Welcome to the Pack #81 (Patreon)

Good night.

So this page marks the 100th page I've done for Welcome to the Pack (including all specials and #0.5 pages). These last eight pages were written and sketched out by July 2021. These were supposed to be out that year, but it's taken me 2.5 years to finish them. Lots of things happened: I started putting more effort into streaming and Patreon art, I started putting a lot of time into running my D&D campaign, and a lot of really personal stuff happened in my real life. It goes without saying that the pandemic really messed with a lot of things...

Before all this, I had always joked that my story was going to take 10 years to take shape because there was so much that I was keeping a secret. I did have plans on what would happen next immediately after these pages, and there's a lot of ideas that I still really like, but the fact is I'm at a different place than I was when I first conceived this story. I was in my early 20s in college and when I finally got to making this comic, I was 2 years out of college. At the time my focus was on a story about old high school friends being friends forever and I had planned that they would go to college together after it not working out the first time because they all split up. I'm now in my early 30s and a lot of my priorities have changed. My perspective is different. I've live more of my life and I value other things a lot more now. And ultimately I want my characters to reflect that. And let's be real, they no longer look like they're in their early 20s anymore anyway.

Funny enough, a lot of the ideas I had for the future of these characters and their backstories will remain in tact. I just want a fresh beginning. A new lense to see this story through. Looking back at all the pages, there are some things that I wish I would have presented and introduced differently. There were so much stuff to reveal for way too long. When I got tired of holding it all in for so long, I ended up lore dumping so much stuff out of nowhere and it muddied the impact of the info. And frankly I realized that not everything has to be a big reveal. You guys should know ground level info about them before I give you more. It's gotta given to you guys naturally in a pace that's digestible.

But don't get me wrong, I am proud of what I accomplished so far and I don't want to throw all of this away or anything. If anything this page might have a bit of the flavor of what I want to be doing. I want to increase the cartoony-ness and do way more silly, sexy chaotic stuff. Like I said, I have plans. It'll be a while until I can reveal what I have cooking. I need time to reset my brain and create a plan for moving forward.

But of course, you guys know I'm not gonna stop drawing these guys. I've been drawing them this whole time and they've continued to grow and change even beyond this comic. So you can be rest assured that these guys are important to me and whatever I have next for them is gonna be fun time~