These are actually pieces of a much larger project, it involved about 17-20 (?) different characters. It was printed as a one of a kind Giclee print by American Art Editions it was donated to the Annual NERennies Fundraiser Dinner and managed to bring in some decent money.

This is what it looked like when I unwrapped it.

The goal with this wallpaper was to create a very dynamic image that appeared to be in motion without any of the trappings normally associated with motion in comics, ie motion lines blurred background or any other tricks we comic artists normally use. I believe I have in fact achieved that, hopefully you do as well.

To download the paper just go over to the calender on the left hand side and choose your size.

This is a sketch for this months wallpaper, the goal is to have it be pretty dynamic and visceral. Hopefully I have achieved that…

4 years and my style has gone through some interesting changes. When I started this comic it was all done by hand (except the lettering) now it it has moved to completely digital. The whole of my style has evolved, and I think it has evolved for the better each stage was a natural progression to where I am now. And while I know I will continue to improve I am pretty happy with my current style.

Over the course of these 4 years my life has seen many changes some good, some bad, and some downright awful, but through it all I continued this comic. Some of those changes made it into the comic, though a lot of them were “hidden” in metaphor. Others are just blatantly stated, and still others are just to close and raw to deal with.

In the course of these 4 years I have not become a hugely famous web cartoonist, I have a small dedicated audience. That gives me encouragement and lets me know that I am not just talking to myself when I do this. They also rallied behind me to raise the money for a new Wacom Intous 4 tablet for me, because my readers are full of win.

Thanks to all the folks who have kept me going through these 4 years and I hope to continue to bring you strange comics for years to come.

Ok it’s late… but at least I did a sketch! I really need to get back into the swing of doing sketches when i have the chance, I have been a tad consumed getting things in place for the new print comic project and have let the weekly sketches slide. Also I need to start broadcasting my drawing sessions live again.

This is the partially completed first panel of my latest comic project, this is taking some time to create because it is all new characters who I am still getting a handle on drawing and also it is my first work for print in quite sometime. Overall I am pretty happy with how it is coming out so far.

Don’t worry I’ll be posting more details about the project as they become more firmly planted in the here and now. But I am pretty excited about this project if only for the fact that it will bring my work to a different audience.

Ok, it’s a bit late but here it is.

This is a test sketch for a new project I am working on, tentatively called “Comicality” and yes it features pirates. The strangest thing about this project is it is for print as opposed to the web. Strange to have to worry about print constraints again after it not being an issue for so long.

Most of you probably already know that webcomics.com has moved to a subscription based business model, and for those of you who didn’t SURPRISE!! That is what it was like for folks who visit the site regularly, one day all the content was free the next they had to pay to see it.

Now before you folks get up in arms about how Brad has been giving away his priceless pearls of wisdom on how to run a successful webcomic business for years now, and how he deserves to be paid for his wisdom, remember he was part of a quartet that wrote this book about “How to make Webcomics” didn’t he get paid for that? Personally all I ever saw the webcomics.com site as was a way to promote the book, “Look here is an article about X, and if you want more info you can always buy our book.”. Which I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it by the way and I would even recommend it to people.

Brad certainly deserves something for giving so much back to the community, maybe a great humanitarian award or something? For those of you who don’t know I maintain a Renaissance Faire community called NERennies, we provide a place for rennies to meet online and we provide valuable information (via our members) to folks just getting started in this crazy thing called Rennie-dom. Now do I deserve compensation for giving so much of my time and energy to this community? Well, if I were being paid for it I wouldn’t be “giving” my time to the community would I?

I will admit I am not a frequent reader of the site, the articles I have read were interesting but not compelling enough for me to visit more than 6 times a year at best. So the subscription would not really be worth it for me, maybe for others it is worth it.

Now we will get down to meat and potatoes of my issue with this sudden decision.

1. I was slow to coming around to the Halfpixel mindset that subscription walls don’t work but after some very convincing arguments from their side I came to believe they are right about that. One their main arguments would be if it didn’t work for the NY Times what are the odds it will work any where else. Somehow Brad and Co. have convinced themselves that since their site is an information site it will work. I must say that this sudden change of what works is a bit disconcerting to me. Heck maybe micropayments actually will work in this crazy new world we find ourselves in. What say you Brad and Co. care to look into iCents?
2. There are people who submitted articles to the site and now those articles are locked behind a pay wall. You didn’t notify them of this change, and your response has been that all they need to do is contact you and you will take them down? This is not how this should have happened and if it had happened on anyone else site you guys would have been the first to cry foul. This is what I would consider a major violation of trust between the publisher and the author, in my opinion it is the publishers responsibility to notify the author of the changes and ask for permission to use the article. Perhaps there was some clause in the original contract (or whatever passed for one when someone submitted an article) that said Webcomics.com could do whatever they wanted with the article. If there was no such clause then I feel it is the duty of the Publisher to contact each author and obtain permission to use the article for the new version of webcomics.com.  Is this a pain the ass, perhaps depending on how many authors we are talking. Would it be tough to keep under wraps  so word of the impending change did not leak out, most definitely. Do these things change that it was indeed the right thing to do, no they do not.

That in a nutshell is my objection to this change, does it matter a lick? Only to me. Will it change the minds of the webcomics.com folks? Nope. But there are my thoughts on the matter and since this is my site I figure I am entitled to post them.

Have a wonderful day all.

ps: I must say that after reading the comments (all 8 million of them… ok it wasn’t 8 million but there were a lot) I was struck by how easily it degenerated into name calling. Do people not have the ability to debate in a calm and reasoned manner? Gesssh people…

Here are the specs:

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