Obsession Du Jour

... ads like this are not OK on my website.

This ad normalizes hate and associates it with social justice. It ain't foolin' me.

I don't monitor my ads closely and have so far only blocked ads that were obviously scammy, and only when I saw them. But I cannot accept advertisers who promote violence, and linking it with social justice causes – opposition to sexism, MRAs, the year-long harrassment campaign that is Gamergate, and transphobia – is both a shitty thing to do and crosses the scam threshold harder than anything I've ever had to deal with before. I actually clicked on the ad and it took to some shitty image blog, so it's a bait and switch as well. Doesn't make the ad's contents OK.

The ad that replaces it, the next highest bidder on Project Wonderful for that spot, says "Repent or perish in hellfire". Not much better but at least it's neither hateful nor scammy (as the ad actually leads to a site that tells people to repent or perish in hellfire, from a writer who appears to be sincere). It's also running at no cost to the advertiser. So now might be a good time to bid on the top banner for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan on Project Wonderful. It's still got a lowish but steady daily flow of visitors on a number of web locations that carry the ad.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic page for September 1, 2008 has been digitally inked, coloured and re-lettered.

Page 64 of Feral. Bye-bye brother Bartholomew!

Colors by Aggie Janicot.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic page for August 25, 2008 has been digitally inked, coloured and re-lettered.

Page 63 of Feral. Colors by Aggie Janicot.

Colors by Aggie Janicot.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic page for May 9, 2010 has been digitally inked, coloured and re-lettered.

Page 101 of Feral. Colors by Aggie Janicot

Colors by Aggie Janicot.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic page for August 18, 2008 now has digital inks and colours thanks to Aggie Janicot (and me). More to come.

This one had actually been sitting in my files for a few months. I finally got around to adding the new lettering and completing the page today.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic for April 27, 2010 has been given a makeover with fresh digital inks and colors and new lettering. Shading by Aggie Janicot.

Aggie also did this:

Silly version of the page. This could become a tradition.

Read it here: Let them stew, I say!. Highlights and shade by Aggie Janicot.

Game plan for the rest of the week: I want to go back to the earliest penciled pages and digitally ink as many of them as I can. In addition, I want to create at least one more new page for Abúi's Travels and maybe one for yet another comic.

Digitally inking those old pencil pages is turning out to be a smooth, easy and fun process now. I am, however, aware that as I gain consistency throughout the series, I'm losing some of the things that only pencil can do. Right now, I'm looking at a silhouette of two characters, but when I look closer, what looks like a flat dark grey shadow is in fact full of nuances indicating shadows, highlights, the hems of costumes, and so on. You can't reproduce that in ink. Well, I can't.

I'm also taking a leaf out of my wife's book and revising as I go. So far, there isn't an awful lot that desperately needs it. While pages 62-70 aren't the very best in the storyline, they are what they are and I'm happy to leave them mostly as they are. But I leave the option to make art changes open on a panel-by-panel basis.

And while we're on the subject of Abúi's Travels, there's a new page up. This is one of the biggest-looking pages I've ever come up with, due to the detailed backgrounds and the shading and highlights provided by Rona. It's also got a ton of cameos from other webcomics. Backgrounds and crowds make for a lot of extra work, but in this case, it was worth it.

Rona's been updating her own science-fiction comic Hekatomb on a weekly basis for almost a year now. Lately, after a catastrophic CMS update, she's also been re-uploading her vampire horror comic American Gothic Daily in a revised version. What she does is she takes each old page and draws/paints digitally over them, expands the canvas size and adds new materials. While reconstructing the site, she posts the old versions of each page as an addendum to the new ones, so you can see how much progress she has made since she started the comic in 2006. It's a very fast, efficient process with staggering results. Go see it.

I have a week off right now, so I've been working on Feral some. I've been inking penciled pages from 2008-2010 and adding color flats to them, which I give to Rona to add shades and highlights to. Yesterday, I gave her the revised version of the page for April 11, 2010 and she sent me back this:

Silly version of page 97 of Feral

The final four episodes of the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan storyline The Corby Tribe have been remastered.

To read images with captions and all:
Paradise regained... for some! II
A Plain, yet Foodsome Repast I
A Plain, yet Foodsome Repast II
A Plain, yet Foodsome Repast III

The titles are the way they are because at the same time I redrew the final 2 episodes back in 2010, I split a bunch of double and triple episodes up into separate pages. These were originally conceived as extra-large bonus eps to celebrate the ending of the storyline itself, but the flow of the archived comics works better when each comic has its own page.

And with this, the remaster process is done! Unbelievably I started remastering comics in January 2006, while I was still working on Headsmen, Halloween and Feral. Once I got a day job, the whole process slowed down and I had to choose between either producing a slow trickle of new art every other month or so, or remastering the old stuff in the very limited amount of time that remained for me. I wanted to choose the former, but that became immensely frustrating to me because so much time would pass between art sessions. Eventually, about two years ago, I fully embraced the other option and at least got to be a bit productive again.

Now, though, I'm just glad this is done. With some changes to my daily schedule, I think I should at least be able to write and draw daily. I'm not promising new episodes this week, but definitely this year.

The Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comics for September 6 through 12, 2002 have been remastered. We're still in the dénouement.

To read, including captions:
Impulsive implosion, or impassiveness?
Brush-off and morph-lust
Returns from a job hunt
September 10, 2002
Morph-lust sated
Paradise regained... for some

Watched Desolation of Smaug yesterday and actually enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of time for anything Tolkien usually, but as silly as some of the movie was, the cinematography was beautiful, the acting was stellar and the action and comedy sequences were thrilling/funny. I promised my wife I wouldn't giggle through the serious bits and was able to keep my promise.