To a certain degree it'd depend on the dog and its personality, but being a dog owner is closer to being a parent than an owner. Dogs bond fiercely with their caregivers and rely heavily on being guided and educated by them. If you can imagine caretaking for a 6yo it's about the same levels of consideration and responsibility and dependency.

And I have owned cats before yes! The biggest difference between being a cat and dog owner ime is that cats are far more secure being independent and looking out for themselves to a certain degree. Dogs are far more dependent on the owner for their time and attention. For example, a cat can go to the bathroom (as it were) on their own and clean up after themselves while with dogs you basically have to take them outside to do their business.

Basically: with cats I found myself living a parallel life alongside them, a bit like with a roommate, but I have to center my whole world around a dog and be an active participant in caring for them. I never once had to think of hiring a babysitter to do an afternoon errand for a cat but I go out of my way to make sure my dog has a playdate with someone if I'm out of the house because separation anxiety takes over and they can panic.

(Note -- you CAN train separation anxiety out of your dog so they're more comfortable being alone and trusting that you'll be back eventually, but if you're like me where you're home most of the time and that's what they're used to it's pretty much impossible)

Dogs also demand a lot more daily bonding activities than cats do. Daily walks, daily play, that kind of thing. Dogs are extremely social animals and they need to connect with the world around them and need a VERY solid routine to be emotionally healthy. It's kind of why you generally see extroverts being more attracted to owning dogs and introverts to owning cats, because dogs are by far built to force you to go outside and interact with others but you can more easily be a homebody with a cat.

pointing out people can cook badly like that defeats the analogy instead of strengthen it is confusing to me because toxic or irresponsible artists do in fact exist. I never said everyone is an amazing cook to specifically feed others, I just said you're responsible for how tasty your food is when you feed yourself, which is objectively true.

You're understanding the analogy just fine, but you're also equating skill and taste as synonymous (they're not) or that taste can be learned (it can't, you can train taste in the same way you can change your habits and that is a matter of personal interest and willpower). You're assuming people's personal tastes can be universally compatible, which obviously is impossible.

The storyboards, mostly. Gaze An Eagle Blind has an unusual set up for a webcomic, and I'm committing extremely hard to the bit, so I don't have a personal gauge on how to anticipate audience reaction. Comparatively to a standard comic, I have a lot of experience to understand what to expect from readers.

Creating storyboards as a comic rather than an animatic also comes with some complications like how to control timing/pacing when the reader can click through at their own speed, as well as how to indicate audio/vocal cues like if someone is speaking offscreen or SFX. Screencaps don't have dialogue bubbles to indicate who is talking. It's been a bit of a puzzle and this adds to it being an untested format.

That said the characters are also something I don't know how to predict! It's basically a cast of shallow selfish assholes, and the protagonist is a bipolar drug addict who works as a human trafficker. He is very difficult to root for lol and I'm sure down the road will be responsible for a lot of discourse.

As for what's most challenging - really, the whole thing. Before starting this I have zero experience with storyboarding and despite drawing like one, I am emphatically NOT an animator, so I'm full of anxiety hoping it isn't obvious to other animators I'm completely bullshitting everything and embarrassing myself. I remember testing out finishing the first couple of frames over a year ago having absolutely zero idea if I was doing anything right. I've definitely grown and learned a lot since the beginning of this, though. I joke to Alex that I feel like I'm making student film for an animation class that I never signed up for.

As for an assistant - a godsend. It would've taken me 500% longer without one helping me with environments, not a joke. Krad has been absolutely essential to the project, so much so I'm crediting them as a co-artist for BG design at this point. It's been just so much fun working with them too.

And as for the process itself -- I don't know if it's that complicated. I thumbnail the storyboards in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, export the frames in a PDF, then create photoshop files of all the frames to polish/render/color. Once I set up the files properly I send them over to Krad, who workshops the environments under my direction, then passes them back to me as I progress. I aim to finish about 4 frames a day -- sometimes it's just one, other days I can bang out up to 6. My current record is 9.

Feel free to ask more I'm happy to share or explain what I'm able.

I didn't take it as disrespectful, you're good! I understand your curiosity now.

I'm not really looking toward a "career change" because I don't really want to sacrifice my time and energy to labor that'll get in the way of the pile of work I want to get in control over, so what little other work I can find tends to be in the odd consultation here and there. Ideally I'd like to be able to continue teaching art more regularly as a side hustle but not a lot of opportunities for that has come up. What I'd LOVE to be hired to do is project management or story supervision because I do consider organization my primary skill set (even more than art) but I've had even less luck with that.

So ultimately I'm full on investing in my projects garnering enough support in the long-term, it's just taking an immense amount of work upfront to build up to it!

honestly right now I'm very lucky to have had the option to move back in with my family rent-free so that I can focus on paying off my debts can get back to 0. My only official income are my ko-fi subscribers rn and all that money is going toward what I owe in taxes and CC debts. so really I owe a lot to any and all that are choosing to believe in making the dream happen.