Hello! It’s been a very long time (6 months?) since I’ve posted an update for The Secret Name, mostly due to being busy and also a string of health issues. You won’t see many updates anyways since I prefer keeping this doujin’s progress reports minimal in order for me to focus actually working on it instead of calling it done once I report something (a bad habit of mine where I say a lot but not do a lot).
If you’d like a refresher about this project, you can check my other post here, but here’s a quick summary:
Two gay dark elves named Zahir and Suha’ri fall in love but Suha’ri harbors a secret… he’s an erotica novelist! When Zahir uncovers this, he decides to do a little light reading in bed for Suha’ri…
Here’s a quick blurb of each of the characters pictured above.
- Suha’ri Nizohb is a former historian who left his homeland to become a writer, but he keeps what he writes a secret from everyone. He’s a tall, thin and dainty dark elf with white hair and orange eyes. He’s a shy introvert, and can also get lost in his writing (and daydreams), but he is very gentle and polite. His creative writing skills weren’t well liked by his clan, so he left that behind to live his dreams, but living in a city only continued to get in the way, so he moved to the humble Treegaish village to finally clear his head. His family remains a mystery. His accent is too subtle to notice, but sometimes he’ll switch out of common speak to his native tongue which sounds very much like real-world Northern Vietnamese.
- Zahir Che-hakl is a farmer from Treegaish village, a small village 20 minutes away on foot from a small town. He’s a strong-looking, shorter-than-average dark elf (Suha’ri is the average) with white hair and yellow eyes. He’s an upbeat and hardworking individual who is nice to everyone he meets, and while he has his moments of cleverness he doesn’t think ahead most of the time. His ancestors were originally from a sea-faring clan that settled in a city, but they moved out to Treegaish village to live a simple life as farmers. Zahir is the youngest of his three siblings (all sisters), and his mom is the head of the household; his father is out of the picture (but I don’t really have a reason why). He has a thick accent that’s very similar to a real-world Northern Irish accent.
Both are what dark elves consider their 30s, but I haven’t really thought very far ahead about what a dark elf’s age range is in this unnamed fantasy world. They have subtly different skin tones since they’re from different clans (and also because Zahir is out in the sun most of the day), but most dark elves are around Suha’ri’s height. Also, since this is a porn comic, yes. They both are well hung and, well, it’ll be a fun guessing game to see who gets to eventually top in the comic. If you’ve seen my old, old art and sketches, you may already know. 😉
At the moment, I have more than half of the script and thumbnails (29 pages to be exact) complete for the doujin! I’ve been using Scrivener to work on this project, and the scriptwriting feature has made it so much easier to eliminate how many programs I originally needed to write it out. The script was 90% completed before I did the thumbnailing, but I ended up rewriting a LOT of it while simultaneously thumbnailing it since the flow was going in a different direction than I originally intended— the script was a little more serious than the goofy stuff I ended up loving to draw. I did the majority of the thumbnails on paper since I had trouble with my wrist for a few weeks while using my tablet, and also because the process was much faster on paper. Here are a few select thumbnails I’m willing to share:
As you may notice, some parts of the pages are done digitally, mostly because they’re from the concept art that I didn’t feel like redrawing lol. The rest of the thumbnails will only be available to those who purchase the paid edition of the doujin in the future.
As for when this doujin will be completed, I’m not sure! I’d rather not make hard deadlines since it’s difficult for me to complete them with my health issues and, well, trying to stay financially afloat. cries If I had remembered June was Pride month (-100 queer points for me…), I would’ve completed it by that month, but oh well. Anyways, thanks for reading! Next update will be about the thumbnailing and scripting completion with some commentary.
Feel free to ask me any questions about the project in the comments below. 😊
See you next update!