  
|
|
  
|
|
|
|
|
Hello, my companions. Hope that you are enjoying the new site. Many things are similar to the old site, but I've gotten a little savvier at coding since then and I'd like to think that the site looks much better, at the very least.
Some considerable things that have changed:
1. I removed the first chapter of the comic because I felt that it wasn't adding anything worthwhile to the storyline. It can still be read here if you have the urge to seek it out. If you don't read it, you aren't really missing anything (which is why I pulled it), but if you do read it, it won't make everything suddenly not make sense either, so if you have some free time, go for it.
2. I combined several pages in the archive to improve the pacing of the story, and also mushed some chapters together because it made more narrative sense that way. Now reading the archive will take less time and less clicks! Check out the archive page to see everything all big and mapped out, or start reading from the beginning of the story here. The opening is also new since I got rid of the first chapter.
3. The art page has been updated to include more of the beautiful fanart I received this year during various Secret Santa comic swaps.
4. The links page has been updated to include more sites for you to check out when you're through looking at this one.
5. The cast page has been revamped to give more information on the characters you're curious about, including links to the first canon appearance of each character. Additionally, the main eight characters have each been given sub pages where you can see more pictures of them and read their responses to the "Wallwater Electric High School 'Youth Response' Assessment for Students Soon to Graduate." (What a mouthful!)
So this is cool, I have this nice site now, everything's good. Except for the fact that I am graduating college in THREE MONTHS. Having a few existential crises here and there. Seriously, it's a litte unnerving. I started this website my freshman year of college, I feel like I've grown up with it. Now I'm gonna graduate and it's just so weird to look back at all the old strips and all the old code and say "Jesus Christ, I did that two years ago." Three months from now, probably to this exact day, is the day of my last final. Then the next week is graduation. Then I'm a grownup. Then I look for a job and try to make money. The first strip of Loud Era seems highly appropriate now- where have the years gone?
Well, now is not the time to cry for the future or the past. I'll keep up drawing as much as I can, but as always I need to make school my top priority (especially now in this last home stretch). Thanks for reading and hanging around, and I hope to see you all again soon.
It has been over a year since I last updated this news page. Quite a bit has happened since then! I now have a mirror site on SmackJeeves, which is a good host in many ways although I still prefer ComicGenesis, as it was my first internet home and the community has always been kind and helpful to me.
I took a hiatus from September until late April. While that puts me far behind where I would like to be in terms of my storyline, I think I also improved artistically during that hiatus and that my newer work is noticeably better, as well as more coherent.
I entered two of my characters, Joseph and Clarabelle, in the "Mr. and Ms ComicGenesis 2011" pageant over at the ComicGenesis forums. When able to, I will display my entries here on the site.
In personal news, I finally had a great year at college. Next year may prove difficult with regards to my updating schedule because, I mean, senior year, amirite? What's that all about? We'll see how this summer goes. I'll do what I can to maintain a M-W-F schedule, or at least a 3-times-a-week one. The coming few days may be a bit delayed because I'm taking a wee vacation to the shore, but I guess it doesn't matter since no one reads this news page anyway, lololol.
I redid the site layout and am in the process (as you may notice) of fixing up each individual supplementary page. The archive and about pages are functional (as is this one), though could use some touching up, and I will get around to characters, links, and art sooner or later. However, right now, updates are more important than site tweaks, and real life is more important than updates.
Hope that you are finding the new site look to be aesthetically pleasing. I cherish all my readers and hope that you will come back for more! Talk to you all soon, preferably before next May.
I'm 14 strips behind right now and finally stopped caring about trying to catch up with those fourteen, so instead I'm just going to start updating according to the Monday/Thursday schedule. I thought I'd get extra time once I returned home from school to get everything squared away but unfortunately it was an out of the frying pan, into the fire sort of situation.
I can't make any promises about adhering to this schedule but I'm going to try. Things have settled down somewhat, so I guess we'll just have to see. I would rather post late completed work than punctual unfinished or disappointing work, so I'm sacrificing schedule for quality. Hope that you all find this suitable.
Just finished a guest strip for Final Arcanum, a really awesome strip about Space Pirates run by my girl Steph "Skwinky" Stober over at SmackJeeves. Check out her work, it is most beauteous!
I know what you're thinking. "VCC, you're eleven strips behind on your own comic, but you go and do a guest strip for someone else? Well I never!" Well, we'll put it this way, it's easy to do something if it's helping someone else out, and because I'm so far behind here that I just feel as though I'll never catch up.
In the interest of being disclosive, I will confide to you that I have two more strips sketched out and will try and get them totally done ASAP. I have four more after that storyboarded, and then we'll go from there. I can't make any promises about when things will get done, but I am trying to make the site look better as well as increase my updatings.
