Looking Up at the Same Sky + Bonus Test Animation and Vent

-
Four characters (one green-haired girl with red goggles, one blue-haired boy with blue goggles, one turquoise-haired female, and one brown-haired little girl) standing on a hill in front of a tree, gazing at the sky. In the background, a mountain can be seen.

I had such a terrible last week. Although there were some positives such as being interviewed last Monday about my comic and it being shared on Wednesday, there were some negatives as well such as said interview not getting enough reach, even after sharing some of the clips from the interview on my socials, my vent about the mobile game Dragon Ball Legends going way downhill with the addition of the Legend rarity, and Popeye's messing up my order by giving me a regular chicken sandwich instead of a spicy one. As mentioned in my previous post, I was laying in bed, crying badly.

I haven't been feelin' motivated at all to draw any new fanart, nor work on SaGia. I didn't really draw anything on Valentine's Day. One day, I got bored and made this new SaGia art of the main four (Haido, Lain, Lass, Rena) in the same cel-shaded 90s anime art style similar to my current banner and profile pic that's on my Bluesky, Facebook page, etc:

Four characters (one blue-haired girl with red goggles, one blue-haired boy with blue goggles, one turquoise-haired female, and one brown-haired little girl) sitting on a bench together in front of a cherry blossom tree and green grass. The blue-haired girl in the middle is happy and hugging the blue-haired boy and turquoise-haired girl.
Two girls, who are 2-D illustrated, are standing in front of a starry sky. The girl on the left has dark skin and black hair wearing a white striped shirt, while the one on the right has green hair, red goggles, a red scarf, and a yellow tank top. The green-haired girl is smiling at the camera.

I really liked how the new drawing came out, so I'm naming it "Looking Up at the Same Sky". 

I then made another one, but as an animation this time. I picked Lain and Jikiru for this one; originally, I was going to pick Haido. This one took me about 2-5 hours to complete? I didn't keep track of how long it took me, but I completed this one in 1 day (2/16). Animated in Procreate (not Procreate Dreams).

I also made a VHS version of the same animation by dropping the MP4 in a software called NTSC-RS.


Original is at the top, the VHS version is at the bottom. 

After finishing the animation and looking at the final results, it made me think: What if SaGia had a full on animated pilot. I could bring back some of the voice actors from the Volume 2 second trailer that I shared last year. It would have that 80s/90s cel-shaded look. This animation and the drawing at the top of this post is just a concept; I just made the animation as a test. 

Honestly, I don't know if an animated pilot will happen. I do have storyboards on my computer still of what the pilot would be like, but I never really shared it. I think I made that storyboard pilot in 2023 or 2024. I'm not a great animator too. Another SaGia animation I worked on, and the first animation, is called "Jikiru's Cleanup", based on a sketch in my sketchbook. I've completed the animation for that and finished voicing all of Jikiru's lines in 2024. But, I never put it together yet. I feel embarrassed, scared to share it. It still sits on my computer to this day, waiting to see the light. If I feel the courage, I will share it someday.

Another thing is, SaGia doesn't have a big fanbase, really. Just a smaller one ever since I made the series public in 2024. Whenever I share SaGia online, sure it gets some likes, but no one reads it. As of 2/17, my most recent chapter published at GlobalComix has 0 views. Sad, as I had worked hard on that chapter for weeks, with a whopping 44 pages total. I know that this economy sucks, as my dad told me. People are afraid to spend their money and I understand. Besides that, the reason why I made chapter 1 free and the others $1.99 at GlobalComix is because my mom wants me to monetize the comic and two, to see if people are interested in the series with the first chapter being free. My Ko-fi shop has been dead silent, with no new shop orders. I'm still struggling to find small events in my state after Chibi Chibi Con was full with the applications.

There are times where I want to end SaGia on a cliffhanger... just end it all because it's an original work and no one cares about it. But, that would be devastating to my readers, who have been following the series for years. I have some plans for the 2nd anniversary happening in August, so stay tuned. 

I will share this drawing and animation later on over at my socials. I wanted to share both of them early here. If you want to see a SaGia animated pilot happen, email me, leave it in the comments, beg me, annoy me. It it gets enough support, I'll try to make it happen and do the best I can with it since I'm working on a low budget and as I said, I don't have great animation skills.

And one last thing, screw social media and the algorithm, especially Instagram. I hate how most of my notifications consists of people liking my old drawings from years ago. The low interactions, with less comments and likes (depending on the post) makes me depressed every day. That's a reason why I'm taking a mental break from that garbage.


If you want to check out SaGia, read it over at GlobalComix. You can also read the chapters early before Volume 3's release: https://globalcomix.com/c/sagia

or check out my Ko-fi shop: https://ko-fi.com/wimbearn/shop

Comments

Post a Comment