i mean, i've been working on a VN! i finished all the writing earlier this year, so i can at least talk about that aspect of it.

prose in visual novels isn't always identically constructed to conventional novels (in particular, there's often less ceremony around characters speaking, since you can just look at their sprite/name label)... but it was still a very interesting challenge to make a serious, concerted effort to write a narrative in prose, for once.

i've written things before, though nothing very long. some fanfics, here and there, beyond schoolwork. a lot of unfinished stuff. fair bit of poetry and lyricwriting at this point, too.

but as a storyteller, i prefer writing shorter stories. i am very accustomed to "trimming the fat" with any of my narratives, pruning and rewriting things until i'm satisfied. i found this especially important to do when making comics, largely to reduce the overall pagecount/amount of work i'd have to do visually.

i needed to slow down more than usual, pacing-wise, when writing my VN. it's not even an especially long one, regardless, but i had to deliberately linger more than usual, which took some adjustment. the pace i would have naturally settled on was far too breakneck for this project. i ended up enjoying the process, though. i learned a lot.

though, to answer your question more directly... i think my stories could still work, largely, in text format. they would just come across differently. i mean, simply put, i'm a significantly more experienced cartoonist and character designer than novelist, even as someone who likes my own prose.

i believe the various disciplines i've dabbled in, however unevenly, go down smoother when my visual art is somehow involved. but i still have a lot of work left to do! so please continue to wait warmly... for as long as it takes.

now, i'm probably just being stubborn about this, but i wouldn't personally describe any of my comics as "webcomics". they've exclusively been released in their entirety, all at once, without any semblance of ongoing updates. what you see is what you get. that kind of drip-fed release cycle sounds like hell for me, since i'm someone that gets stressed out by the prospect of not being able to go back and tweak/revise things easily.

cough anyway, i've talked about this before, but i don't mind rehashing things. it took me a while to settle on a process that consistently works for me. i tried a number of different approaches over the years—notably, hubris debris didn't have any formal planning involved at all (though i did have a pretty solid idea of the initial premise going in). i can only talk about what i prefer doing, as a person, which might be different from what works from you, or anyone else.

starting with elysium, i consistently began each project by writing a loose text outline of the entire story. some parts would be more or less specific, or even take multiple drafts, depending on the project. when that was done, i'd iron out any major remaining designwork that needed doing (mostly characters), and then draw a height chart of every major character. this is also when i would figure out the project's color palette.

a note: you really don't have to do a height chart, or stick to palettes, or whatever. it's a lot of work. i just have animator brain, which strives to maintain an internal "model" of a character to roughly adhere to over time. having too much freedom with color choice for a longer project also stresses me out, so it makes more sense for me to adhere to palettes. the height chart is pretty funny, regardless, since it'd often be my first time drawing most characters, therefore by the end of the project i usually end up drawing them fairly differently... still helpful to have as reference, though.

after the height chart, i usually go through and lay down text/dialogue for each page, arranging them in a way that helps me simultaneously figure out panel layouts + the final pagecount. thumbnailing just doesn't work for my brain, so this is the next best thing i can do.

and then i draw the pages...! for ~my first 3 original stories, i went with very tight linework over my already-tight roughs. with most projects thereafter, i chilled out a bit, since this was simultaneously very time-consuming and also just not the kind of art i actually had the most fun making. plus, i felt like i was losing a lot of nuance+energy in the process of going over my lines.

i often don't design the cover until i'm at least halfway finished with the pages, if not more. it's not a rigid rule i adhere to, i just tend to not have a good idea of what i want to be on there until then.

making comics is an extremely taxing experience. it's also not very financially sustainable, for the amount of work that goes into it. i had been releasing my comics exclusively on itchio from the years 2018-2025. 16 different comics, in that timeframe, all PWYW (though elysium was initially paywalled, along with my first art archive).

over 7 years, i earned a bit over $3k usd. in doing so, i worked my body and spirit well beyond a breaking point multiple times.

i'm not sure if i'll make more (longer-form) comics, at this point! maybe someday, but maybe not. i am currently having a nice time working on my VN, at a much slower pace than i would work on my comics, historically. in theory, i could probably float it by JAST if i wanted to monetize the completed version... but i don't. i'm tired.

i don't want to be acclaimed. i don't want to be famous. i don't even want to be perceived, generally speaking. i write with my dick, it's not an especially unique or enlightened process. my dick just coincidentally wants to see very eccentric things, which the world i was born into is currently doing everything in its power to eradicate.

