Ding Dong–

Okay. I’ll stop. Anyhoo, I apparently lied when I told you that I was done messing with the site. I wasn’t lying at the time, but a few days ago (Friday? I think Friday) I asked the good folks at the Comic Press Forums what they thought of my site, and the prognosis was what I feared:

Too Complicated. Too much scrolling. And why the hell do you have two separate archives?!

See, about a month ago, my friend (and reader, SmallWonder) mentioned that he didn’t notice I was still updating…he didn’t notice the ‘latest pages’ thing changing…so I knew I had a problem…I just didn’t know how to fix it.

BUT, I took it to heart, and with the help of the illustrious Frumph (At this point I should have a Frumph tag…man’s helped me out a lot) I’ve whipped the site into shape. I was originally against the whole ‘splash entrance page’, but really, what was on the old main page that isn’t here, just more accessible?

My Blog?

I don’t fool myself. You’re all here for the comic, if you reading this right now, thank you. But I’m not so infatuated with my wordsmithing that I feel it’s some high-brow art and that you’re here just for this.

Basically, it’s all here, just easy to get to. There’s little to no scrolling, everything looks nice and clean (seriously, that twitter button I was using bugged the hell out of me).

Now, I know I’m missing that shout-box, but honestly, that thing was a resource hog and the people that ran it seemed shady (I hardly had control over it…). I’m going to try and find a place for it, because I know some people enjoyed it, but right now, it’s hidden away. Sorry, I’m working on it.

I make no promises about it, but I’m working on it.

Finally, a big thanks to the folks (folk?) at MilkAddict for the snazzy new buttons that I’m using to point people to DA, FB, Twitter, and RSS. I was originally scrambling around trying to find buttons that looked kind of similar, but found nothing for Deviant Art, then lo and behold, I found a whole set.

Anyhow, I’m still playing with it a little, but for the most part, we’re done. Again.

Hopefully for good this time…heh.

-Peace

First off: I’m still crusading for CYS and Adis’ comic running in Zuda. So go and vote for My T-Shirt Fairy Tale. I’d love to see him win, regardless of the rewards he might bestow upon me >_>

I’m being serious, actually, but it’s not like I’ll turn him away.

On a comic note,  I think that I finally found a way of doing the comic that really fits the way I’ve been managing my comic and my time. I was done a few hours early today and I plan on getting an early start on Tuesday’s comic tommorrow night after my weekly session of hanging out with my friends. Basically I’m using a little large paper that’s scaled to fit my current size constraings (10×15).

Then I scan the comic and ink it digitally. Which isn’t too differnt than past techniques, but the last two or three comics have been done totally digitally…Which I’m really not that fond of. But on top of that I’m back to doing something I feel goes a long way to making the comic better…I’m doing two pre-steps before the inking.

See…I used to draw a really crappy ‘script’ then a good ‘blue’ version. But at the start of Book Two I decided to try something: I stopped drawing the ‘blue’ and inked directly off ‘script’. This resulted in me taking more time on the script and less time on actually getting ahead in scripts.

Now I have a real, TEXT, script that’s letting me get ahead. And the blue step can take as much time as I actually need…

It’s working well and I’m hoping to start getting ahead again.

Anyhow, on a cutier note…My Puppy (Eliea) got her first hair cut today! And she looks adorable…

Yes. I have the cutest puppy ever. It’s OK. You can all admit it. Enjoy the pics.

And enjoy the comic.

-Peace

And it’s not like I’m totally altruistic here…He’s now promising fan-art and filler in exchange for some of the happy-go-lucky pimpage. So get happy and vote!

Truth be told I signed up and voted a few days ago, but I didn’t really think that this was a big deal. I thought he was going to kick the ever loving hell out of everyone and be done with it…

But it looks like it’s going to be a fight. So take two seconds and join it. Zuda’s pretty freaking awesome anyway. I already read a few comics on there (that shall be linked after the tourny is over…I don’t know why it would make a difference, but no need to risk it, heh) so it’s not like I’m asking you for a kidney or something.

Like I said, aside from the fan-art I have no investment in this cause. And honestly I wouldn’t give Adis any crap for not giving me any even if I help push him over the edge. Though his take on my characters would probably be adorable and full of win…

But I’d really just like to see something good happen for a fellow webcomic artist that’s looking to improve his lot on the Internet.

