Tabula Rasa - A Lesson Learned.

A day late but not unexpected at this point, I've got a full post on what's been going down in my neck of the woods. So sit back, relax, and I'll try to make this as coherent as possible - irregular sleeping hours do wonders to a person's ability to write.

A week ago last Friday there was an exploit in my Wordpress install of Stacked Hand - the plugin I was using for newsletters, specifically - and malware was hacked into my site. Because of my update schedule I didn't catch it until the following Monday, and my site was closed down later that week. Thanks to some help, I've cleared out the old archive, done a fresh install on the site and starting from scratch on the build. I didn't think of backing up the site itself for such an occasion, so the format is starting over from new.

Obviously, this means that the site right now is threadbare as all getout. I've learned from the launch in April that I need a much more solid design for the site itself. So what this boils down to is this: for the time being I'll be working on redesigning the site to better reflect the theme of Stacked Hand, and then putting the pages back up to start the schedule up again. For the time being page updates will be suspended, but you can see what's been posted so far on the comic's mirror site. I apologize for the inconvenience, and will be working to fix this as soon as I can.

Keep being Awesome,
C-Z

Cleaning House, Entrepreneur Blogging and Updates.

Yes yes, I know, I've once again spaced out and left this space vacant. In my defense, things have been steadily picking up since the last lengthy post I did here. A quick rundown, for those who haven't been paying attention:

• Stacked Hand has officially launched! The page itself is still in a good need of a website tune-up, I just need to set aside time to implement it. The current update schedule is biweekly on Mondays. (next update is Jun 23rd). 
• There is also a mini comic in progress telling more of the exploits of our yet-to-be-named main character. Don't worry. He gets his introduction soon enough. 
• I am busy at work developing another set of prints for next year's convention season. The first series is based on the art style of Alphonse Mucha. 



Which, while it is visually appealing as all hell is very. Very. Intricate when it wants to be.

• Thought Bubble has also launched over at the Peoria Journal Star's website! Each week I review webcomics and small press books, and take a look at the comic culture in general from where we are now. It's been going for about a month now, check it out. 
• And of course, I'm still teaching, with a few new courses to start up here in the oncoming weeks. I'll have more information on that as it develops in the future. 

If you want to help support me, get access to more updates/WIPs like the one I just posted above, and get monthly request sketches and new wallpapers, give a spin over to my Patreon account.

This past week at 1MillionCups in Peoria the discussion was brought around to doing a community blog that features/spotlights the hundreds of entrepreneurs that are in the local community and whatever projects that they're working on. I would love to try to get a push towards at least a listing of the group in that way, or a site that could be used as an aggregate feeder that would link to the entrepreneur's own writing on their current work. One of the things my teachers used to instill in us was a high value in production blogs, no matter how much of the process you actually want to keep hidden from the general public until the big reveal. You can still do bits and pieces - snippets, really - and get folks interested in what you're working on. At least, I'm guessing that's why you're all here, right? </rimshot>

Anyway. I leave off with a mental note to myself to seriously clean up my label list for this blog. It's cluttered and pretty awful. Til next time!

Launch Date!

Normally I'd be trying my hardest to spend today working on coloring the comic, but for a little stubborn corgi trying to lick his stitches, I'm kind of distracted. (As I type this, he's finally curled up to sleep for a little bit) Having to work away from the usual station will see how this weekend goes.

Hopefully, by this time tomorrow, he'll completely forget about the sutures.

I wanted to let y'all know that I've got a tentative release date for the comic - April 7th! Until that time I'll be sparse around online sources as I'm trying to get the finishing touches done on the comic. Again, if tumblr's your thing you can follow the comic here, or you can get updates emailed to you on the main site. After that, I'll be setting up a Patreon account for the comic if you're interested in keeping it rolling. (or it may be sooner, we'll see how time goes.)

Til next time!

ENERGY DRINKS REPLACE WATER!

I tend to do a bunch of regular updates, disappear for awhile, then come back and swear I'll never go silent....and then promptly do the same thing I did last time.

I've been splitting my time between multiple projects. Some of them I really can't show anyone yet, but I thought I'd tease you folks with a screengrab of one of the pages from Stacked Hand. I've been trucking on' long with this comic, I'm so pumped to show it finally. Looking back it's been nearly a year since I started writing it down in my moleskine. Kind of crazy.

I've got a (very, very late) Birthday Gift to finish for a friend of mine, too, sometime this week inbetween 3D renders and comic pages. This last week health has been somewhat dismal, with Physical Therapy and other things taxing on my neck like mad. But we've got a case of Red Bull, I think I know how to use the espresso machine, and I'm ready to go.

I'll give you a hint: JGL is trying to turn him into a movie. 

That's...really it, for now. Making a mental note to talk more about getting back into Game Design after next weekend.

- C-Z

Getting Every Thing In Order.

