Another important bromoment redrawn and colored from the first volume to be used as website header. This moment is when they first met after they jumped in the river, available in chapter 2

I used Photoshop CS6 at resolution 450dpi (I always had my stuff at 300) and I guess I’ll go with these two from here on.
I’m not impressed much with the BG but over all, I’m happy about it

It’s added to the headers roll so it’ll randomly pop up! Make sure you refresh till you get it ;)
Guess I’ll be adding the broments to random roll from here on. I’ll add the jump pic as well.

Thank you for reading~

If you’ve been in and out in the online store, you’d find that some merchandise are out of stock and I’ve been getting messages lately asking about when they’d be available, so I’m writing this to answer all those questions.
It’s been a dream to have my original merchandise and I just love to be creative and come up with new ideas of our regular daily merchandise and stationary. And I still dream of owning a shop that sells all sorts of merchandise with my original art on it. But for the time being, any item that goes out of stock won’t be reprinted.

I am an artist and a writer first, and everything else second. I always get requests of sketchbooks, artbooks and after my teaching experience in the German Jordanian University, I’ve been asked to make series of teaching books and I’m sure you all know that printing costs for books are high. I also have book 3 to print by the end of the year, not to mention that I’ve sold around 75% of book 1 so that would need a reprint soon.

So all that made me come to the decision of not reprinting any of the out of stock merchandise.
It’s not a permanent decision, that’s for sure.

Thank you for reading and understanding!

I have another one to draw later that fits the whole green theme and it’s an easy one so I hope to finish it fast and post it to roll with this one. Guess I’ll just stick with the theme of broments for the year since there are many old art that I’d love to redraw coz it just hurts me to look at them as is sometimes haha.

Nothing much to report on this theme, just that I’m kinda happy with it. Change in look is always refreshing and good~

So, I won’t be writing much about it but I can say that it was a success. The one thing that made me sad was the inability to sell the books to everyone who wanted to buy them. You see, I had to take a limited number coz I’m travelling so the weight was an issue but other than than, everything was awesome! The people  were really nice and supportive, the event was arranged well, the organizers were really sweet andthe only thing that kept it from being the best trip was my health. Guess I need to take care of myself a bit more coz I was half dying the whole trip and went home with the nastiest flu that I just now, was able to get up and move about.
First day was so busy and the books were sold out around noon which was really shocking for me. I couldn’t sit for more than 10 min free on the table, people kept stopping by the table constantly. I am so fired up and encouraged at the moment judt thinking about it.

I was lucky to get art gifts too! One fanart from the sweet Vienix (@instagram) and a Killua fanart from the lovely Mira (of http://hachikurooo.deviantart.com)
Both are available on my instagram
I already have so many plans for next year if I was able to attend, God willing.
I really want to thank everyone who was there, physically or spiritually XD
Now, I’m just waiting for my body to catch up with all the plans I have on my mind, then you’ll get back to reading more “I’m busy I’m busy” ;)
I dunno if the above made any sense, I’m tired and using a new device (samsung galaxy) to write so I’m not sure how it formats anything ^^; just trying for now

Thank you for reading!

Thank you!

What’s this exactly? Need more reading? The below is for those who like to read~

—–

You all know that a lot of us, webcomicers, are putting everything on the line for this labor of love and that we make money off books (for those who are fortunate enough, thank God), merchandise, commissions and out appearances in conventions.

Thankfully, I don’t have to worry much about living expenses since I’m still living with my family. We don’t have the culture of living on one’s own after a certain age here, but I still live in a 3rd world country where there is a lot of worry about as a freelances and self-published author without even thinking of the day-to-day living. Shipping costs, printing costs, phone bills, online subscriptions for websites and accounts, art supplies, savings, etc. And art tools per se, digital and traditional, are all bought online with a high chance of getting stuck as customs for taxs almost triple the original price with shipping. So I think you got the state of things by now.

I’m writing all this to share and request for those who would like to support my series, an easy quick way with little to no money what so ever!
I am part of two websites, MangaMagazines.net and Tapastic.com as a paid author. These websites are devoted supporters to indie creators. If you meet their guidelines and have an ongoing series you’re committed to, they include you in a monthly pool that pays you according to how much traffic you bring the website.