So, please, join Zuda and vote for ‘My T-Shirt Fairy Tale’. It’s been getting comparisons to Scott Pilgrim in the comments, so that puts it right up there with some great peers.

-Peace

I’ve still not managed to get the archives to align horizontally, but I’m still working on it (and in the grand scheme of things, is it really that important?).

I’m also on Twitter now, if you haven’t noticed. Again, a huge thanks to Frumph to welcoming me to the fold. Honestly, the man knows his code.

Other than that, there’s not much to point out. Wander around, enjoy the sites. Tell me if there’s anything broken/disliked.

-Peace

It’s damned good, isn’t it?

I spent most of Monday working on it and I spent most of Tuesday morning finishing it. And it shows. I also shrunk it by another 100px, which isn’t a lot, but I kind of like it. I’ll let you all know what I decide later about size.

My resolution to you guys is this: I’m going to do my best to do justice to this comic. I’m going to spend as much time and effort on each page as is necessary to give you the finest story and images as possible.

And God knows I’ll try.

Anyhow, COMICCON!

Met all my favorite Web-Comic folks. And they were all really, really nice people. Not an ass-hole in the group. The Zap! pair were awesome and were two of the nicest people I’ve met. I picked up the second book and gave them my fan-comic, which, like I said, they seemed legitimately happy to have. Pascalle (the artist) said they’d put it up on their site, so I don’t want to post it just yet. But if it’s not up in a week or two I’ll stick it up here. I’m not going to bug them about it, I was just happy to meet them.

I also went to the AppleGeeks’ meet and greet. It was cool meeting Hawk and Ananth, they were interesting to talk to. And a few people mauled Hawk for sketches, I didn’t bug him as he signed and sketched in my AG book the day before. But he could draw stuff in all of two seconds. Some one even had him draw a little Hawk on their Mac-Laptop…

From there I met Chris Daily and Aeire from Punch an’ Pie, I picked up their book and Chris did a fantastic drawing in it, I also picked up a ‘read’ poster…Which amuses me. And Randy Milholland from Something Positive was, despite what he’ll have you believe, an extremely cool guy. I picked up Super Stupor one and two, which he personalized.

Honestly, it was really, really cool to meet the people I’ve been following for five years. And once I got past my initial ‘oh dear god, I know these people’s work’ I’d like to think I didn’t make a total dick of my self.

Seriously, Zap’s Chris Layfield and Pascalle were the first people I met and I nearly fan-boyed on myself. It was quite embarrassing when the only thing you can think of is “I love your comic”. Which is a good place to start…but the ten seconds of awkward silence that follows isn’t exactly a winner. Haha. But I recovered damn it!

I also went to the Neil Gaiman panel on Coraline (I’ve been pronouncing his name wrong for years, apparently. It’s ‘Gay-man’ not ‘Guy-man’…oops.) and it was quite awesome listening to him speak. He’s a funny dude, I’ve gotta say.

I didn’t get a chance to shake his hand, but it was cool listening to his stories…Also, he’d like to see an American Gods Movie made. Which frightens me…But if they do it as well as Coraline, I’d be cool with it.

I also went to the ‘how to layout a page with panels’ panel with Jeff Smith…Who as you all know, is my favorite comic book guy ever. Seriously, I’ve re-read Bone more than I care to think about.

It was really inspiring to see how amazing he really was at drawing. He free-handed shit like you wouldn’t believe.

He drew and inked a whole comic in all of ten minuets. Holy @#$%.

I also saw the panel on ‘Batman, Arkham Asilum’ which honestly looks pretty awesome. But it’s still on my ‘rent’ list. Still I did see Batman and Joker…Well, their voices anyhow, which I grew up with:

So that was pretty cool. They were actually really funny, Hamil kept hitting on this one woman dressed as Harley Quinn…But slightly more…Slutty than the cartoon version. Haha

And the Watchman Panel was interesting…I didn’t stick around for the movie though. The trolleys stopped at 1am and the movie was shaping up to go until 2…Ah well. It was good enough to see the pre-show stuff.

There were two guys dressed as Rorschach who asked questions, they ended up dueling voices with the actor…Which was hilarious. The whole thing was quite awesome.

I’ve never been to a convention before, so this was a hell of a place to start. I had fun…I don’t know if I’ll be doing it again next year…But who knows.

