Unsurprisingly, most of my waking hours are spent working on Across Thin Ice. I'm just over a third done painting the 100 some pages of the first book, and when I'm not painting, my sights are turned onto layouts for the next one. It's a ton of work--probably 15-20 hours per page to layout, sketch and clean up, then another 20-25 to ink and paint. I've hit my working stride and things are progressing as they do--slow, but steady. I haven't had much time to do anything else, but it's actually been quite zen.
Looking at the time line now, the release date might get pushed back a few more months. I'm deep enough in now I think I'd be annoyed at myself if I rushed or trimmed a bunch of pages just to meet an early deadline. But such is life--somethings you can't rush and it's better to just enjoy the ride. The plus side is, if I keep on working as I am, with a summer release I can have a preview out for the second book when the first debuts, and there will be significantly less time between their releases.
Here's few more pages I finished earlier in the month!
Page 29 and 60
Some progress photos of Page 29:
Lastly, here's the original concept sketches I did ages ago for this page and page 28.
