Well, it's done. After spending way too long working on it, I finally finished my one-shot, a bunch of wires! I was feeling a bit unsure when I posted it two days ago, but now that I've had a chance to go through and read it on my website, I can more definitively say that I'm quite proud of what I made. Yes, even though there's a lot of parts of it that look distinctly amateurish, even though the characters look completely different at the beginning of the comic than at the end of it, and even though the narrative is... really not the most straightforward.
I'm not yet at a place where I want to elaborate too much about the contents of the story, especially since it hasn't been long at all since I posted it. Maybe one day I'll go deeper into some of my thinking behind its themes and imagery, but for now, I feel like I don't want to say too much about it and would rather just let the comic speak for itself. However, the thing that I would like to talk about are some of my plans going forward, both in the short term and long term.
My plan initially was to release the comic alongside character bios for all five of the comic's major characters, but in the end, I ended up deciding to release the comic first. I guess it's a little bit counter-intuitive considering if you've already read the comic, you don't actually need to read character bios... but whatever. Truth be told, the actual reasoning behind these character pages (and even A Bunch of Wires itself) has to do more with my long term plans for the site.
For a long time, I had an idea for a longer form series that would be able to go more into depth about its characters. So, I must confess, I had a bit of an ulterior motive with A Bunch of Wires. It wasn't just about making that one short story, it was also done in large part as a test run for that longer series. Since I had never made a comic longer than one page before this, I had to figure out what would be the best workflow to create a longform comic. I also had to work out what exactly the art style of the comic should be, and if I was capable of actually telling a story using that art style. In terms of reaching those goals, I'd say that A Bunch of Wires was very successful. That isn't to say that after drawing only 50 pages that I'm suddenly able to make comics that are professional quality - I still have a long way to go in order to reach that. But what I was able to do is figure out what workflow would be best for me, and figure out what kind of techniques give me good results (and, conversely, what gives me bad results).
I also wanted to have an existing website where I could upload shorter installments of a longer comic, so I wanted to make sure that this site was actually set up to do that. It seems like releasing my comics on here works very well, but I welcome any feedback. Is the site easy to navigate? Were you able to have a smooth reading experience on the device that you were reading the comic on? I'd also love to get your feedback on the comic itself as well. That feedback will be very directly useful for my next projects.
Just to clarify, this longer comic won't be about the same cast of characters that were in A Bunch of Wires. I feel like that cast really only works in a one-shot, and I don't really feel like I need to tell more of their story. Maybe one day I'll want to revisit it, but for now, it's one and done. The characters of my longer form project which is now my main focus are ones that I have posted before, though. Perhaps you'll be able to read more about them soon, maybe on some kind of page specifically dedicated to character bios... but who knows.
Posted on: 4/23/25