Maybe I’ll have a booth an you guys can come visit me.

Well…I can dream, can’t I?

-Peace

(HOLY SHIT this was a long post. Sorry…But I figure a con-report has to be a little long.)

I’m not trying to be purposely vague, but when you read though the entire archives of a comic in two sittings time get blurred.

Also, remember the Cybers from Book One? Look at their eyes in this comic. See? They’re kinda like cheap ass television sets on the blink? All static-like? Yeah, dumb, right? Check out their later appearance right here. See? All red and glowy. Much more menacing.

That’s almost exclusively because of Zap and it’s artist Lepas. A few months after I started to read it they posted The Glow Swatches on their DA page.

From there I started to screw with all sorts of blurry, glowy, awesome.

So, if you don’t like it, blame them…

No, really, don’t. It’s not their fault I’m not as competent. Heh.

Anyhow, enjoy the sneak peek of Gunner in my little fan comic.

-Peace

(PS: Remember, I’m leaving on Wednesday, so I’m away from my comp. I’ll hopefully have something on Wednesday for you all, but I make no promises. There’ll also be filler upon my return on Monday, probably something PKF oriented. Your regularly scheduled updates will resume Wednesday July 29th, Gods permitting.)

It’s a short story. But a story non-the-less.

I started reading webcomics around 2003/2004 (Give or take a few months). The first comic I found was MacHall, done by the very talented Ian McConville & Matt Boydan. I thundered though the archives but found myself looking for more…Then I found AppleGeeks. Mohammad F. Haque and Ananth Panagariya are probably two of my favorite webcomickeryers (what? it’s a word, look it up…Ok, fine, it’s not a word.) and I’m not saying that to kiss their asses.

I mean it.

MacHall changed my life and AppleGeeks continued the shift inexorably to the creation of my own comic.

To my then sixteen year old mind the idea of placing my comics and art anywhere but the back of my dresser’s draw was unfathomable. It honestly never occurred to me that the Internet was for anything other than gaming cheats and porn artistically rendered photos of women men…people.

They showed me otherwise.

Since then my Webcomic reading grew and grew. But it was actually El Goonish Shive that convinced me to start my comic finally…Because, let’s be honest here: when Dan Shive started that comic he wasn’t very good. It gave me hope that I didn’t have to be a college student studying art to do a webcomic.

There it is. That’s why I do a webcomic…AppleGeeks was the progenitor of my love for this little hobby, and I’m finally feel like I’m good enough to give them a little payback. The final picture will probably be one of the best I’ve done, I spent most of the last two days working on it, and will likely spend the next day doing the background…And trying desperately to fix eve’s @#$%ing FACE.  Hawk? Awesome. Eve? Awesome…’cept the FACE?!

@#$% me.

Lol…

Well that’s my story. I’m going to be working on a few other Fanarts this week (Something Positive and Zap!).

I’ve been meaning to show my love for these people for a long time…But this is the perfect excuse to do so. So look for little snippets of fanart the next week or so. And maybe I’ll even fit in some PKF goodness along the way.

-Peace

PS. Maybe on Monday I’ll explain why these guys aren’t linked when my respect for them is so @#$%ing massive. Or not. Either way.

First, you’ve probably noticed a few changes…yes…I made the content area closer to the top of the page, and I made new set of directory images. And yes, they roll-over. This was all kind of spurred along when I posted on Comicpress’s forum asking for opinions about the site…they were all positive but the size of the space between the top and the comic was a theme…so I spent today playing with it.

I think it looks nice…I did my best to try and keep the thing the same feel…just more…compact. I also moved the ‘Vote’ and ‘Share’ doo-dads…Share appears below the comic and Vote on the right of the blog. Also, share is everywhere now…every comic page in the archives…so…uh…feel free to abuse it?

Second, remember when I said I’d link a page with the wall papers? Well, it’s up. I’ve also got a few avatars up if you’d like them…they only took a few minutes to make…so I hope you all enjoy.

Third, I’ve discovered that the thing I WAS using for my Fanart and Older Pictures is down. I don’t know for how long. But I’ve decided to not deal with it any longer…so Fanart is HERE and Old Pictures are HERE you also may be interested in a new ‘Old’ PKF picture I put up…check it out here. It’s a VERY old picture of Mark and Pat…dating back to when they had their old names. When I first started the comic I was a little too candid with talking about upcoming plot points…so when I did a new design I removed it. But it’s back now. Enjoy.

