Happy (Belated) Issue 4 Launch Day!

Ronan doesn’t seem to be particularly enjoying the festivities.

Issue 4 launched yesterday, but because of work obligations and generally running around, I didn’t get around to posting about it. Here’s my attempt to rectify that. With the launch, we had a couple of changes this issue:

We got a second writer for this issue! In an attempt to tighten up some of the frayed ends of the writing due to having to split, recombine, and re-split Issues 3 and 4, I enlisted some additional help. Issue 4 is sure to tug at the heartstrings a bit. Also…I changed the logo again. The reason why is this:

As a fun little side project, I’ve started an official Japanese translation of Electric Fencer, with help native from speakers, even! You might remember I have a shirt in the merch store (which you should check out among our other things). When talking to my fellow translators, we decided that Dengeki Fencer (電撃フェンサー) would be a more fitting name for the series in Japanese than Denki Fencer (電 気フェンサー). So that entire line’s probably gonna be discontinued at some point in the near future 🙃 I actually tried to recreate the original logo in Japanese, but it turned out to be a giant headache, so I figured some more minimalistic branding was in order. Once this design ☝ finally shook out, so did this one 👇 :

The branding around the site will also be changing as well, once I get around to finally redoing the character portraits around the site.

Finally, I added a new page to the Extras section in the menu: Fan Works! Currently, we’ve got one piece of fan art over there by WVGrizzly!

It’s Elliott! This was actually part of an art trade. Here’s my half, as per their request:

With all these new changes, I’m hoping Issue 4 will really be one for the books. I’ve got a buffer built, but still more pages to go, so it’s back to the salt mines for me!

It’s Like Cosmic Background Radiation

Except it’s neither cosmic, nor is it radiation.

A lot’s been happening with the comic in the background (and that’s the part that’s relevant!) as of late and for those of you still reading, I’ve figured that instead of simply telling you about it, I should probably show you:

There are still a lot of warm colors and outlines, but now I’ve also opted for punchier colors and hatch shading, giving the visuals some volume while also cutting down on how long it takes to illustrate each page. Ironically, with the time saved, I’ve started going in on more diverse and flashier visual effects, so it’s still taking me some time to get Issue 3 done. Currently, the plan is still for this to be a 36-page issue, but I’m considering posting again once I’m about halfway through the issue and posting one page a week, giving me time to finish the remaining pages, while also scheduling them to go up as they are completed.

It’s been nearly a year since Issue 2 finished, but I feel that the time taken to go back and reevaluate the direction I was going with Issue 3 was definitely the best call, as this really gave me the opportunity flesh out the pacing a lot more and give everyone a chance to really shine.

I’ll be back with another update soon…ish, but until then, please enjoy the new screens!