Making all the puzzle pieces fit together

Over the last weeks, I've been silent on my blog and on social media. Sorry about that, it was necessary for me to take this time alone. I worked on the Pepper&Carrot story, the structure of future books and episodes, digital painting techniques, tools, workflows, renderings, the future tutorials, my desk and equipment ...etc... All of this to continue my progress on future Pepper&Carrot episode 34 and tutorials. This long and time consuming process happens now not because I decided to (it would be really bad timing) but just because I have to compose right now with something new in the way my body manage my energy and motivation.

The main rule of this new thing I caught from I don't know where (probably aging, I'm approaching 40...) is simple: my energy drains now super quickly into the exploration of certain path and certain solutions. It drains me to the point it gives me headaches and sometime I even need short nap to recover.

On the bright side, it also works a bit like a reversed compass. By avoiding with trial and errors the penalties, I'm sort of guided slowly toward new solutions and perspectives. This process has been contagious to many aspect of my life and continue to spread. I estimate it started after the release of the self published book: it was probably a process put on hold during all that time.

What it will change? It's hard to tell, I don't have enough distance, we will see. Tiny specifications of my style, my character design, my storytelling patterns will just probably slowly shift to something more personal and authentic. At least, that's what I hope.

This exploration refills me with motivations and plenty of energy. This week, I reached a point in this process where I recorded new videos, made new arts I like (illustration of this blog-post) and I took back my work on episode 34. Also, the more I continue to do progress on this path, the more all the puzzle pieces fit together and the easier it is to take decisions and move on.

So thank you all for your patience in regards of the unusually long production time for the future episode, I hope you'll understand I do my best to continue with this weird and picky built-in compass. Thank you also for all the recent donations, for all the books purchased (now over 1500 books sold in total) and the one who joined recently on Patreon, Tipeee, Liberapay. Each notifications came really as a little sparkle of lights.