that's fine. i am happiest among the roaches, scuttling quietly in the spaces between. and i would prefer to see my works proliferated amongst this joyous infestation of perverts as freely as possible, for as long as i can sustain it.

thank you for caring.

this is a funny situational conundrum to be in, but i've definitely been there. i don't mind talking about it.

depending on the character's species, the least obtrusive route would be to simply explore null stuff. failing that... the body shape itself is not the actual issue when trying to put any kind of genitalia on there. it's actually the leg positioning. thigh canyons (such as with boxman, or cuphead, or etc) are inevitably going to look strange and kind of goofy when dangly bits are haphazardly positioned between them.

this body shape, at least in the example you gave, is also inherently pretty toony and unrealistic, so you might as well lean into it. wiggle or completely change the leg positioning situationally, even outside of sexual scenarios. explore different posing and compositional options for cheeky censoring. you can even get silly about things on purpose!

sexual expression does not always need to result in drawings where you can see someone's urethra. sensuality can take so many different forms that have nothing to do with genitalia. this is especially important to keep in mind for designs where slapping a dick and/or balls on them could just end up looking undignified. for example, i think magnemite is very cute, but i have zero desire to see any kind of explicit genitalia on the thing. but there are fun features and analogues to explore with it instead—maybe it likes having its screws touched? maybe it can vibrate. maybe it feels some kind of way about magnetic attraction. electroshock. et cetera.

but at the end of the day, you're your own best judge of what you find sexy or compelling. i'm just some weirdo on the internet. good luck!

cyan's entire setting is so incomprehensibly futuristic that any of the stories i tell in it are meant to be viewed as if they have been localized. tradespeak, the actual language most characters are speaking, would be completely unrecognizable to modern humans. english, and any other language found on earth, would be just about as useful in daily conversation as latin.
also, cortez only attempts to use french and japanese with dmitri. it's otherwise using tradespeak with him. it does this because it's read way too much ancient manga and french comics.
the visual novel i'm working on (which is in the same setting) expands on this a little more. please wait warmly. thank you.

i don't think i'd actually redo or change anything. sure, there's stuff that doesn't read very well, or could be drawn more according to my modern standards... but every piece, every story i ever make crystallizes the moment in time i spent creating them. and i'd much rather have finished and released an imperfect piece than agonize over something for so long that it never comes out.

there might be moments i want to forget. works i want to forget. things that make me wince to look at again. but most stuff i've created over the years has been posted publicly, in some fashion—and i am too much of a digital archivist, myself, to feel compelled to erase my creations.

i only completely disown my works if keeping them in the public eye seems like more trouble than it's worth. this hasn't happened for the better part of a decade.

overall, i am of the opinion that i wouldn't be the person i am today without living the life i have already lived. and no matter how crudely my past self may have painfully vomited something onto a canvas, i love and appreciate her for it.

i want to keep living. i want to keep growing. and i want to see what kind of art i make in the future, too.

i feel like "artblock," over the years, has become an overgrown, monolithic term haphazardly applied to any kind of personal disconnect between an artist and their art. there's just about as many potential causes for this as there are words in the english language. maybe you feel like your artistic "eye" has outpaced your hands. maybe you no longer identify with the things you used to find joy in depicting. maybe you're moments away from an identity crisis. et cetera.

as such, it would be basically impossible for me to sufficiently address your highly personal circumstances—so i'm gonna resort to some very generic advice instead.

1. are you having fun? if you're not having fun right now, what sounds like fun instead? do you think you can feasibly achieve this, or at least work towards it? it's okay if something other than creating things sounds more fun right now, too.

2. how's your relationship to your output? do you find yourself preoccupied with numbers? do you find it unforgivable if you didn't work on anything that day, week, month? this may be normalized in many corners of the internet, but it's objectively corrosive.

3. on a related note, how frequently do you compare yourself disfavorably to other creators? everyone's got their own stuff going on, and nobody's ever gonna see the perfect vision in your head that never quite makes it onto the canvas. sometimes, in the past, i would get asked how to achieve the artistic output i used to uphold, particularly for my comics. the answer is actually very simple: break your body and spirit in order to drag your mangled self across some kind of hallucinated finish line. i would not recommend the experience.

i didn't actually start "loving" my art consistently until, like, 2020 or so. i spent many years feeling frustrated and humiliated about my works. nothing seemed to turn out the way i wanted it to. there were times when every piece felt like pulling teeth, and looking at them after the fact still makes me wince.
but my art wouldn't have existed if i didn't make it. and, to this day, i still occasionally encounter people who have found such joy and meaning in stuff i made almost a decade ago.

that matters, to me at least.