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WisteriA is live! + details about Patreon changes
🕑 Added 2018-10-30 17:00:00 +0000 UTC Hello!I was running around yesterday making lists of lists to make sure everything was ready for today. I think it is, so here we go.
I've been talking about my Patreon going in a new direction for a while now; mostly vaguely at first, then a bit more precisely while referring to comics, followed by a big post a week ago to explain things more concretely. Today is the culmination of all that as I publish the first page of the comic I started working on, entitled WisteriA.
It's going to be a long post, but hopefully it will contain everything to answer most if not all questions anyone might have about how this all works. Here's the TL;DR:
- I'm launching my webcomic WisteriA here. The first page is available for reading, with updates to follow every Tuesday and Friday, up to 8 pages per month.
- My Patreon will be supporting the comic with two tiers: a $1 tier (progress snapshots) and a $5 tier (previous tier + full chapter access at the beginning of the month). Update your pledges!
If you want more detail than that, read on!
WisteriA info
The comic is hosted at wisteria-comic.squarespace.com, and as of this announcement, the first page of the first chapter is available there for reading. Three years in the making!
About WisteriA
WisteriA is a story about a girl named Momo (a name I borrowed from her sometime ago before she got her own comic, as I repeat often to avoid confusion). If you've been following the character file posts I've been rolling out, you already know all the main characters that appear in the first chapter. There are a few more on the way, but like with any story, some of them will only be appearing later...
The title WisteriA was picked for a few reasons, but one of those main reasons is the plant's aesthetic. It's a pretty, almost wistful plant, with lovely colors and a fantastic fragrance (or so I've read. Time to buy and plant a wisteria). There's not too much reference for its flower language meaning, but the few sources I did find have welcoming and wishing wellness in common. Welcoming someone to a new house, place or life, perhaps. Wishing them a safe and pleasant journey. I thought that the way it droops almost makes it look like it's cradling whatever's beneath it, or watching over it. That's just me, of course, but there you have it.
It is obviously based on an existing format of comics, namely the yonkoma or four-panel format so popular in Japan. However, it's read left to right, as you'd expect English comics to be. Left to right, top to bottom.
I hope you'll enjoy reading it.
Update schedule
To confirm the uploading schedule, each month will see 8 new pages posted on the site on Tuesdays and Fridays. This number is also inspired by four-panel works being published in Japanese monthly magazines 8 pages at a time. Partly that, and partly because it seems to be a good workload for me at the moment.
I avoid saying every Tuesday and Friday because it won't be: rather, the current plan is to stick to that 8 pages/month model, with breaks in between updates as needed to keep the schedule. That means a month with four Tuesdays and five Fridays won't see 9 new pages, and posting will only begin after the first Friday, for instance.
To elaborate on that a bit, I was originally planning to start publishing chapter 1 on November 6th, then through to the 30th—eight pages over four weeks, which is a pretty average rate for webcomics. I decided, however, that I wanted to put at least the first page out before November started so that people could know that they're paying for when they pledge here on Patreon. Bumping up the schedule by one week means chapter 1 will now end one week before December.
The website
Naturally I needed an actual website to host the comic on. I opted for Squarespace because it was just the simplicity I needed given the time I had to get everything ready for today. The comic's site itself is fairly simple in design and hopefully it'll be easy to get around when you visit it for the first time.
On that note, I'll probably be switching to a different platform (and URL) fairly soon. The pricing on Squarespace is kind of bad and I'm fairly certain similar results are achievable on WordPress with plugins and such, albeit with a bit more work on my end. Fine by me. So expect an announcement sometime during November about that!
That's it for WisteriA itself. The other half of information that I'm sure everyone's itching for is the details about how Patreon fits into all this.
Patreon info
My Patreon will now be fully supporting WisteriA's creation. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the month when sending out September rewards, those reward packs we're all used to were the last of their kind. The new tiers are as follows:
- $1 tier: This is a simple tier with WIP snapshots during the month as I work. Just normal stuff like close-ups of storyboards or inked panels and such. (Related note: there are no plans for streams or anything like that right now.)
- $5 tier: This tier grants access to batch uploads of entire chapters at the beginning of the month, so that you don't have to wait around to read them.
It's nice to be able to keep things simple this time. The average tier price is at its lowest yet, so tell your friends!
That said, an important note: with the formerly highest valued tier of $7 now gone, you'll need to update your pledge with the new reward tiers in mind. Most patrons have updated their pledges to more suitable amounts since the last change, but there are still a few patrons with $10 pledges. I won't tell you to like, not pledge $10, but make sure you intend it!
That's about it
I'm glad to finally be sharing the real project that I've been wanting to work on. I guess I can consider the past two years as practice for making the comic more presentable. Then again, most webcomics/manga start out one way and end up looking better over time anyway, so there's that consideration... Regardless, the second best time to get it started is right now, so that's the plan.
Also, along with the first page, there's an introductory blog post on the WisteriA website as well, so you can check that out if you still feel like reading things (it's shorter).
If you have any questions/reasonable suggestions, just leave a comment down there. Otherwise, thank you for all your support up till now, and I hope to see you around in the future.
-momo
