Bob Appavu

[WIP] Card Portraits

I spent today working on (*gasp*) the card deck!  I went through the entire deck and figured out which cards needed full redos, which needed tweaks+re-inks, and which needed entirely different characters.  I also figured out my top priority expansion packs.  When all the card art is ready, I plan to do a Kickstarter. (for just the card decks, not for books.)

The real reason I was looking at the card decks today is because Jordana's pre-rebellion portrait is showing up on the nex...

Chapter 4, Page 11 [Nov.13 Page] +News

So this page was delayed due to travel, but I promised that patrons wouldn't have to wait till next Monday to see it. So here it is!

Now, the news:

tl;dr: I'm adding early access comic pages to the $5+ tiers!

The longer version: I know I said before that I wasn't going to offer early access to comic pages, but *surprise* I changed my mind. ^_^ About 24% of the patrons I polled didn't want early access, but somehow due to the way I broke up the poll...

PatreCon Day 2, and DOTU update

Day 2 of PatreCon started off with an amazing private talk from James Higa about negotiating.  It was some of the most powerful information I've ever been given but ended up leaving a good half of the room near tears too.  Later, we had talks from Philip DeFranco and Comic Book Girl 19.

In the afternoon, my group had a really interesting workshop called "The Unspoken Language," led by Lisa Rowland, who's an improvisor, actor, and teacher.  We did some interesting (and often hila...

PatreCon, Day 1

Yeah I know, I look waaaaaaaaaay too happy about seeing my name on a wall here. (and nowhere near as cool and intimidating as I do in my self-portrait, hehe ^_^)

I'm at PatreCon in LA right now, and I'm learning so much about Patreon and how to be a better creator, and I'm meeting lots of other awesome creators and it's just been really great. :D

I arrived at PatreCon with my battery empty, and it feels like it's been recharged with each event and each conversation I have.  You guys...

Devoted - Merritt's Story - Chapter 20

Here's the new chapter!  You can download the attached PDF or read it inline.  Chapter 21 will come in either 2 or 3 weeks depending on how fast we can turn around edits.

[Table of Contents]

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Chapter 20

Soft Sloth Coffee was a South-owned café in neutral territory a block away from Yackley’s. In its early days, it served as a waiting ar...

Pogo's October 2017 Letters Have Been Sent!

Pogo's October 2017 letters have been sent out to all processed patrons, so you should be getting them soon.  Email letters went out yesterday for those who get them digitally, so if you haven't received them, let me know. (I did get one bounce-back, which I'll attempt to resend in a moment.)  The $10.01 secret gallery illustration should go up in a couple of hours.

It's a Halloween-themed letter!  Hopefully at least some of you will get it in time for the holiday. ^_^  And...

Inktober 17: Graceful

This might be the last Inktober I have time to do before the end of the month, but like I said, I plan to still continue into next month until I get to all the ones I want to do.

This one is inspired by the scene in chapter 1 where Belmont first sees Merritt sparring at the military training grounds.

Inktober 16: Fat

I posted this one on social media back when I was still artist-blocked on 12: Shattered, but I'm posting now for my patrons who aren't on the other platforms.

For this one, I took a mini break from the Merritt's Story theme to finish up this old Patreon sketch of Fat Winter Annie <3

12: Shattered just went up for $10+ patrons.  17: Graceful will go up for $2+ patrons over the weekend.

This post is set to public visibility.

Inktober 12: Shattered

This is the one that got me stuck and made me fall behind on Inktober, but I finally managed to circle back to it.  I just had a lot of trouble with the pencils for some reason.  This is for $10+ patrons because it's from a scene in Merritt's story that hasn't gone up yet and won't for a pretty long time.  I posted 16: Fat on social media before and will post it here in a moment, and I have the sketch done for 17: Graceful so it should go up soon too.

I don't plan on doing *ever...

2017 Creator Portrait, PatreCon 2017

It's been over a year and a half since I whipped up my last creator portrait, and I'm actually going to be showing my face in public soon, so it was time for an update!  I got a better likeness in this one, but it also disguises the fact that I'm kind of a bumbling dork in real life. ^_^  And of course, there's my main man Ebo.

