 Hello, I'm doing a pause during the production of episode 34 to inform you about how it is going and yes, this is the first time I do a video report about the production report. So I will have some little quirk here and there but it will improve this time and if you are on this channel for the tutorial or for the learning content, you can skip this video and I will do a special video thumbnail so you will know what content to skip. But let's move to the production report. This video contains visuals and ideas about the next episode of my webcomic pepper and carrot. It doesn't contain what I would call spoilers but if you just want to read the comic and keep the full surprise for later, I advise you to skip this video. Thank you. So here is a little recap to give you context. In the previous episodes of the webcomic, Pepper finally got her diploma and experimented her new power on a battlefield. Pepper is now finally ready. Remember, it was clearly ununsaid by her godmothers at the end of the book 3 after she does her first chain reaction. This situation put a big closure on the main story as I designed it so far. Pepper needed to grow as a legit witch and it's done now. Yep, I'm proud of Pepper, she grew so much. So I knew I would have to start for the next episode a totally new story arc for the series. For that, I decided to focus on the introduction of a new major character, Wasabi. Wasabi is the godmother of one of the friend of Pepper named Chichimi and this character was already existing in the Viki and in the fanfictions around pepper and carrot since years. So it was time to insert her as part of the main story. She was just designed to be the main antagonist for Pepper. Yes, only that. So not a little character and a very big challenge. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best timing for writing such a major episode. By June 2020, I decided to finish the project I had on my hands for years and this project was the self-published book project for Pepper and Carrot. So it took me five months of production to complete it, but it gave birth to the art book and a new refreshed website with a new eShop page on it. I also started later to work on many other projects that felt really important to me like PeerTube and Mobidizon. So all in all, I haven't made a lot of Pepper and Carrot episode in 2020, but I'm still very proud of all the things I did this year. Meanwhile, I started to multiply the scenarios for the new episode. My two main attempts were a shared on the Pepper and Carrot beta reading thread, but I wasn't happy with them. The first version focused on Pepper trying to get a new job and Wasabi was acting as a super administrator for managing the witches. The script wasn't really well understood on the beta testing thread and it was also boring and confusing. It ended we wrote a lot about it. I then continued to write more synopsis. One of them was Pepper breaking in the temple of art with Chichimi, more precisely in the library at night, to discover some secrets about her school. Because I really like the cinematographic cliché of let's break into a library at night. This one was honestly a good candidate. I had a full storyboard ready with all speech bubbles and dialogue, and also all the main concept art done. I even made progress on getting color red page for the start of the comic around September. But I quickly realized the story was leading to nowhere on the long term and the setting of the temple of Chichimi and the introduction of Wasabi was just another pretext for a comic strip joke. So after that and more scenarios cancelled, I understood that introducing Wasabi would be a bigger task than what I thought. Adding Wasabi would affect the long term of the series and its core structure. My previous way to write episode wasn't working anymore. It was based at each time on a tiny comedy comic strip and then later rapid into the setup of a fantasy adventure. Instead, now after adding a villain to the story as Wasabi, the reverse started to work and the goal of each episode started to be about making progress for a fantasy adventure. But don't be afraid, I'll keep a strong comedy tone to the series of course. Once I realized and accepted this new evolution for the way I've write my episodes, I could write episode 34, but also 35, 36, and all the guideline until, well in fact, until the end of the series itself. I was really surprised. But for a reason you easily understand, I decided as an author to protect this full story of pepper and carrot and never reveal it publicly. All in all, this big writing process took me a very long time and it was hard also to take decisions now about what I'd simply have to draw over the next years. It was really, really hard. And even harder because writing doesn't create a lot of visual material. So I had no picture to post on social media to keep you updates. So that's why I was silent for a long time on this project. Right now, by the end of January 2021, I clean up my storyboard and I'm halfway inking the episode. It's a really long episode with over 10 pages where each pages are made of many panels. I'll not reveal the story of the current revision to not spoil what I do for it. But by the first pages, you'll understand it happens at the graduation of Shishimi and Pepper joined the celebration just after the end of the previous episode. It starts with a crash on the crowd and making the layout and the drawing for this scene was super complex. I struggled a lot with the production process and started over my pages several times to redraw the panel and improve my design. I tried speed painting them. I tried painting over color red sketch. I tried multiple widths of inking. Then I made two coloring tests and all of this to realize my inking was bad and pushing me to redo my drawing and inking. Yes, I probably inject a little bit too much work into that. In final, I found a way to ink my drawing with a soft brush and I learned to work more on the precision of the proportion and the dynamism of my design. I keep working on a light gray color red background to preserve my eyes from the too violent white of the monitor and I rarely use pure black for the stroke. This method is convenient also because I can see clearly the boundaries of my borderless panel and borderless pitch bubbles as both of them use a flat white color red background. This type of soft painterly inking also allows me to do many layers and paint over the inking using some time values presets. This way I can add little shadows or texture and increase the modeling of my forms to test visually my designs. Once the artwork is done, I just adjust the level of the picture to remove the gray and contract the line out back. I achieve this way a very soft painterly inking as you could see recently on my artwork and letting me room to paint over later with colors. This is not a new technique but I'm just revisiting a process I had on episode 21 the magic contest and episode 32 the battlefield. I'm just trying to push it to a better rendering. It's a solid process with a big priority on the drawing and that's probably where all my weaknesses are so it's a lot of work. Yes it's a lot of work but also a very good opportunity to improve my design, learn to draw better the character as I have them acting in my imagination. And I think all my research comes from this frustration. I really would like to make pepper and carrot episode looks as I imagine them and not just as a close enough approximation of this type of rendering and for that I still also have a lot to learn and I'm simply on the way. So that's all for this production report in video about episode 34. It's not a full production report I still have a lot of work to do on this episode and it will not be ready until weeks. So I want to thank a lot all the supporters of pepper and carrot for their patience. I'm really taking a lot of time on this episode and I know it but now you understand why and I hope it will be a good episode. So thanks for watching. If you have any questions, any comments about the format, you know what to do and I'll see you on the next video. Bye bye.