Monthly production report for June 2026

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My hand with a stylus over the XpPen19 artist Pro gen2, while drawing a comic strip, during the drawing process.

Table of Contents



Intro

This is my monthly production report, this one is for June 2026. I publish them mainly to log my progress and inform my supporters on what I have been doing.

If you want to join them, you can support my work on:

Weekly comics: Mini Fantasy Theater

As usual, I produced and published four comic strips each Wednesday this month: Episodes 55, 56, 57, and 58. I'm also including Episode 59 in this report since production occurred in June, though it released on July 1st.

Episode 55: "The Potatoes Quest"

This was a super challenging episode to release. To explain why, I need to share my usual production workflow:

  • Sunday evening: Write the scenario.
  • Monday: Layout, speech bubbles, drawing, and inking.
  • Tuesday: Coloring.
  • Wednesday: Buffer day in case production falls behind; release in late afternoon (5:30-7:30 PM CEST/Paris time).

However, with Episode 55, I had just returned from the Torino Comics festival in Italy. I traveled all day Monday in heavy heat and didn't get home until late. Unpacking, doing laundry, restocking the fridge, and recovering took up all Monday evening and part of Tuesday. This left me with very little production time, so I had to use Wednesday as well.

I've discovered that traveling for in-person events creates real challenges: I miss a weekend with my wife and cats, can't help with household tasks, and return exhausted on Monday, making the weekly production much harder. I'll definitely be more selective about which events I attend going forward.

"The Potatoes Quest" received great feedback. I really enjoyed this one, especially the art history cameo to Americain Gothic. I really should do cameo to public domain culture more often, the feedback was great!


Blue penciling of two panel for episode 55

Episode 56: "Home Sweet Home... Sort of"

For Episode 56, I wanted to invest more effort in the drawing itself: adding more crosshatching, shading, and modeling at the black and white stage. This was partly an on-going process attempt to get less comments (mainly on Facebook) claiming my comics "look like AI" (20 years of my work online was used without consent to train AI models, so I get that now). I'm still working on this part, and see if I get more or less "This is AI" comments as a way to validate if my style can departure of what the large audience think the GenAI looks like now.

Anyway, for the story, I needed to resolve the treasure that Url the adventurer and Litchee the fairy found in the previous episode. They were rich now. I decided they wanted to buy a new house, and I inserted in this one a Baba Yaga tale references (mainly for my Polish wife's enjoyment).

Technically, the heavier shading made coloring difficult. Once all the decisions were made about light source and texture in this black and white phase, there was not a lot of room for taking decision at coloring and everything felt darker. That's a technique I won't repeat as it is.


The detailed penciling shaded of episode 56

Episode 57: "The Nest and Travel Souvenir"

Episode 57 continues directly from Episode 56 and that's where I really decided to start a story arc. But one of the big problem with arc: to understand the house's initial situation with the egg, readers almost need to have seen Episode 56. This type of continuity is risky on social media, but I decided to try it.

Producing this episode right after the Geek Faeries festival was challenging for the same reason than episode 55 and the Torino comics festival. But this time I tried to get ahead by doing some work before the festival.

I was a bit worried the humor might be misunderstood, that readers would focus on the implied "the house had sex" aspect and miss the cute payoff I wanted: just a tiny house pagoda. Fortunately, the feedback was charming, and I think my intent came across clearly.


Me at my desk, while drawing on episode 57, under a continuous heat wave.

Episode 58: "Adventure Calls (Clearly)"

Episode 58 was difficult to produce. I felt unwell because of the severe heatwave sweeping France that week, and I was also disrupted by the kind of unexpected issues that come with a bad week. Finishing and posting it felt like a small victory.

In this episode, both the Adventurer and the Pink Fairy act immorally, abandoning the baby pagoda, a troubling act. I knew upfront this wouldn't be well-liked. However, I had a vision for where the Baba Yaga House arc needed to go, and this moment was a necessary story beat.

Technically, drawing the Pagoda was challenging, and the montage panel with three sub-panels took forever. Combined with the heatwave, I felt genuinely exhausted by Wednesday afternoon.


The clean line-art of episode 58, but complex with the montage.

Episode 59: "Baby Pagoda Side Quest: Failed"

After Episode 58, I felt a bit of breathing room to invent Episode 59's story, the adventurers were free! But the comments made clear that abandoning the Baby Pagoda was too immoral for readers to move past. So I had to find a way to show them regretting their actions, punish them, and reassure readers that Mama House and Baby Pagoda would be okay. I felt creatively free, but I actually faced many constraints.

Regardless, this episode concluded the Baba Yaga House quest. Now the status quo is restored: our adventurers are back on the road, penniless and homeless.


The soft untextured line-art of episode 59, one of my favorite panel in June 2026

A lesson learned about story arcs...

The big takeaway from June was that this format, four panels weekly, doesn't work well for extended narratives. Audience engagement dropped noticeably during this arc. Each episode referenced the previous one heavily, and the story didn't make sense without reading the prior installment.

That said, I hope it was rewarding for readers who followed the full arc. But if someone missed an episode, it immediately became hard to follow. On the bright side, the confusion intrigued new readers and prompted them to revisit and explore previous episodes, trying to piece together the larger story.

Lesson learned! Four-panel weekly comics work best for standalone stories. I'll focus on that going forward in July and also adjust the cast a bit, that's what Mini Fantasy Theater is all about.

