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Monday, September 19th, 2005 - 9:00pm - [Direct Link]
Was playing around earlier today and broke not only the site but my miniforums/tagboards. Everything should be working again, let me know if it's not.

Thursday, September 15th, 2005 - 2:00pm - [Direct Link]
I recently made some changes to the layout of the filesystem and whatnot. If anyone finds anything that doesn't work anymore, please drop me a line.

Monday, September 12th, 2005 - 3:00pm - [Direct Link]
I've posted a few things recently that I wanted to put somewhere in one place. They're "art/webcomic tutorials" of sorts, but more about planning and mental states rather than actual drawing.
Advice to someone thinking of starting a webcomic
I've noticed a lot of people that said, "I'm going to start a webcomic" but didn't succeed. Here's what I think about creating a webcomic:
Webcomics should not be created because you want fame and fortune. Webcomics should be created because you either have a personal purpose for it (for me, I wanted to get better at art), or because you simply have a passion about drawing or comics. They also require dedication, be it a daily, weekday, two/three-a-week, weekly, or even monthly. Passion is a fleeting thing. One day you may be all abubble with it, and the next you're hunched over wondering what you were so excited about. Without dedication, you'll never get through the dark spots where passion wanes.
Let me tell you... a daily comic will drain you like nothing else. I'm spending hours a day updating Trivium. Even a weekly comic can be agonizingly difficult if you don't have the passion. A webcomic is a big undertaking.
I recommend creating a dozen or so strips/pages "off the record", using the full creation process from pencil-and-paper to ready-to-show, to see if you can really do what it takes on a regular basis.
The mental state of an artist.
I have a theory about how an artist is supposed to think. I've encountered a number of very, very good artists that insist that they're terrible and their art has so many problems. I have yet to encounter an artist that is perfectly satisified with any piece of art that they have created. I find the whiners very annoying, especially when they obviously have talent, so I decided on the best type of behavior that I should follow.
1) Always be happy that you're drawing. Draw because you love it. Honestly, graphic arts is a terrible, terrible business field. It's saturated, if nothing else. Art is something you're going to be doing because you love it, not because you want to make money off it.
2) Focus on how much you've improved, not how "bad" your existing art is. If you compare your art to other people's art, you're only going to end up hurting yourself. Compare it to you own art: your older pieces. (Never throw anything away, and make sure to date them!) Go back as far as your childhood drawings if you need to, but focus on the improvement you've made, not how far away you are to drawing like another artist does.
3) Never be satisified with your work. The moment you're satisified, you will stop improving.
Advice to someone thinking of starting their webcomic over
First, the comic is yours. You do whatever you want with it. If you really want to start over because you know you can make it so much better, then by all means, do so.
Second, don't you dare start over.
I've read a lot of webcomics in my time (I have over 100 on my list that I read regularly) and one of the wonderful things about them is art evolution. I'd show you an example of my own, but I've only been dong this for about six months, so I'm going to show you the first and latest Schlock Mercenary, which started five years ago.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20000612.html
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/index.html
Amazing, isn't it? And if he had started over every time his art reached a new level, he wouldn't have as many readers as he has, and he wouldn't have gotten near as far in the plot as he did. We're always learning, and there's nothing wrong with improving over time.

Sunday, September 4th, 2005 - 4:00pm - [Direct Link]
So apparently Google indexed me recently. I've gotten a few hits from people searching for "inking tutorial" and went looking -- I'm somehow result number six (on page one). I wonder if people just don't have them or if I used some kind of obscure wording that people don't normally use.
I really need to get this site looking prettier. It's hard to read right now, and has a placeholder banner at the top. How embarassing. You know what... how many people actually looked at this index page last month. Oh wow. Almost 700 page loads? Ya... I'm embarassed.
Off the record, Gimpy, the author of Hustle (webcomic), has plans to restart it. A month, a year, who knows. He didn't like the start, and a new one is planned. So look forward to it, because Gimpy's a funny guy with pretty art.
And I think found a friend to encourage me to start drawing in the Gimpy Stick sketch gallery again (yay!) so that may start getting updated once more.
Threw up my todo list on the left. I think I oughta start working on it.

Monday, August 29th, 2005 - 9:00pm - [Direct Link]
Threw up a dirty version of the inking tutorial. It should be enough to work off of, but may not be exceptionally clear in some points. I also never finish inking the example picture.

Saturday, August 27th, 2005 - 12:30pm - [Direct Link]
I've got a few new ideas and some old ideas, and I wanted to write them down somewhere. I figured here is good enough.
My current plans for the Morrowind Comic are to finish it before Oblivion comes out. I've heard dates ranging from October to December for a release, so I'll just have to try to get it done as fast as I can. My goal of two comics a week hasn't been going very well, but I'm still trying to get as many done as I can.
I've said a few things about after I finish the Morrowind Comic.
1) I'm never working on two comics concurrently again.
2) After I finish my Morrowind Comic, I'm going to try getting my proposed figure tutorial going.
I may not be the best at drawing, but I'm good at figuring things out and troubleshooting, so I should be able to provide some information in the tutorial that's useful.
It was also mentioned that I oughta make an inking tutorial so people can be aware of how I ink my comics. It's been mentioned that the linework on them is very clear. I'll see if I can't get some kind of tutorial like that up and running sometime, too.

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 - 4:00pm - [Direct Link]
It's my birthday!
And Gimpy had this idea where we draw a sketch a day and see how we improve. So I whipped up a quick site where we can upload pictures.
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