Last…How about that Darasoon (Pronounced how you guess: Dar-Ah-Soon)? He’s actually an old character that I’ve given a facelift for this arc…he wasn’t supposed to appear just yet, but I needed someone for Sam to run into when he got where he was going. And Dara’s alwasy been a fun character, he’s always hung around the temple…but previously Sam’s gem wasn’t here.

Dara was (maybe he still is) guarding something other than the gem Sam is looking for.

I was dreading Dara’s character design…because he’s one of the more recent parts of the story that eventually became The PKF. What does that mean…well…He’s from when I started to describe everything in detail…and I rarely drew it. So I went nuts with Dara and when it came down to the wire I wasn’t sure I could get him to look the way I wanted…but damned if I didn’t.

Oh…and he’s got fur AND scales, before you ask. And yes, he’s usually rather innapropriate. And that IS weed he’s smoking. (don’t do drugs kids, he’s not human, so he can get away with it).

Heh.

Enjoy the upgraded site. And awesome comic.

-Peace

And I know it seems like I’m referencing Book One more than I should since I tried to ‘self contain’ this book, but honestly, all you have to know is that it tried to kill them. Nothing else was really relevant from the last appearance of this critter.

I’m seriously going to have to do a ‘behind the scenes’ after this story arc, because I really have to explain why I decided to bring a bit character back from almost three hundred comics ago. This arc actually had a whole other villain attached to it at the beginning of the comic (and I mean pre-Chapter One, Book One beginning of the comic) but the villain never made any sense to me. It was basically a super advanced giant robot built by Sither to destroy Earth.

But, ‘Sither’s a geneticist’ you say?

Well, there’s my problem with it too. Sither’s the best geneticist in the universe, but he’s not exactly a mechanic.

So about mid way though Book One, Chapter Five I decided that I’d bring back the ‘Unknowns’ (my private name for them) and use them in place of the giant, angry, robot. I didn’t think I’d be bringing back the original Unknown, but I left it open.

It wasn’t until I started the pre-writing for this arc that I decided to include him again…why? Because I suddenly called him ‘Fluffles Wuffles Kuddly Kins’ in my head…and it made me giggle like mad.

And when I start to spontainiously giggle in the middle of my living room with the TV off that can only mean I’ve thought of something made of pure awesome extract. And thus it was including in the comic.

So I brought back Unknown Prime and gave him a middle-aged-crazy-cat-woman as an owner/care giver. Pamm Blinkly is there purly to call Fluffles ‘Fluffles’. Her other purpose us pure fluff (hehe), I assure you.

Also, she’s wearing a Choo-Choo Bear tie, Choo-Choo is the amorphous blob of a cat, from Something Positive (sometimes NSFW), which is one of the fantastic comics I read that isn’t in my Links page.

Which makes her awesome.

More about Fluffles and Blinkly will be explained in the next comic comic or two. Don’t worry, there’s only a little downtime until they strike out and seek out the balls of light (or gems, whatever).

So sit tight. It’s only going to get more fun.

-Peace

I’m still tweaking his design…I know that’s not a good thing to do post-intro, but let’s be honest…I rarely think in terms of art…even after doing this comic for so long. I still think of everything about their personalities and life…THEN their appearence.

That said, nothing too major will change about him, I’m thinking hair cut. Haha.

Anyhow, on the site side of things I’ve found a few plugins that I’ve implimented. Some stuff you won’t notice some you will. See the last post for more details on minor stuff.

But I did find an interesting little plugin that lets me edit the site without you guys seeing it! So now I can play with all the crap I want without it demolishing the site! GO ME! So now I won’t have to confine my messings to weekends to avoid bothering you guys! Yay.

Heh.

ALSO! I updated the links page with a new comic I stumbled across. I usually don’t plug unless I’m advertising there, but Steal This Comic is some good stuff. Go check him out. It’s a joke comic about a guy and a talking dog. But the dog denies he can talk…which is always fun.

That’s it. I can’t really think of anything else, but for the mostpart everything works great.

Oh. I have an RSS feed through feed burner now, hey, hey.

Check it out. It’s neat-o-keen, dangnabit.

…yes. Dangnabit.

You heard me.

-Peace