Reply
stemy@mas.to

Une telle intégrité artistique, ça force le respect. J'aurais un petit pincement au coeur quand P&C sera fini, elle restera pour moi la meilleure oeuvre d'humour-fantasy qui ait jamais existé.

link der.hans   - Reply
lufthans@mastodon.social

thank you for continuing to give us vantage points to see the work that goes into creating your great art

"upbeat and bright" is one of the endearing aspects of Pepper & Carrot

Even when you get to a dark topic, it's just been part of the journey, not the destination, thank you

Perhaps, like Monet, you've made it through the dark period and can now see in ( the humorful ) ultraviolet :)

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@lufthans

link Albert Westra   - Reply
odysseywestra@linuxrocks.online

I'm glad you were able to figure things out. It sucks when you try to do something new and you come to realize that you were basically doing the same thing but just slapping new lipstick on.

At least you could look at it from this way. What you've been doing has been working. Just keeping it simple, and subverting our expectations is probably what I expect from your world of Pepper and Carrot regardless.

Either way, I still look forward to what you have in the store for us.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@odysseywestra Thank you.

link Valentin Petzel   - Reply
valentin_petzel@aut.social

I think the reason why epic pulp fantasy battle and fighting scenes don't work out with PnC is that in its origins PnC was never really about fighting or anything. It is a story about a girl and her cat, about growing up, about friendship, about search for purpose and acceptance, about trying to prove yourself, and about understanding what's important in life and finding your way. It is a story where an epic final battle would not make sense.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@valentin_petzel Thank you and you perfectly described the core of the series and what I think of it now.

I start recently to also get an answer to the question of why my brain kept going Shōnen/battle genre. Probably something in the same vein as an imposter syndrome: many comic I was fan when I started to draw were of that genre; and I still associate 'masters' and 'big series' to that genre.

But now I can identify it, I can work on it. Thank you for your comment!

link vv221   - Reply
vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it

many comic I was fan when I started to draw were of that genre; and I still associate 'masters' and 'big series' to that genre.
It’s time to burn your idols: you outgrew your masters and built your own genre over time ;)

CC: @valentin_petzel@aut.social

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@vv221 @valentin_petzel Thank you for "outgrew your master", I don't think it, but I really appreciate the words
About burning them, well; I get the idea 😉 I'll just try to take my distance and be my own thing.

link vv221   - Reply
vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it

Well, I don’t like shōnen at all but I love your work. So you clearly achieved something here.

CC: @valentin_petzel@aut.social


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