To be perfectly emo, lately I've been feeling really down about my abilities in many fields. I won't get into details, but I feel as though I'm not doing very well at things I used to be really good at. I don't know where my talents went. Things that used to come naturally to me are now difficult and time-consuming.
Ain't giving up, just having a big old pity party. Maybe once I'm all caught up here I'll feel better about myself. If you wish, subscribe to my RSS feed if you care to be informed of my sporadic updates. Talk to you all again soon.
Eleven updates behind. This hurts. I know exactly where to go, it's just about taking the time to sit down and draw it all. Hopefully such a time will come soon. Changed a few aesthetic things in the meantime, will get to do more of that somewhere down the line.
So here's the reason updates halted for a while recently. First, last semester was pretty terrible for me and even when I did have free time I was usually in too rotten of a mood to do anything good with it. Over break, I settled down enough that I could really put the pedal to the metal again and for a while there I was updating daily to try and catch up with the fray.
Then our home computer became infested with a virus and could no longer be used, and needed to be completely wiped clean and all its babies reinstalled. Meanwhile my laptop had... something? which resulted in me needing to reinstall the operating system and start from scratch also. Now I'm back at school, have reinstalled my printer software, and as you can see I've begun to use it s'more.
My main goal right now with this site is to finish enough updates to bring me back up to date and ideally another one or two so that I can take a little eensy break. Someday, hopefully by March, I will return to a regular updating schedule. For now, updates will be haphazard and will effectively happen whenever I can find the time.
On the bright side, it's not a matter of writer's block or anything, for now at least. I have a good grasp on where the story is going, so as long as I am able to get some work done here and there I will try to continue updating as much as possible. At a future date, I will fix up the site and add the bonus material I had intended to add over winter break- links to other giraffes, a f'nart/gallery thing, and a "History Of" segment.
It will be good! Thanks for reading. Hope you stop by again soon.
I actually started the whole comic over since the last time I updated this page... haha silly "9/3/09" thinking you know everything. So all of the old comics were taken down to Chinatown because I prefer it that way. I hope you're enjoying the new beginning. I know I am.
Updates have been slow going but I'll get back to the beat soon. And that will be soooo worth it. See you soon, friends.
Things have been squishy for a while since having to pack up for school and all that. The good news is that my work space at school is ridiculously perfect for working on this comic. So I've been working diligently with each opportunity.
There's a mini-season in between seasons one and two- cleverly called Season 1.5- the first page of which is already up and has been there since Jesus walked the earth, and the rest of which I've just finished inking. I just have to color & scan them in now, and that means twice a week updates that will carry me through well into this month.
Which gives me a good buffer that will allow me to organize the parts of season two and start production on that. Season two's gonna be really good. I mean, relatively to season one. It kind of has like... plots and stuff. Which is wacky-dacky and totally unusual for this comic's happenstances so far.
Also, via the abundance of drawing I've been doing these past few days I've figured out some ways to make this more visually appealing. You know, stylistic changes and that.
Just to be a butt for a minute and talk about myself (which doesn't matter since this website currently has an average of 0 visitors per week), I'm really pleased with the progress & improvements I've made since starting this comic. Even since the really early planning/pre-website stages, but most specifically since the very first comic on this site. I drew that first comic in.. February? And when I did it I honestly thought it was really good.
Pretty much that's how I do things when I draw, especially stuff like this, I try to make each thing the best I can make it. So in one sense it's a little embarassing to look back and say, Shoot I really thought that that was tip top and great. But it's also a good feeling now to look at the stuff I just finished erasing the pencil from under and think about the simple improvements that just look so much better and don't make me want to sob.
That being said, I really need to get these next few comics up and stuff, because the "It's great"/"It's crap" cycle is starting to catch up with me- I'm already seeing errors with season one's finale and with the page of season 1.5 I have up there. Got to hurry before I lose the motivation to get done the rest of the stuff.
Sorry for the long news post. Not like anyone's seeing it but, you know. Sorry me. Let's get this shit done.
Labor Day. Labor day I will put the next one up. See you then, self.
99% done with redoing. Enjoy the better site. New comic should be up Thursday, if not, you won't even notice.
Wrapped up first season, now just tidying the site fixins, everything will be set and savvy by August 13.
New pages added to the site- minimalistic sort of outline things. Hope to be fixing them up to look nicer soon once I have free time.
In terms of things you can't see (yet): Finished inking all the way to the next to last update for the first season. A little disappointed with how the finale is looking so far, have to go back and fix a few things in that as well as on the previous pages. Looks great in my imagination, but meh on the actual page. Raaaah!