Maybe it's the woodglue talking...

Hello, hello.

I'm building some shelves right now. Like, from scratch. Ordered a bunch of 2440x1220 sheets of ply and had them delivered to me in a massive lorry that absolutely was not meant to come down my tiny street. I must have apologised to that poor driver a dozen times while I helped him unload.

I've not built anything like this since I was in Design Tech class as a kid. I forgot how nice it feels to just kinda fall into that process of measuring and cutting. It feels good to have such a physical and practical project to work my way through after what was quite an abstract month running the PuddleJumpers kickstarter.

As you likely already know, Issue 2 sadly did not fund. But I'm comfortable that I did what I could to promote it, and that it was simply a big lift for someone who's very much still starting out. Money's tight, there are a lot of amazing projects online right now asking for money. If nothing else I learned the limits of what's possible. So I'm thankful for that.

This was only the second time I've run one of these and I now know, for the next one, that I need to take some steps to put some measures in place to make sure I don't drive myself crazy. Fun fact about me: when I'm nervous, I eat. and for all of April I feasted.

Feasted perhaps makes it sound more fun that it was? Dear reader, I ate biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I built a wall out of Tangfastics and ran through it like it was nothing.

Which is all to say that Kickstarters are hard on the spirit. Whether they fund or not. So much of the time when you're doing creative work you're just doing it for you, enjoying yourself and the daydream. A Kickstarter takes all that joy and asks, in that tone from our childhood which we all know, "what's that worth?" I've had one Kickstarter fund and one miss, but both times have been an emotional rollercoaster. If you've got one in your future, please look after yourself during it. Tell your cornershop to ban you maybe?

So, what's next for PuddleJumpers? It's going into the hanger for a bit while i figure out how to approach things differently. It may be that it would work better as a graphic novel rather than issues. Or I find a way to make the stories more compact to lower to page-count and cost. I'm certainly not abandoning the ideas I had for Issue 2 and beyond. They will find a life somehow.

In the short run. I'm developing a couple of ideas i've had for other comics, and working on a couple of small TTRPG modules as well that I'm hoping to start testing soon. They'll emerge in due time. And I'm also waking up a long-slumbering project 👀 More on that in a future post.

And of course, This Constant Experiment will return. It was somewhat suppressed by the Kickstarter. Turns out it's hard for me to be whimsical when i'm a nervous wreck.

So look forward to all that! And thanks as always for following along.

More soon.