Payments can reach a grand monthly (or even more) and they’re not even asking for imaginary number of visitors to get paid well like that. I’ve just been recently added to Tapastic’s Premier publishers and it’s still in its promotional period so I’d be happy to have an active large traffic there!

I don’t really mind if you drop checking this website for the time being and picked one of the two; MangaMagazine.net Link or Tapastic Link
I always keep the website coz it’s the official place where it has everything in one place but I don’t really care of the traffic here if there is another place where I’m actually paid for traffic.

It would really be helpful if you start reading the updates there. In the end, it’s really your call and it’s the way that you’re most comfortable with. Reading is an experience after all u_u
I just thought I’d share this for those who tell me they love to support the series but are unable to shop online.

Here is an easy way!
Just bookmark and/or join the websites for the regulars updates.

I’m not going to stop updating here of course. It’s not a promise that I’m not going to do it in the future. I honestly have no plan for that yet, I hope you’d still be around either way~
Thank you for reading!

Where is chapter 15? missing

Did you mess up the numbering? nope!

then why? I hate number 15.

No, really. As much as I don’t like the number (and any with a 5), it’s not the reason I skipped it.

Remember I already said that the first arc is 15 chapters that are focused on Black and White. But chapter 15 isn’t ready to reveal itself just yet. There is a bit on the boys that needs to be on hold for now and it’s why I didn’t reveal chapter 15. You can expect the chapter to pop up anytime! Not soon, but later after an end of an arc, there will be a sudden “The Missing Chapter 15″ in between.

And on that note, I need to clarify that there wasn’t a time skip between the first two arcs. The “mature” Black at the start is just because of the seriousness of the scene, the weather chapter is something that’s kinda popular in my country. Last year, we had snow in mid-March and after 3 days it was burning 37° C so it’s totally fine to have the boys with snowy clothes in chapter 13 and all hot and light-clothed now.

So you didn’t miss much between the chapters 14 and 16. Chapter 15 is just an aspect in the boys’ life that I decided to keep in the dark for now.
I hope that answers your wonders~

In the end, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who replied to the long post of last time. I started getting back to all the comments but I really can’t by now. So I apologize for the inability to give the time you kindly gave me when you replied to my thoughts. Many things are changing around my days, personally, socially and professionally and I’d hate to reply with just “Thank you” so I’ll sadly fail in appreciating all your kind support!

Thank you for reading~
have a lovely day!

107 days, 19 hours, 35 minutes ago

As I did with the first arc, this post will be to share a bit about the second arc and info about the updates.

About the Arc

We’re done with slow-paced up-close views on the two boys and now, after the last chapter of the first arc and the prologue, story wheel is set in motion. Everything is going fast. I have the plan for the whole arc, it will be 15 chapters in two books, vol 3 will have 8 chapters while vol4 will have 7.

New characters will play roles and ones that had minor roles in the first arc will have bigger roles now. The first part of the arc (vol3) will deal with the theme “Change” coz Black was all set to change himself in the previous arc. You can expect anything from here on, regarding story events and genre, even horror (didn’t expect that myself!). Also, there will be a new character introduced in the first chapter that I never revealed anything about before, or… maybe I did somewhere (haha!) You’ll see~

The weather is getting warmer in their time and like we have it here, spring can start so hot. Heck, even now in winter, we have 21ºC days which isn’t that hot but it is warm considering it should raining or something.

You might notice that the pages are getting richer. First volume was all about getting in the rhythm of creating a story, so it was so empty and full of mistakes in my opinion, but it was the method I had in mind to be able to trick my mind into seeing thing manga artists work as easy. When I published the first book, I knew that I’m doing it and that I committed and now it’s my thing to create stories so I started polishing the art and storytelling in a way that an editor would do, so in volume 2 I concentrated on anatomy, camera angles and most importantly, something I neglected in the first book; sound effects. In the 3rd volume, I didn’t have any plan for it more than improving my art, panelling and storytelling more and more, but in last October, I met Reinhard Kleist; a German cartoonist. We had a good talk about lots of things and he checked my books. Kleist complimented the art a lot and he loved the logbook. “I like your sketchy work more” he said. He also asked for tips about drawing every-day poses coz he was impressed about Black’s dancing and eating doodles in the logbook, something that made me all happy yet awkward coz that man is a famous pro cartoonist and he’s there asking tips.
Yet, one thing happened that ticked me off at the time, but motivated me to work more in this volume now. Kleist held my book, the second volume, which supposedly, have better richer panels and he flipped through it like you’d flip any new book you hold, just a mere cover to cover flip and he went “You don’t like to draw backgrounds do you?”….

