NINE GATES

Hey there!

First things first, I’ll admit that I’m not sure what sort of things you’d all find interesting to read about concerning 1000 Gates. I’m kind of just winging it here and talking about whatever part of writing or development is on my mind, so please feel free to ask any questions you might have.
Last month was partially spent with me being distracted by both the holidays and moving my new housemate in. She’ll be helping me with backgrounds, which was the part I was most nervous about doing since there’s a lot of those. Beyond that, I’ve been going back through the half of the script I have written down to annotate and edit it: this is how I’m deciding what backgrounds, CGs, and portraits need to be drawn, and when certain character expressions should be used. I could’ve (and probably should’ve) done this at the time, but this is my first time doing anything like this and it entirely slipped my mind in my excitement.
When most of the portrait and background work is done I’d like to do a short, free prologue both to draw in new readers and as a consolation for older readers for the sudden discontinuation of Nine Gates. Unfortunately I do need to make a living, and so as you may have guessed the rest of 1000 Gates will be monetized. Likely 10-15 USD per chapter, which if Chapter 1 is anything to go by, will be a lot of story for the price.
This month’s character spotlight is Mora:

She’s a bit of a roguish tinkerer, very high energy, very volatile. I had a very vivid idea for her appearance in my mind when I first began designing her; her look and character were very much inspired by Jinx (Arcane), Casca (Berserk), and Harrow (The Locked Tomb). She came to me in a dream after having already drawn out the entire main cast and written the whole outline for Chapter 1. I was actually very worried that she might feel tacked onto the story because of how late I made her, but I trusted the process, and I feel that I’ve done a good job making her feel like she was there from the start.

That’s all I have for you this month. See you next time.

Nine Gates has always been a product of spontaneity ever since I first conceptualized it sometime in 2021. I didn’t actually have a name for the comic until I’d finished drawing the tenth page, and I didn’t even know what the Nine Gates were until sometime during Chapter 4.
Following the conclusion of Volume 1, I finalized the outline of the story arc and found that there were many plot threads that I couldn’t tie up concisely. As time has gone on, I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the concessions I’ve had to make for the sake of time, and I would rather not spend another two years wrapping up a story I’ll ultimately be unhappy with. Especially since I straight up cannot bring myself to continue working on comic panels. That said, I appreciate all the readers I’ve gotten over the years, and I apologize for what may be disappointing news for some of you. It’s been a blast seeing you try to figure out what’s going on (The climax was going to be batshit insane despite how messy it is. One day you’ll learn what’s REALLY going on with Jeane.)
That isn’t to say I plan to retire the project completely, but when it returns it will be in a different medium with a VERY different face. The setting and story of Nine Gates is kind of an erratic hodge-podge as a result of me figuring it out as I was producing pages over the course of five years, and I think if I were to take what I have now and refine it I could make something really special. My current plan is to do a visual novel of some sort, as it blends my love of drawing and writing in a way that’s much less backbreaking than comic work.
Going forwards there will be a few changes:

-First, I will be shutting down the Patreon on November 5th. When I have something new to show off I’ll consider opening it up again. The Discord will be made free to use (rather than being a $1 patreon reward), I’ll leave an invite to it here which will be good for about ten uses if that’s something any of you are interested in.

-The monthly updates here will continue, though I plan to make them more focused on my project of refining the world of Nine Gates into something new. If you’d like to remain unspoiled on that front, I’d suggest just following me elsewhere (Bluesky, Tumblr) to keep posted on when more pressing news comes about.

-As per above, this website will obviously remain up so you can read the one volume of Nine Gates. I’ll see about creating a PDF of all of the pages for those of you who want a convenient way to read it offline (and for preservation purposes in the event that the website goes dead for whatever reason).

Here’s a few of my sketches for the currently unnamed Nine Gates v2. There’s only one of these designs that isn’t adapted from Nine Gates characters

Hi again everybody. Between moving prep and a bit of burnout I’ve been a bit slow on what I said I’d be doing in August. This month will likely be no different, as half of this month will be spent doing the other half of moving. So progress will continue to be slow for the time being. Beyond that, nothing in particular to report or set as a milestone. Hopefully I’ll get into the meat of chapter 7 later this month though.

-Gregoria