Revamp Progress - I'm inspired by manga again (Patreon)

I've rewritten most of the script. I'm not going to hold back this time. It's definitely a lot darker and emotional, though I feel less restricted than before. I was too afraid of offending people or scaring readers off so I changed my script many times, but there are so many manga and webtoons with crazy stuff that happens, it's a silly fear that I've imposed on myself. I've struggled with my mental health for most of my life and it got worse the last few years. That's why I stopped updating my webtoon publicly and haven't been promoting the comic. I didn't have enough energy to do much, so I focused on recovering and drawing what I could. It's been an existential hell for me--I've never experienced emotional numbness and a disinterest in life to this extent. I suspect isolation and living a false identity for so long finally broke me. I didn't know what I wanted anymore. I would try many different types of creative hobbies, but I felt nothing. I would always default to thinking about the comic. I recently sat in front of a blank canvas for hours, getting distracted because I didn't know what I wanted to personally draw outside of Patreon. I've been trying to "make it" so long as an artist that I stopped making art for myself entirely, and now that I'm asking myself what I'd like to draw, I struggle to find an answer. So I've been visiting the book store more often to get inspiration and see what other artists are creating. I tried not to limit myself to books that I think would help me with the comic, but just genuinely picking up anything that interested me in the slightest. I used to be a huge fujo for example so I tried dabbling in that again. It's been fun, but some BL manga still sits on my shelf untouched. I struggle to even enjoy media and entertainment in general. I forced myself to think strictly about creative work for so long, it seriously fucked me up. I'll say I've seen some crazy stories out there made by the Japanese and Korean artists--it gave me hope since it made me realize I shouldn't feel trapped making a safe, palatable story. I'm still doing everything alone. I had help with line art and flats, but I often had to redraw things so I started to just go from sketch to color like I used to in 2021. I tried to find artists close to my skill level, who are reliable, trustworthy, and interested my story, but it's so difficult. Most artists want to work for someone established and the NSFW scares a lot of them away. So it's possible I will remain alone for a while.I knew I had to do something different this time around since my old methods weren't efficient and led to burn out and numbness. I decided to try a story planning method suggested by the author of Suitor Armor where you write story beats on notecards so it's easy to move them around instead of cutting and pasting it in a digital document. I decided to take it a step further and color code it by the vibe of the scene, and I used sticky tabs to indicate which characters appear in the scene so it's easy to see if a character needs to appear more or not. I plan to tape the notecards to my wall so I can look at the overall arrangement of the story beats to see if I need to insert more fun or dramatic scenes to keep myself, as well as the reader, engaged.I've also purchased different types of manga to get ideas on how I want to structure the page layout and figure out a fresh style to suit the new direction of SWFTD. I'm thinking of doing less panels, like 3-4 per page, and returning to a black and white style so I can do more pages per month and draw more NSFW bonuses. The full rendering and color is attractive, but it's killing me. I can't progress the story as quickly as I want and I'd like to focus more on getting the reader to feel the emotions of the characters and explore problems with things like the struggles of finding stability and direction, the loneliness epidemic, mental health, and the broad spectrum of feelings and fears that come with romantic relationships. I realized how broken everyone is around me and it disturbed me. I have so much to say. I've teared up many times while writing the script, and that's big for me since I felt so numb over the years. I finally feel like I'm starting to make a break through to where I actually feel human again.Other things I did to draw faster is pick up a book on animation to get ideas on how to simplify the character's form. I also paid for 3D rendering courses to learn how to make models of my characters. It will definitely speed things up and help with scenes where the characters are further away so I can put more pages out. The learning curve is super tough and I may fail a lot in the process, but I'm trying my best to actually finish this project.This is super long and I thank you if you read all of it. Part of healing myself is being honest with my emotions and allowing myself to feel and express them, even though it's not what people want to see from me. The suppression of my true self led to the immense dread and numbness I've been feeling for so long...I can't continue to exist like that anymore.