Looking back on my mid-2017 shutdown in Empowered vol. 11 production, the issue (as I've stated before) was that I just couldn't muster the slightest bit of energy or enthusiasm for the very specific task of cranking out the pages' finished artwork, which has long been the bane of my existence as an artist—and, in fact, that's why I (mostly) stopped doing conventionally formatted comics artwork after 2000's miniseries Dirty Pair: Run from the Future. I could no longer face the prospect of week upon week and month after month of repeatedly drawing the same g-d page layout over and over again in tighter and tighter forms, thanks to my maddeningly redundant workflow of sketchy roughs, tight layouts, tighter pencils, even tighter inks, color guides, lettering guides and so on.

Empowered had started life as essentially just my old "tight layout" stage—which many or most of my fellow creators actually preferred to my finished artwork, to my chagrin—repro'd directly. By this volume, however, my latent perfectionist streak had taken over, resulting in the same meticulously detailed and grindingly slow work process that had stalled me out back after Run from the Future.

(Continued tomorrow, maybe?)

Today’s Patreon update: Originally done as a means of scratching out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. So, who knows what today's post might feature? Could be Life Drawing or Distressed Damsels content (both of which are featured at least three times per month), or something in the Work Stages, Vintage Con Sketches or Design departments, or possibly something entirely new, such as updates on fantasy test project The Chaste and the Chained. Golly!

-Adam Warren