Tuesday 22 July 2014

Important update and thoughts

    Sooo…. it's been quite a while. But that doesn't mean behind the scenes weren't any less busy.

    As I mentioned in a recent illustration that was featured on tumblr, Space Officer Triggs is undergoing a massive reconstruction and reboot as such. And, to be quiet honest, I’m not even sure if I can call it so, because during this time I've realised the dire amount of elements in my overall fiction that were not developed at all. As many notes and ideas that I had written down across various notebooks and word documents, it still lacked a considerable amount of weight and fullness to the universe itself.

    I began VERMILION on a whim - I wanted to try and write a serious and thrilling story involving Triggs. The year was 2011 and I was leaving school, embarking on the education I really wanted afterwards. I thought writing a webcomic and studying animation would be a breeze, but oh god how wrong I was.
The whole comic was very ill-prepared and it kept changing in many ways. I suppose that can be a good thing in a sense - especially the vast amount of style experimentation that I did during the course of it.

    Sadly, it came to a point where I began getting insanely jaded with the story, as I didn’t even know how to finish it, until I had made a final decision to end it in the most surreal way possible.

    However, will this ending be seen? Sadly, not now. Since quite some time, VERMILION is hence on a permanent hiatus.

    It was a pilot. And a pilots purpose is to test the waters of every aspect - characters, story, settings, presentation, etc. And as the updates of this comic were very infrequent, Triggs was evolving more and more in ideas during those update gaps. As a result, because of this evolution, the pilot became somewhat obsolete.

    I actually got to the point where I began saying ‘no one hates VERMILION as much as me’, just because I got so frustrated and lost while working on it on many occasions. And that’s not really fair. It’s not fair to the me in 2011 who had the aspiration to try and create something new and launch it out for the whole world to see. It’s not fair to the still existing dream that’s inside of me to make this comic series a reality. It’s not a perfect comic, and I know that. At the same time, the praise I had received from a large majority was so overwhelming and more than I could’ve expected. In the end then, I owe a lot to VERMILION. It gave me the courage to make something, try something new and show it to the world, while learning and discovering many new things along the way. Regardless whether it was 'good' or 'wtf is this i don't even', I was going out of my comfort zone and making a comic. Sharing it makes you fearless and vulnerable at the same time - and that's really the thrill of creating something. Create, share, learn and watch it grow.

    VERMILION may serve as inspiration to a future plot, becoming much more polished and a neater package. So don’t fret if you really were still interested in seeing what would happen!

    So where does that leave me now, and the future of Triggs? Actually, in a very positive and optimistic light! I have been working really hard this past year on the first, full-fledged legit story. My aim is to spend the next year or so dedicating the majority of my time where possible on it. I’m not setting a deadline for this, I’m taking it at my own pace. I’m gonna make this good. I’m gonna make the story I want to make and one I will have a lot of fun creating. Also, I know this blog has not been as active as it once was. Perhaps, a change of online scenery may be necessary in the near future, but not right now. Let’s see where things go for now, and I’ll get back to you.

     In closing, I want to say thank you all so very much for every ounce of support you’ve shown since I started VERMILION back in 2011, and even before since! It truly means so much to me.