Follower: an apocalyptic sci-fi comic

Slow Going

August 29, 2023 bugbyte No Comments

Hey folks! It’s been a minute so I’d like to post an update talking about the status of comic updates and such.

This is not the update I want to be making; at present I am having a lot of difficulty working on art. I can work in short bursts, but overall things are very slow going. I haven’t really discussed it here in much depth, but within the past year I’ve been having a lot of joint pain and problems, which have been mostly narrowed down to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and POTS syndrome (tl;dr my joints are too flexible, easily injured, hurt all the time, and when I stand up all my blood stays in my legs and my heart can’t keep up with making it go where it should – I wrote more and drew a little comic about it which you can read here.) I’m waiting right now on genetic testing to really narrow down the specifics of my problems, so I guess I’m getting the full Chio experience here.

For now though, I can’t say with accuracy when I’ll have a regular update schedule again. I’m working with various doctors on solutions for my pain issues, which is a little frustrating and a little slow. That’s the biggest obstacle I have right now to working regularly. I’ve been through multiple rounds of physical therapy at this point which don’t seem to be improving my situation like they’re supposed to, which is deeply frustrating because I felt really optimistic about it in the beginning. I’m working on any option I can to adapt to the situation and get a page buffer going.

Regardless of how long it takes, I have no plans to quit making comics.

I want to see this story through to the end, and make even more after that. I just have to figure out how to make it work, and now that we’ve at least put a name to the beast(s), I have a tiny bit more direction on what I can do. Or at least I know what questions to ask now.

As a further update (about updates!, no less) I am working on consolidating my online presence to a few reliable places. Twitter has become sort of artist-hostile (let’s be serious, user-hostile in general.) The best options are to subscribe to my newsletter here or use RSS for website updates.

Beyond that, here are the best places to find updates from me:
Bluesky
Threads
Tumblr
Cohost

Anyway, thank you for reading, and I appreciate you sticking with us even though I’ve been the world’s slowest artist this year. I’m doing my best to fix that.

Bug’s Got Car Problems & Other tales

July 27, 2023 bugbyte No Comments

Update July 28: We made the goal and my car is getting set back up today! I am humbled and thankful. I’m leaving my comics on sale for anyone who might have wanted to grab a copy. I also dropped a new sketch comic last night talking about…life, if you’re interested. That can be found here on my blog!

Hey hey! It has been far longer than I meant it to be since my last post here! To make a lot of long stories short, I’ve been dealing with a lot of issues from my newly-diagnosed connective tissue and heart-related disorders. It’s been a lot to deal with, more than I expected, and I learned that I can go from feeling relatively ok to not ok at all very quickly…and then I ran out of buffer pages. So it’s been kind of difficult to get back on board with making comics, but I am really trying.

I have a great team of doctors who are making huge changes to my life day by day, but they are specialists for unusual conditions like mine and are located an hour one way from where I live. My car’s registration ran out, and I need an oil change, and I can afford none of it.

So, as a last ditch attempt to try and mitigate some of this, I put all my digital comics on sale on itch and ko-fi. All I need is 9 people to buy a bundle on itch and I can fix these issues.

If you’ve ever wanted to pick up some of the Follower bonus stories and single issues, this is the best opportunity for you and me!

Visit my ko-fi shop (use code ‘Carproblems’)

Visit my itch.io shop

Updates about updates and more

June 14, 2023 bugbyte No Comments

Hey all,

I’m a bit late on the last two pages because I’ve been having some health issue flare ups in the past few weeks that have made it tough to accomplish much drawing-wise. I’m doing my best to get back on track, and I’m aiming for next Wednesday for the next Follower update. I apologize for the unexpected break, but that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess.

I am also currently running a small fundraiser for web hosting costs for the year, as I’m not certain that I’m going to make it. This would take Follower and Messenger and generally all of my work offline, which would not be ideal. The past couple of months have been rough for me and I’ve had to dip into my small savings for health and medical related stuff, which hasn’t left me with much, so I’m a little worried about this. If you’re able and want to help out, you can check out my current goal on Ko-Fi. Please don’t feel obligated, especially if it would put you at a financial hardship yourself. But the reality is, this has been a difficult year and I’m struggling to keep this little project together, so I’m being upfront about it.

Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll do my best to have something together for next Wednesday! 💪✨

Chio Club Stickers Are Here!

April 11, 2023 bugbyte No Comments

The Sticker Club stickers have arrived! They’re nice sturdy matte vinyl, so you can stick ’em on basically anything. Get yours (along with extra rewards like early comic pages!) when you join the Chio Club Sticker tier!

The Chio Club Sticker Tier is $12/month (including shipping!) and you’ll get an exclusive unique sticker each month you’re subscribed! You’ll also get other rewards like behind the scenes stuff and early pages!

You can join via Patreon or Ko-Fi at http://chio.club!

This is an experiement still, so if nobody joins, the Sticker Club just won’t continue since it won’t be viable to keep going. The Chio Club directly keeps Follower (and my other comics) going by paying for webhosting, software updates & subscriptions, domain renewals, and more.

I’m really hoping at least a couple of folks join in so I can keep this going! If not, these are going into the proverbial vault until I figure out what else to do with them.

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