welcome to the newsletter! ✩

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first issue of my newsletter! These will be sent out up to twice a month with important updates and announcements on my projects and other work.

I do NOT want to spam you guys, but I want this to both be a way to keep in touch with me and my work as well as a place to inspire and motivate you on your own projects.

I will be cross-posting this newsletter on my Patreon for free, so if you miss a newsletter or want to see what other goodies I have to offer on there, you can check out my page for more info! 

✩ beneath the woods updates

I haven’t updated Beneath the Woods since last year (technically February thanks to a scheduling mistake lmao), but my plan was originally to resume updates again in February and post throughout the year. However, I have been going on and off hiatuses for the entire run of the comic (which is going to be 5 years this year!) because I make about 10 - 20 pages, think that’s good to keep going with updates, and then struggle to keep up with the workload while releasing lower quality pages. It’s been a vicious cycle for a few years, so rather than come back with updates and fall back into my old habits again, Beneath the Woods is going to be on hiatus until further notice! I plan on getting to about 30 - 50 pages before I resume updates because I want to make working on this comic sustainable and fun for myself. Right now, I’m at about 11 pages, so it’s a long way to go but I know this is going to result in better, more consistent updates and a better work-life balance for me.

In the meantime, you can get early access updates on my Patreon – I’ll be sharing all of the new updates on there as I complete them! Updates will be a little less consistent, but I’m aiming to complete 3 - 4 pages a month.

I’m also going to be posting story teasers and other fun things on my social media between updates as well. I’ve been having a lot of fun making animatics and mini animations of my characters, but my goal with this is to show you guys more about the characters and the world in my comic before they appear in the actual story. I’m aiming to do some fun projects for BtW’s upcoming anniversary as well, since it’s the 5 year anniversary!

✩ shop news

I started selling stickers on my Etsy shop! My goal with this shop is to sell stickers and charms of characters from my comic, as well as other hyperfixations that I have at the time haha. (I’d love to do a Gravity Falls sticker or charm set at some point, especially with the Book of Bill coming out soon!) Main reason for this is kind of self-indulgent, but I love making charms of my characters and I want to make more stuff with the goal of making plushies of my characters. I know it’s going to be a LOT to get to that point, but I’m excited to make more stuff so I can get there! : D

For now, I have Max and Noct stickers up on my shop! (I’m also aiming to post sketch zines and individual chapters of BtW soon as well, but that may be on my Ko-fi until I can set up my own site!) I am currently holding an interest survey to help me figure out what products to prioritize next, so check it out if you’d like to get some charms of my characters in the future! 

As a thank you for being a subscriber, use the code “POLARIS10” to get 10% off your order! 

✩ other projects

I’m returning to Youtube shortly with the goal of posting new videos once a month with a few Shorts sprinkled in as I make animatics! My Youtube is going to be very art-focused, but I want to focus on my journey to becoming a full-time artist through videos on the platform. I’m trying to figure out how to do videos about this when I don’t want to show my face, but I’m probably gonna just do speedpaint videos for now and figure out where to go from there!

You can expect videos on the first (and sometimes third) Friday of each month! 

I also joined two Gravity Falls zines!! One is celebrating Bill Cipher and the other is focused on the seasons in Gravity Falls. I finished my Bill piece a few months ago, but I’m working on the second piece, so I will absolutely share updates about this when I can! I haven’t made any work for zines since about 2018, so I’m VERY excited to take part in these two haha.

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time! 💙