I had Meta Emp comment on the "open hair" bit because, by the end of the Ninjette-centric Empowered vol. 7, I was indeed growing weary of all the time I was sinking into the seemingly endless rendering of all the highlights in Kozue's dark hair. More specifically, my oft-ailing drawing hand grew extremely weary of all that graphite grinding, especially in relation to the vastly quicker and much less stressful depiction of Emp's hair.

Along those lines, that's why I wound up having to discontinue the (nearly) everyday life drawing sets I was doing in 2017 & 2018, as my hand just could not handle the heavy-duty pressure required for high-contrast analog pencil rendering. I'm hoping to go back to semi-regular photoreffed sketching in 2021, but that will have to be done with less hand-intensive digital media.

Today’s Patreon update: As it’s a Wednesday, time for the $5+ Patron tiers to get their weekly dose of commissioned damsel-in-distress content, along the lines of the same material was eventually reworked into Empowered. (No idea what as to exactly that might be at this time, though; these commentaries are written much further out from posting than are my often last-minute Patreon updates.)

-Adam Warren