I know it’s not exactly a webcomic, but if you’re enjoying the Apex Predator series, I’d lay paper on the likelihood that you’ll also like Simon’s Cat.
So I am going to have to beg your patience one more time, readers.
I’ve said a few times that this is an exercise in getting into the habit of doing comics on a weekly basis and sometimes the experiment doesn’t work, because I’m still having to learn a lot about how to make comics. And this isn’t just in how to tell a story visually, bear in mind – it’s also in figuring out how to structure my life around a regular update schedule and develop good work habits so that I can keep at it.
I’ve got one more page of The Apex Predator coming, and it will go up sometime this weekend. After this I have a five-page narrative story planned, and I’m going to change up the format (and my personal schedule in creating these comics) to something that is more sustainable.
Hey cats! The short story A Fine Day Out took first place in the Adult section of the Graphic Novel Contest hosted by the San Jose Public Libraries. You’ll find us at the awards ceremony at the Martin Luther King branch this Saturday afternoon, shaking hands and preening and being beautiful.
If you’re local, be sure to come say hello! The website says they’ll have refreshments there and I bet that means they’ll have little cubes of fancy cheeses on toothpicks, and seriously that’s worth the price of admission* right there, I love that stuff. If they do, I intend to eat a completely silly amount of them.
*there is no admission fee.
Probably old news to many of you who are regular webcomics readers, but I’ve been really digging The Abominable Charles Christopher. It is seriously one of the most smile-inducing comics online. I am kind of glad, though, that I was late to the party in reading it, because if I’d been familiar with it half a year ago, I probably wouldn’t have done a fox story, given some of the similarities.
So I am taking up a collection for a specific combo printer/scanner to expedite my ability to create artwork and comics. The primary reason why I would like this thing is because it scans at 11×17″ as opposed to the standard scanner size, which is typically half that size. The secondary reason is that it also prints at that size. These two functions would make my life much easier, as far as artwork is concerned.
Specifically, there are two tasks I’d really like to have this printer for:
The first is that when I draw or paint, I typically work on a sketchbook that is 11×14″, rather than the 9×12″ that tends to be more popular. I just like to draw big. But it’s a real inconvenience to have to stitch all of my scans together, or crop the paper down to fit onto the scanning bed. And our current scanner has a very high lip at the edge of the scanning bed that requires the paper to be bent upward at an angle that I won’t do with watercolor pieces, as it runs the risk of damaging them.
The second is a technique used by comics artists that involves laying out a page and penciling digitally, but then finishing the artwork by printing that page out and transferring the artwork to another sheet of paper with the use of a lightbox, or in some cases, printing the blue lines directly onto the sheet to be finished on. Tony Cliff demonstrates an example of this procedure here.
So, if you derive enough value from this comic to believe that this is a thing worth contributing to, I’d surely appreciate it. And I’m sure you’ll see some new and interesting things taking place as far as the kind of artwork appearing in the comic is concerned, as well.
Ooof, it’s been a while since I’ve posted some cartoons. Let’s fix that!
Dry Fish from Andy Martin on Vimeo.
Hey cats, I took some time this week to prep and upload artwork and tee designs to Redbubble and MySOTI, and so now there are three or four different tees available, as well as a number of prints and stickers.
All of the artwork I posted predates this comic, though, so there aren’t any Dawn Chapel-specific tees available just yet. The Redbubble shirts are a little more expensive, but they go up to 3XL, whereas the Mysoti shirts are cheaper but only available up to XXL.
We have expanded our operations to leverage The Dawn Chapel more effectively across our target vertical! Effective immediately, we will concentrate our efforts on two key segments:
1.) The Dawn Chapel is now syndicated on livejournal! If you’re more of a livejournaler and less of an RSS reader, there you have it. New entries delivered every week straight to your friends page. Class!
2.) The Dawn Chapel now has a very official group page on deviantArt for you to join! Though there isn’t anything there just now but the tremendous weight of expectation. If you are on deviantArt and you join the group, though, I will give you one (1) high-five. True story!
Also, this is old news, but I completely axed the facebook page, because who cares.
So one of my favorite things right now is Tod Wills’ comic Ekwara, a cartoon fantasy full of gorgeous, cheerful artwork that reminds me a whole bunch of 1980′s fantasy films like Willow or The Dark Crystal. Ekwara started out as a weekly full-color comic, all done up with watercolors, but recently Tod’s stepped up his game and has gone weekdaily, giving up color in favor of moving the story along much faster. The man is some kind of machine, as in addition to Ekwara he does two other comics, Crimson Flag and Dracula, and manages to keep his Zazzle store stocked with new and excellent artwork every week on top of that. These are initiatives that I as a voter can get behind.
(there are not actually any cricket bats in Ekwara, the title of this post was unnecessarily misleading in that respect, and for that I apologize)
We’re planning on taking off and visiting family at the end of this week and the trip may prevent me from getting this week’s comic up. It’ll depend on how industrious I’m able to be over the next three days (and whether I can find the story, which I’ve misplaced). If I don’t see you this Friday, be sure eat lots of barbecue and blow things up for me this weekend.