It feels like it was yesterday when I sat down to update things. This week has blown by fast. I'll keep this week short.

I'm hoping that, tentatively, I can start pushing updates in late March. I'm not nailing down an exact date just yet, but that'll probably show up in the next couple of weeks.

Yes, gradient. Boo. But the font change seems so much nicer. 

In the meantime, you can still hit up the website for the newsletter.

This week, my copy of Manga Studio 5 came in. I can successfully say that, with the exception of a few effects I'm still trying to tinker with, I can use this program for the comic and not have to worry about losing any style or the comic looking too terribly "unpolished" and rough around the edges. It's still available on Amazon for twenty-seven dollars, I cannot recommend the program and Frenden's Wonderful Brush Sets enough.

Anywho, that's all I really have for right now. I'll catch you guys on the flip side!

Tools of the Trade

I can officially say that my computer is now back up to working condition! All of my previous comic files are now nestled in their home, and I've made several different alarms to make sure I back up everything I have. (Honestly, can't be to terribly careful anymore.) Since I'm still trying to figure out a good time table on the comic itself, I thought I'd give a little tour of some of the tools I use on the computer. 

And yes, post-it notes are Kind of a Big Deal.

While I've been doing a lot of the extra work for the comic in Photoshop, I'm starting to lean away from using them in favor of other programs. The brushes and blending that I use are prevalent in Manga Studio 4, but I will be upgrading to Manga Studio 5 in the near future. 

The inking and flat coloring have been fairly simple so far in MS 4 EX, but I've heard enough about MS 5 (considering it's on sale right now) and that it's coloring capabilities are on par with Photoshop. We'll see where that goes - hopefully, it'll help me settle on a style for the comic. (or at least kick that perfectionist feeling out of high gear. )

Photoshop is enough of an industry standard that I really don't feel like I should go into it. I've been using Photoshop for around thirteen years at this point, but when they shifted to the subscription model I sort of lost that "Adobe Fanboy Glow" in my eyes. I have CS5 and it's still one of my apps I use a lot (and adore), but I'm shying away from it outside of teaching work. There are things far more affordable. 

I've also been experimenting more and more with Mischief since I got my laptop back. The situation's improved a lot as far as lineart goes, but I'm still floundering about with coloring. I've kept it as my sketch/doodle app for now, and I do recommend people give it a try. 

Coffitivity is a site (and application) that generates coffee shop white noise. They did a study about people working better against the calmer background of a coffee shop as opposed to office noises or just general silence. I've been using it for a few days and so far have really enjoyed using it. I tend to pair it with listening to podcasts (don't know if that's weird or not) but the balance has been acceptable for me. For music, otherwise, I just use Spotify. 

Another webcomic artist turned me onto Frenden and his brush sets. Since then, I've bought both the PS and the MS 4 brushes and they are smooth. I've always struggled with achieving beautiful line weight variances like this, but with these brushes they're much easier to achieve. Before it was like painting calligraphy with the dirtiest, nastiest, split-hair brush you could find. Frenden does reviews about both wacom and monoprice tablets, and has convinced me that if I ever upgrade I should move to a yinova as opposed to a cintiq. 

In the end, that's a fraction of the software I use, but it's a good start. Catch you next week! 

Back online, back (somewhat) on track.

This week we finally ordered an external harddrive port so we can gut the old laptop and move over some of the missing files that I need for the comic. With that, I think we'll be entering into a psuedo spring-cleaning: whatever I haven't touched in a year from my old laptop goes into storage. While this new laptop's speed is much, much faster, I don't have as much room to keep things on here (and I'm going to try to keep everything free of digital clutter...as strange as it is to say it.)

So what have I been doing in the meantime? Well, mostly tea.

Well, a LOT of tea.

About a year or so ago I started putting together blends based on Guild Wars 2 characters and only recently finished up the artwork for them. Mostly because the labels didn't work for me before. Eir's Tea, for example, has gone through four labels on it's own.

From this, the original name of the tea...

to this, which still didn't feel right.

There are more blends planned for other areas (along with a set of teas not related to any fandom in particular because, let's face it, not everyone's a fan of everything). It's not much, but every time some one orders one of those teas, I get more money off when I go to fuel my own tea supply, which, in turn, allows me to test more blends of teas. (Also, let me know if you're new to the site, coupons are a lovely thing.)

It's a hobby of mine, mostly, that comes up on the side. Much like the SCA and related activities, which was last weekend.

With apologies to Ms. Diane Peterson-Dover for borrowing her photo.

But yes, that's what I've been up to in the fallout from the mini-computer-crisis. Realizing now that it's been roughly three weeks since the computers both had issues and two since I got the PC up and running, and about a week for the new laptop to get to a state of normalcy.

I will have more on a projected release date for Stacked Hand after next weekend. Until then,

-C-Z