This year, I was invited to participate in PatreCon, which is an annual conference run by Patreon, for Patreon creators.  It's their second conference an...

Bonus Prose: Belmont

I mentioned with my last DOTU update that the next chapter of Merritt's story was being pushed to next week.  So while we wait, I wanted to share a bit of bonus prose.

I generally write to unwind at night before going to sleep, and to explore different characters and ideas.  So here's a little excerpt from... Belmont's story?

In the end, I decided to post this to $2+ folks since Merritt's story was delayed and $10.01+ patrons will get an inktober drawing today too.  There ...

Chapter 4, Page 10

Here's the big size, and it's up on the main site!

http://www.demonoftheunderground.com/comic/p266/ 

Merritt's story chapter 20 will go up next week since I'm still doing edits and it'll be easier to have an alternating schedule with DOTU pages.  But we'll have some $2+/$10+ inktobers and $10.01+ bonus prose this week instead.

I fell behind on Inktober due to a massive freelance dump ...

Hiatus Update +Patreon Revamp

Hey guys!  I just finished updating my Patreon page, and I wanted you guys to be the first to know what's going on and what my future plans are.

Comic pages will resume on Monday 10/23.  I owe all of you a HUGE thank you for sticking with me while I took this very necessary time to recover from burnout and figure out how to both work on DOTU and cover my basic needs.  Six patrons did leave after I announced my hiatus, but 11 joined and even more increased their ...

Devoted: Merritt's Story - Chapter 19

Here's the new chapter!  You can download the attached PDF or read it inline.  Chapter 20 will come in about 2 weeks.

[Table of Contents]

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Chapter 19

Merritt should have known Mercury wasn’t blind to Belmont’s schemes. Of course Mercury knew who Belmont really was, and of course he’d taken it into account when choosing his ri...

[NSFW] Inktober 10 - Gigantic

Sorrrrrryyyyyyy, when I saw the prompt was "gigantic," I just couldn't resist doing this scene.....

This is from Merritt's Story chapter 16. "Think any of the rumors are true?"

Chapter 19 goes up at midnight.  It's gonna be... an interesting one.

Inktober 8 - Crooked

I know a lot of you probably already saw this on tumblr/twitter, but of the four inktobers I plan to do this week, three are going to different pledge levels (public for this, $2+ for #7, and $10+ for #10 and #12), meaning I won't be able to do a nice batch post like I did last week.  So here's #8 for those of you who aren't on social media!

This is one of those classic instances of Merritt having trouble with clothing.  It was specifically for chapter 9, when he's getting ready for ...

Inktober 7 - Shy

I'm going to be keeping more Inktobers as patrons only from here on.  The ones that I don't think would have much appeal to people who haven't read Merritt's story will be shared with $2+ patrons, while as I mentioned before, the spoilery/suggestive ones will go to $10+.

This one is inspired by the chapter 3 scene in which Merritt invites Torrence to their first elite party.  In retrospect, I ended up editing out some of the passages that described Torrence as being nervous (aside fr...

Inktober 1-5

For those of you who aren't on social media, here are my first 5 sketches for Inktober.  The prompts were as follows:

1. Swift (end of Merritt story ch.3, when the pigeon delivers a message from Mercury)

2. Divided (Merritt and his North/East divided loyalties)

3. Poison (Merritt story ch.17 "Belmont’s body was sweet poison, and he refused to take a sip.")

4. Underwater (Merritt story ch.7, Merritt guiding Troy through the water traps)

5. Long (Merritt story ch.1...

Thank you/Follow-up

Since I'm finding I can't reply individually to everyone who commented on my hiatus post and elsewhere, I'm posting here instead.  So many of you have been so supportive and understanding, and I want to thank you.  Like, some of you nearly made me cry, and it really means a lot to know that you guys are invested in my work.  DOTU is still my pet project and something I care deeply about, and you guys are my motivation for sharing it publicly instead of just keeping it in ...