So, here I am, after the shame I felt (at the time) telling you that the new pages will be richer, which you might have already noticed, coz I’m adding backgrounds even to doodles. It won’t be overly detailed coz there is something intentional in the lack of background in Grey is…, especially in the first arc and I know that. Yet, it made me ashamed and then motivated when Kleist made that remark after a 3 second book scan.

About Updates

First things first; updates will be every Saturday and Wednesday now. With double pages still.
Updates will start again in the first week of February and I’ll announce that when I post the schedule in the about page. Updates will be fastest in MangaMagazine.net and this website, but– there might be a change in that later this year where MangaMagazine will have the fastest updates. I will fill you in more about that in a dA blog soon~

Don’t worry, the story will always be free (unless, Comix Wave decided to translate and publish the thing worldwide, then I’ll have to excuse myself for a year to sweat over it XD), it’s just a matter of where the fastest updates will be. It will all depend on traffic and at the moment, I aim for a high traffic on MangaMagazine.

I just hope I’ll find the same support from you coz I don’t want to lose any reader~ Anyway,

More news will come soon!
’till then,

Peace~

This is exactly the look I was aiming for from the beginning. I wasn’t able to get rid of the sidebar and put the latest pages up under the custom menubar before, but thankfully I was able to this time. I didn’t struggle at all this time with the coding which was really nice! I am getting better with all the CSS stuff but the main helper was the plugin “Firebug” on Firefox which made it easier to test the changes live before I edit the actual css file of the website. It was a lot of work and mind-consuming but it was fun.

I had most trouble with the header! I didn’t have any concept for it and the pic I had in mind, I worked on a lot but never turned out the way I wanted it to be. I like my choice of header in the end, but I didn’t want it to be there alone. I wanted to have 3 headers showing up randomly as you click on a different page, but I didn’t have much time. The idea is to re-draw certain special moments between the boys (which some call broments) in the past two volumes in a promo-like colored illustration. I still have that idea and I want to work on it slowly throughout this month and the one after. There won’t be headers changing every month this year or wallpaper versions of them.

My only concern now is for any newcomer haha! They’re either gonna get the impression it’s a fantasy story or….. what’s worse, kids attempting suicide XD It’s just weird to have that one alone up there as much as I like it.

One more thing, I am happy about the new addition; Cast page. I wanted one for long but I never seemed to make it the way I feel satisfied about. I’m not one to put a profile pic and write info about the character so what I did now is an idea I had for a set of illustrations to draw for each character with a tagline, so I’m happy that it crossed my mind while I was working on the website coz it’s exactly the kind of Cast page I was looking for.
I will be adding pictures of minor roles like Irina and the twins, Waseem’s parents, etc. And other characters will be added as they play bigger parts in the story. You might find some that are main in the story, like Black’s siblings but will be added in the minor roles for now since they only appeared like once or twice in the first arc.

I’ll be writing another blog post soon about the schedule, more comic-strips to be added and maybe, to announce a contest and a giveaway. But let’s leave the details for later.

Thanks a lot for reading and supporting~ <3

Yes, this WIP shot means I started lining the first chapter of the 2nd arc which can be taken as a sign that updates will return soon anytime. It all depends on the amount of buffer that would make me feel comfortable to post without pressure. I’m hoping I’ll be fast coz I missed working on new pages. I’ve been storyboarding the past 2 months and I’m done till chapter 20. And I have written a bit in 21′s script. I have a lot on my plate these days but it’s all fun so I’m good.

I hope all is well at your end, too.
Thank you!