Ten Days Down: Production Realities, Setbacks, and Leveling Up for Phase 2
We are officially eleven days into October, and before we talk logistics, mechanics, or upcoming drops, I want to say one thing: thank you.
To everyone who has been showing up at their desk every single day, hopping up on my table, setting that timer, and putting the work out there—I see you. Taking on a 31-day endurance challenge with real-world constraints is grueling. Whether you’re submitting every day, tagging me in your posts, or quietly following along in your sketchbooks after work, you are doing the real work. That consistency is where real muscle is built.
Running a beast of this size also comes with serious behind-the-scenes realities. Today, I want to pull back the curtain on a few pivots, talk about falling short of deadlines, and lay out what the rest of the month looks like.
The Production Pivot: Shifting to Weekly Winner Announcements
When I launched on October 1st, the plan was to announce daily legacy print winners in every consecutive morning broadcast. In theory, it sounded great. In practice, the daily production pipeline collided with real life.
Writing, storyboarding, scripting, and animating daily video reels for Ivy and Autumn—while keeping their biting dynamic sharp—is a massive undertaking. Trying to tally entries, select a winner, format graphics, and bake that into a rendered video every single night before the crack of dawn created an unnecessary bottleneck that risked slowing down the entire operation.
As you may have noticed, the girls announced a few days ago, all daily contest winners and weekly Flash Sheet winners will be announced in one consolidated batch at the end of every week on Sundays.
Every single entry submitted is still logged down to the second. Every ticket you’ve earned toward the November 1st Grand Prize drawing remains untouched. This shift simply gives me the breathing room to showcase the winners properly rather than rushing an announcement out the door.
The Reality of Deadlines: New York Comic Con and Getting Back on Track
If your inbox has been quiet over the last couple of days, you noticed the morning dispatches stalled out.
This past weekend, I attended New York Comic Con—and after years of walking those aisles, this was my final time going. It was an important milestone to mark, but stepping away from the studio during a 31-day marathon made one thing painfully clear: the production checklist for this event is enormous.
Every single daily cycle requires:
Writing and storyboarding the Ivy & Autumn broadcast
Illustrating and formatting the daily subscriber coloring pages
Assembling high-resolution event artwork and phone wallpapers
Dialing in the anatomical work order requisitions and mentor notes
Formatting and scheduling the morning email blasts late into the night
When you're standing on a convention floor for ten hours, that math stops working. The hours simply ran out, and the emails fell behind.
Here’s a big mentor note: falling short of a deadline is part of being a working artist.
Setbacks happen. Life intrudes, production timelines explode, and energy runs thin. The difference between an amateur and a professional isn't that the pro never misses—it's how they react when they do. An amateur misses two days of a daily challenge, decides the streak is broken, throws up their hands, and quits the entire month.
A professional takes the hit on the chin, dusts off the table, sharpens the pencils, and gets right back to work.
If you fell behind on a prompt or missed a movie over the weekend, let it go. The clock resets today. Don't worry about yesterday's missed box; focus on the piece in front of you right now. The email dispatches officially resume their regular morning schedule tomorrow.
New on the Site: The Winners Showcase and Prize Pool Hub
To celebrate the incredible work coming out of the community, I will be launching a dedicated section on the website: The Spooky-Soupy Showcase.
This page is built to serve two purposes:
The Grindhouse Gallery: A permanent gallery celebrating our weekly winners and featuring selected standout submissions from participants across the country.
The Prize Pool Vault: A full visual preview of the physical rewards. Instead of guessing what you’re competing for, you can browse high-resolution looks at the signed legacy prints, custom cardstock variants, physical Halloween Flash Sheets, and the original hand-embellished watercolor pieces waiting in the November 1st Grand Prize pack.
Head over to the site tomorrow night to explore the hub, see what your fellow apprentices are building, and get a look at the physical loot.
Sundays Are Expanding: A Bigger Stage for Autumn & Ivy
Speaking of Ivy and Autumn—the 90-second daily broadcast format doesn't give them nearly enough room to stretch their legs.
Starting today (hopefully posting tomorrow), Sundays will feature an expanded, dedicated weekend wrap-up show.
Instead of a quick bulletin, the Sunday broadcast will be an extended sit-down where the girls unpack the entire previous week:
Dissecting and debating the horror films from the watchlist
Reviewing community posts related to the event
Announcing the full slate of daily legacy print and weekly flash winners
Digging deeper into the fictional lore connecting the prompts to the 8 Glasses of Water saga
These extended Sunday recaps will live exclusively on the official @8glassesofwater Instagram channel and will be archived on the website blog every Sunday evening.
Phase 2 Kicks Off Tomorrow: Halloween Merch Incoming
Eleven days are just about down, which means the foundational warmup is officially over. Tomorrow, October 12th, marks the start of Phase 2.
The client prompts are getting more demanding, the placements are pushing deeper into high-stakes anatomy, and the narrative connections to Stellacineris and the 8 Glasses of Water books are about to accelerate.
To celebrate crossing into the heart of the month, we are also dropping exclusive limited-edition Halloween and Ink & Paint Club merchandise throughout this week's broadcasts. Keep your eyes on the daily videos and your morning emails starting tomorrow for first access to apparel, pins, and merch bundles before they open to the general public.
Take a breath, clear off your work surface, and take a look at the gallery this week. Tomorrow morning, we're back on the clock.
-Johnny