Hiatus

Hey guys, I'm letting you know that I'm going to be taking a break from DOTU, starting after today's page.  It'll be at least two weeks, possibly longer.

Short version: I'm burned out and making way less than minimum wage for 50+ hours a week on DOTU and extras, so even after I get over the burnout, I can't afford to keep working on DOTU at this level because my living situation is changing and I need to spend more time on higher paying work.

Long version:

In ...

Chapter 4, Page 09

Big size, and up on the main site:

http://www.demonoftheunderground.com/comic/p265/

I'll make a separate post about the hiatus in just a moment.

Pogo's September 2017 Letters Have Been Sent!

Pogo's September 2017 letters have been sent out to all processed patrons, so you should be getting them soon.  Email letters went out a little earlier today for those of you who get them digitally, so if you haven't received them, let me know.  The $10.01 secret gallery illustration will go up tomorrow.

In this letter, Pogo talks about road trips and travel.

And again, a note for any patrons who were affected by any of the recent hurricanes in TX, LA, FL, PR, etc. - If you nee...

Devoted: Merritt's Story - Chapter 18

Here it is!  You can download the attached PDF or read it inline.  Expect chapter 19 in a couple of weeks.

[Table of Contents]

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Chapter 18

Merritt was taking a risk, poking around in Devon’s kitchen without his permission. But he felt compelled to do something to show his appreciation. Devon had put his future on the line for Merritt’s...

Chapter 4, Page 8 + Early Page Info/Decision

Here's the big size, and it's up on the main site:

http://www.demonoftheunderground.com/comic/p264/

I mentioned in the preview WIP last week that this was an 8-panel page, but I ended up spreading it across two pages, so we'll see the rest next week!

Regarding the early pages poll - I decided not to do it for now.  There just doesn't seem to be much interest.  And as ...

[Poll] Would you like to read DOTU pages early?

It's likely that, in the future, I'll sometimes be able to share comic pages anywhere from 1 day before release to 1-2 weeks before release.  Right now, I have 2 finished pages ready and waiting.  So I'm trying to see if anyone would be interested in reading pages early, or if you prefer to read at the official release time.

I haven't decided which tiers should get early access yet, which is why I'm asking for your tier level so I can see where the interest is. (responses are anonymo...

[Ch4p8 Spoiler] 2 Inked Panels preview

I posted a snippet of this kinda spoilery moment to my newly revived twitter account yesterday where I figured it'd mostly fly under the radar, but since y'all 10.01+ people are actually signed up for spoilers, I figured I'd share an even bigger preview here!

Let me know if y'all prefer I keep the spoilery stuff in the offsite gallery only.

There are 8 panels on this page, and basically the entire story takes place on Merritt's face. (his lack of poker face always makes things more fun.)...

Chapter 4, Page 07

Big size, and up on the main site with a new voting incentive!

http://www.demonoftheunderground.com/comic/p263/

Devoted: Merritt's Story - Chapter 17

Chapter 17 is here at last!  This one... gets pretty NSFW.  You can read it inline or download the attached PDF.  I'm expecting chapter 18 to go up the week after next, on 9/28.

[Table of Contents]

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Chapter 17

While Belmont had kept a professional distance from Merritt during the elevator ride up to his suite, on the way down he kept ...

Voting Incentive Gallery Updated, New Login

The voting incentive gallery has been updated to include all but the current incentive.  Seven new incentives, four of which are minicomics!  There's also a lovely new password since we've had some patron turnover.

http://www.bob-artist.com/patreon

login: patreon

password: troysskinlessgrapes

Thanks, dudes! :D

Chapter 4, Page 06 + Process Video $2+ Release

Here's the big size, and it's up on the main site!

http://www.demonoftheunderground.com/comic/p262/

Bunch of news and stuff on the main site.  For Patreon-specific stuff: Merritt's story chapter 17 is coming this week, and I just released a video for $2+ patrons showing the process of painting the background cityscape.  You probably won't get an email notification for it because I released ...