First, I’d like to welcome the new readers visiting for the first time from Sheldon and Starslip Crisis. A little birdie (duckie?) told me that it was time for me to finally start with some advertising, and I hope it will help me get the word out about my labor of love – this webcomic.
It’s been a few weeks, but I wanted to share a few thoughts I’ve had going around in the back of my head. The first is, that I am getting serious about making a book (finally) collecting the best of the best strips from the first few years of the comic.
I want to do the book right, and I want to be happy with what I create (it will be my FIRST book, after all).So, with that in mind, I’ve decided to retool the art.
Why?
The short of the answer is, I don’t feel comfortable with the art in many of my older strips I hate the old art in my older strips. There are other reasons for this decision, namely:
- No high rez images for many of the older strips exist
- The older strips need a lot of work done to make them presentable,
and it would be easier for me to simply redraw it instead of mucking about with the old versions. - Did I mention that I hate the old art? :)
That takes me to pcweenies.org – now, my original plan was to feature daily updates to repopulate the nearly 9 year catalog of strips. I’m not sure how effective this has been from a resource perspective. I’m splitting my time between 3 sites now (Uncubed, pcweenies.org (V1), and this site – and it’s starting to wear me down.
So, what I’m proposing is to shelve pcweenies.org and use the extra time to focus on making the book. It feels like the right thing to do, and I’m one to follow my gut.
You can see a teaser of what the Before and After images for the book will be like. Thoughts appreciated.
-Krishna
Gotta say, I’m not sure I love this idea (I do love the comic, though). I agree that your artwork is worlds better now, but isn’t that progression part of the growth? They don’t go back and re-animate the older episodes of the Simpson’s, which look awful by comparison. Seems like if you’re doing a book of the history of PCW, that art is part of it.
Anyway, my < $.02. I can see why you’d want to do it, just not sure. GL with the book either way.
I like the updated are, but can understand how readers that have been with you since the beginning would like t see the progression as you improved (honestly, I am new reader).
Also, and you I have nothing to do with them, if you are still looking at who to publish the book, I suggest looking at Lulu (http://www.lulu.com). I have been thinking of using them for my own writing and have suggested it to others. Chris from Haunted Pixel Studios (http://www.hauntedpixelstudios.com/asylumantics/) has been using them for a few years now.
The last time you were kicking this idea around, I was all “yay! book!’ and thought it would be cool to see your original art – at least some – just to see how your artistic style has developed. I still feel that way. :-) But it is your book, so I say do it the way you want to. I’ll buy it regardless. :-)
Thanks for the Lulu suggestion, Schultzy – and welcome to the PCW! Matt, trinalin, I understand the need to keep the art pure, but in my case, with the older source files saved at 100ppi resolution and scaled to small values like 432px x 504 px, the resulting comics would look grossly pixelated when resized. Alas, I didn’t have the foresight back then to know I’d still be drawing the comic nearly 10 years later.