Long episode: Pepper&Carrot (episode 40 WIP)

That was a fail! The comic script I'd been rewriting for months (eight revisions!) turned out to look really bad on the layout. With simplified drawings and text side by side, the problem became clear: I was cramming too many ideas and storylines into each panel. The dialogue felt rushed, as if an invisible force was pushing the story forward like a runaway train. Worse than anything else, the story revolved around Shichimi rather than Pepper. It was Shichimi's story seen through Pepper's eyes. I felt terrible realizing these issues only after finishing the layout, when I finally understood what felt off and why I'd kept rewriting it so much.

I had to accept that all my progress was for nothing and reorganize my vision for book five from scratch. I can't cram too many ideas just to work within my page budget constraints.

Fortunately, once I identified the problem and solidified my planning for book five, the new script came together smoothly in a single evening. I then decided to storyboard the episode while writing it (almost simultaneously) and use more "show, don't tell" to unpack the information and avoid cramming everything into long, boring dialogue.

Now I'm stepping back a bit. I'm starting to see what's still wrong: Pepper doesn't have much agency, and the world treats her like a pinball. But I think I can fix it.


Concept-art test: ballpoint pen sketch of Pepper in Chaosah robes

Bonus

Tutorial

At the start of the month, I published a long video tutorial about making an episode of Mini Fantasy Theater from A to Z in Krita, featuring the new text tool and comic panel tool. Video editing took a lot of work: over 20 hours of raw footage to cut, accelerate, and voice over. I was a bit worried about revisiting the entire process after my switch to KDE Neon under Wayland, but I ran into no issues. The resulting 1-hour video hasn't gotten a lot of views, and I understand why: a 1-hour investment is substantial, even packed with tips and tricks. Future videos will be shorter and focus on a single feature.


Kdenlive video editing screenshot: a 1h lenght format, it was epic!

Article

My June article Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux FLOSS Drivers was a big success! It detailed my investigation into drawing tablet manufacturers and explained why Gaomon, XP-Pen, and Huion won't collaborate on open-source drivers due to outdated naming conventions. The article was widely shared and sparked many interesting discussions.


Thumbnail of the article

Contribution

I also started setting up my laptop to learn how to contribute to more technical projects. I'm taking baby steps into coding. It's a lot of evenings spent reading documentation, studying commits from others, trying to understand specific points (nothing public in June). The first results started to appear at the beginning of July with a contribution to a drawing-tablet driver.


Konqi, the KDE mascott, taking baby steps into coding

By the way, to study this way and test the tablets, I had to set up a second desk. I hacked an Ikea Kallax by putting a wooden plank on top. This setup was necessary for testing the massive XP-Pen Artist Pro 27 (gen2) I received as a sponsored item in exchange for a review on my channel (coming soon).


A photo of my filming set while starting to film my review of the XpPen Artist 27 Pro (gen2)

Creating the "Monthly Reports"

It's a bit meta, but June was when I decided to set up the first monthly report about May. It took considerable time to write, create a template, organize everything, and sync the files.

IRL/Conferences/Convention

In June, I attended the Geek Faeries festival 2026. It was a chaotic and small edition because the main organizer had to step down due to health issues, and crew members had to fill the position at the last minute. Sadly, as I write this, we received tragic news: the main organizer, Naya, died yesterday.

We were on the same wavelength, and we had a great time designing the poster illustration together in spring 2026. I'll miss her. My deepest condolences to her family and friends.

But returning to June and the 2026 edition, I want to thank all the visitors, volunteers, and everyone who put effort into making the festival happen anyway. Even with a smaller team and in an extreme situation we were struggling to understand during the event, they managed to pull it off.

I saw giant prints of the poster, and it felt good. I now trust my new color management setup on KDE Neon under Wayland even more for critical color work like that. As usual, I also "painted on the castle" using a projector connected to my laptop (also on KDE Neon Wayland!) and led three sketch-group workshops in the park, teaching basic drawing-from-observation techniques with pencil and eraser. I also gave a presentation under the festival's large tent explaining the rhythm of producing a weekly comic strip for a year and how I manage to keep up the pace.


The castle at the Geek Faeries with my live drawing on the top

Future agenda

Paris, 21 and 22 Jully: I'll be part of Wikimania Paris 2026, part of the Wikimania Team Challenges in the team 03F.

Pepper&Carrot Community


The Japanese translation, first panel of episode 15 by Guruguru

Misc


Pride bundles with Pepper&Carrot part of it.

  • I added Pangolin and Grand Hotel fonts to my font-sharing project, two beautiful SIL Open Font licensed fonts I use for Mini Fantasy Theater.
  • I revamped my self-hosted "link tree" page at https://www.davidrevoy.com/linktree/ with a new look and easier access to my webcomics. It's a single HTML file released into the public domain—feel free to fork and customize it.
  • I did some Krita beta-testing for the Selection Action Panel MR 2778.
  • I did some Krita beta-testing for a Qt6/Wayland black icon issue MR 2819.
  • I investigated a potential issue with animated GIH brushes on Krita-Artists forum thread.
  • The Dryad artwork (Geek Faeries poster) was featured on the Krita-Artists forum. Thank you!
  • And finally, I reached level 45 on the 18th June!


Me with balloons as I reached level 45.

Again, thank you to my supporters for making this work possible. Your contributions allow me to continue producing free and open-source comics, tutorials, and contributions to the broader creative ecosystem, without relying on ads, paywalls, or corporate sponsors. It's a privilege to create this way, and I'm grateful for everyone who believes in this model.

If you'd like to join them and support my work, you can contribute through any of these platforms:

Every contribution, whether it's a one-time donation or ongoing support, helps me dedicate more time to creating, experimenting with new tools and techniques, and giving back to the open-source community.



License: "Monthly production report for June 2026" by David Revoy − CC-BY 4.0
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