For my senior undergraduate thesis, I'm going to be making a short graphic novel. I hope it will be a good way to force myself to see a project all the way through. If anyone reading this has also gone through my Red Frost Archive (sorry it's so difficult to navigate) you'll notice that I tried to start that comic twice in the space of two years. Both times, I ended by giving up.

At the time, I was juggling three jobs and full time college classes, and art fell to the wayside. If I had tried to keep going on Red Frost, I would really have burned out. Still, I know it's not going to get any easier to make extra time for art after I graduate--not really. For me, when I'm working full time, any moment not spent at work is time to recuperate from it, but I need to learn some way to find the energy and the motivation to create anyway. If not, I don't think I'll ever get my comics career off the ground.

So making my thesis project a graphic novel, daunting as it may be, might be a good way to challenge myself to find that path. I'm working a little less now, and I already have an idea that I feel genuinely invested in. So far this week, I've come up with character profiles for the three main characters, general designs for each of them, and a loose outline for a plot. Like my other recent short comics, it's going to be a queer romance--but this time, I also want to challenge myself to do something a little less saccharine. I'm not interested in making trauma porn, but I do want to show healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with traumatic situations, and to allow my characters to grow into healthier relationships together.

I'll post an update about whatever I've been doing with this next week, but in the meantime, I should have some character profiles up soon on here. Thanks for reading!