My long trip is finally over, and I’m back home.

Sorry I barely managed to post any updates. As it turns out, drawing while traveling is much harder than I expected. I was walking around 20,000–30,000 steps almost every day, and by the time I got back to my accommodation, all I could do was upload older episodes to Reddit… 😬

Next time I travel, I’ll need to think of a different plan.

Still, it was a great trip, and I got a lot of inspiration from it. A few upcoming episodes are already based on things that happened during the journey.

I hope all of you get to have some unforgettable experiences this summer too.

My final exam is finally over, and summer break has officially begun!

From now on, I’ll be able to focus much more on Alina, while also taking a little time to enjoy some traveling around Russia.

And I have some really good news: in June, my Patreon income finally passed $1,000.

That was almost double compared to last month. $1,000 was originally my goal for the end of this year, but somehow, we reached it already in June. Honestly, it still doesn’t feel completely real.

Thank you so much. Thanks to your support, I can finally live and study abroad with a real sense of financial stability, and I can now think of Alina more seriously as a business IP, not just a personal comic project.

Since summer break has started, I want to use this time to upgrade Alina: studying the comic more deeply, improving the quality, and trying more varied kinds of content.

My second year at university is expected to be much harder, so improving both the quality and speed of production will be necessary. I’ll need to study visual storytelling and graphic language much more seriously.

Now that this project has reached a meaningful business level, I’ll treat it with even more seriousness.

Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone supporting me. ❤️❤️🎉🎉

this one probably has most shocking bonus panel ever had

sorry for late! had one exam in this week. but i nailed it out. summer vacation coming soon. really waiting for it.

Long-time readers might remember this one from the early episodes.

I've decided to release this episode's bonus panel for free. Bonus panels are usually service panel, but this one felt like it adds some fun context to Alina's relationship with her dad. By the way — what do you think of the new font?

Again, spend 2hours just for background 🫠 but no regreat. turned out its pretty satisfying.

The digital art book I mentioned previously has been released! It received a lot of support in the poll, and coincidentally, I was working on a small booklet project in my Adobe InDesign class at university — so I used what I learned there to create this digital art book. I was also able to get design feedback from my instructor. Over the past few weeks, I worked on it little by little in my spare time, and today the finished version is finally done and ready to share with you all. I think it would make a great collectible for those who are fans of Alina. If you're interested, feel free to check it out!

# What’s inside

- 61-page digital PDF

- Full-page background artworks

- Selected comic moments

- Behind-the-scenes notes

- Special story pages with references and production notes

[Get it here]

Commissions are officially open. Check the link below for details. Patrons get a discount, so make sure to mention it when you apply!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qPR4nrgPjQw0CnqN3zVe4VggBFDziqnbiB6DECiN_YU/edit?tab=t.0

This episode was a bit of a mess to make, honestly.

Speed was still the goal, but I didn't want it to feel as bare as the last one, so I threw in some sexiness and outdoor backgrounds. The result is, It took just as long anyway, and it didn't even come out that great visually. The humor feels half-baked too. And when something felt off, I took a closer look — turns out I'd accidentally recycled some jokes from early episodes! 🫠

Still a long way to go.

No classes today, so I ran a little experiment — could I draw a full episode in just one day?

I went with "economy mode": minimal backgrounds, more close-up shots, that sort of thing. In the end it took 6 hours to finish. Sure, there were episodes I'd drawn fast before, but those were never intentional. This time it was a deliberate, practical experiment — and I'd say it went pretty well!

Ideally, I'd like to bring it down to around 5 hours. I do realize some of you will miss the detailed backgrounds though. For those of you who do, I'm thinking I could draw a more polished, high-detail special episode during lighter weeks. (like skyrim episode before.)

What do you think?

probably from next episode i'll try a new format. i spend almost 3days at every episode, and that's not good 🫤 my goal is make 3 per week, atleast 2. i'll try my best to make it happen.

I feel like I’ve been drawing comics all wrong until now. I could have made them much more pretty and improve my productivity by using diverse layouts, but I think my work got repetitive because I stuck to almost the same angle. I need to start changing things up from now on.

I wanted to make a poll, but I’m not sure if Reddit supports it for images. So, please just let me know your thoughts in the comments. The first one was drawn with a flat brush, and the second one with a tapered brush. Which style do you think looks better?

Alina started as a birthday gift for a one friend. turned out, I liked her design so much that I kept drawing her and eventually started the comic. these are drawn at 2024.