After a necessary hiatus due to life being extremely busy, here is the next comic. I decided to go with a simple toning and shading on this one. It’s a step better than straight black and white line art at least. But I’m still really limited right now in how much time and energy I can spare. But the important thing is to continue the story. I’ve been working on the script and new developments. My goal is to make it more epic and story/character oriented. But I need to sit down and do some serious writing first to take my thoughts and nail them down.

I also decided to stick with Manga Studio with this one for inking. Using Flash just led to too much copy and paste. It’s much better to just ink it and focus more on expressions. Unfortunately I didn’t have time yet for color or even to do a background, but I’ll work on it. And for all those thinking it was a code, you get and “A”

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First off, I want to thank everyone for their feedback earlier. It was much needed and has made me feel that giving up on TFR would be premature. One of my biggest problems right now is time and energy, because I’ve been doing a lot of work lately and haven’t had as much energy to spend on comics. Besides that, I’ve had to come up with new methods to get organized. I never realized how paralyzing it can be to not have a printer. But my sister, who’s very sensitive to chemicals, has had a hard time with printing ink and I haven’t been able to print things out like I used to. We got a wireless printer that I put in another room, but we need to get a wireless router so we can use it. I means I can’t print out the script so as to know what to draw.

I apologize if this seems like whining. It’s not meant to. My point is that I’ve had to come up with alternate ways of doing things. I’d like to get a laptop and do everything on that, but I can’t afford one right now. So I’m going to try and go back to basics: writing everything on good old fashioned notepads and index cards. My uncle gave me a gorgeous leather Levenger Circa notebook as a gift and it’s really cool as you can easily pull pages in and out or move them around. So I’m using that for all my writing to see if it’ll help. I have a new system in my head on how I want to work the whole thing out sans computers for all the writing, planning, and sketching. Then use my computer to put all the sketches together and color them. The other challenge is putting into practice all your wonderful suggestions. I need to make a list, and just possibly check it twice, not that it’ll help because I always forget things on lists anyway. One of the first things will have to be reorganizing the archive to make it less confusing or choppy. Incidentally, I already did this for the ebooks (hint hint <grin>) but I really should do it for the web archive since so many have found it hard to follow. The nice thing about Wordpress sites are that it’s not too difficult to reorganize pages. So that and refocusing on writing will be a first priority.

Next priority would be coloring the black and white pages. Especially in chapter five so as to ready that for print. Also, if you’ve been holding off on buying the book because you’d rather have one big volume with the entire first five chapters in it, rather than two volumes let me know. I really think it’ll be about the same price though one volume might be a bit big and cost almost $30. But let me know if you want me to come out with a particular edition and I’ll work on it. Anyway, that’s all for now.

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I know it’s been a while since my last update and I’m sorry about that. I was actually in the midst of rewriting the story to make it stronger when my laptop died on me, losing some of the new stuff. Thankfully I got it running again, though I’m a little leery of using it if it might just turn off at any second.

Yet even so I have to face the fact that The Far Reaches is not and never was as successful as I would like it to be. It didn’t do that well on Wowio last year, it hasn’t done that well on DrivethruComics.com, and now the print book is not selling either. The audience just hasn’t every grown much even when I was going good and updating frequently. So I have to come to the conclusion that as much as I may like TFR, it’s just not going anywhere, and that maybe I need to try something new. I hate to leave in the middle like this, but I just don’t have the time or energy to continue something that’s just not going anywhere.

I’ve been so busy lately with other more important things, I haven’t had too much time anyway. But I do have another webcomic project in the works. But it needs a lot of writing work done on it. I think Far Reaches really suffered from lack of planning and from writing as I went. So I really want to do my planning for this one.

But if you really want to see TFR continue, if you have any suggestions for what it’s lacking and what could make it successful, feel free to comment. I know many of you believe in it and want to see more, then let me know what you think would make it have a wider appeal. What’s it missing. Maybe it can be saved, but it’s all in your hands.

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Sorry about the hiatus again. I got super busy last month and just couldn’t keep up with everything. Then last week I went out of town to Longbeach, which was really nice. It was a super awesome, but rather tiring trip. I’ve had today’s page in the works for several weeks. My attempt to do it all in Flash blew up and I gave up in frustration. And being so busy, I just couldn’t deal with it. But I managed to do the pencils for this one last week, but just couldn’t finish it cause of going out of town. So here it is. I’ll be keeping the toning style simple right now. I know I keep saying I want to do more pages a week, but it’s been hard. Since this isn’t really a paying gig right now, other more important things have had to take priority. But never fear. I haven’t given up on it, and I had fun finishing this page.

The next ten pages are scripted out and look good. A new, super bad villain lurks in the darkness. I’m hoping to take Friday off and just focus on writing and planning out the story and getting it tightened up. One of my big goals is to make the story a lot more epic. It deserves to be epic. I’ve just been focusing a bit too much on a lot of exposition and hinting at action and things, without actually getting to it. So I need to plans things out a little tighter this week and get it back on track.

I’ve really been wanting to do something big and epic. And I keep thinking about ideas for new comics and such. But I think there’s so much good potential in Far Reaches and I like the story. I just need to work on pacing and all. It’s just w a y  t o o  s l o w. And my schedule is still crazy. Right now I’m just not sure how many pages a week I can do. Things are really at an ‘up in the air’ stage for me. But I think I sitting down and focusing on the writing will help. I just have to think, what kind of comic do I want to read most. That’s what TFR needs to be.

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With life being so increasingly busy lately, I just haven’t had the time or energy to work on the comic. I did manage to rewrite and script the next part of the story, but I don’t have the time right now to work on it. I have to conserve my energy and try to work on projects that will hopefully pay. If you would like to see Far Reaches continue, please consider buying the new print full color graphic novel. They are very high quality. I’m just so impressed with how they came out. Hopefully, I can return to TFR soon. But for now I need to concentrate on projects that have a chance at paying. Sorry about that. I know many of you would like to see the story continue. But my time and energy are so limited right now, and TFR doesn’t seem to be growing or doing very well. I’ve been doing this for over three years and I just don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. Please sign up for the RSS or Twitter (@farreaches), to get the latest on updates and other projects. I have one I’m brewing up now. So thank you for all your support and hopefully, I can continue TFR once I figure things out.

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Volume One in beautiful, glorious full color is now on sale at Indyplanet for only $14.50. Support TFR and get a great book. This one came out awesome. It’s about 90 pages and has the whole pirate episode, a new beginning, and the old beginning thrown in as well. It’s super cool so please help Far Reaches stay alive and get yourself one today. Also if you own a comic shop, soon it’ll be available to order through Comics Monkey. I’ll let you know when.

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