That Worked Fast. Bonus Update Tommorow!

Apparently the old adage of having many interested fans vs. one dedicated fan just paid off.

Thanks to that, we've got two bonus updates to do. One goes up tomorrow, because this particular fan was eager for his fix, and the other goes up next Wednesday. At some point in-between the two we should have the usual Sunday update as well.

And at some point in all of that I'll be over here in the corner blinking in disbelief. Hoo Boy.

BarCamp Recap (and some Comic Pluggage!)

Just came back from BarCamp Atlanta, which is an overnight convention where you put a bunch of hackers, geeks, and otherwise smart people together, get 'em all to host panels on the fly talking about whatever it is they're interested in talking about, and hopefully you get enough folk that want to hear 'em talk too. No pressure, lots of fun, always something to do or see or nibble on . . .

. . . and apparently a good number of folk who had no idea about how big webcomics are. I ended up hosting a webcomics panel last night that went over really well; I'd say 8-10 people in the room, and a lot of 'em grabbed pins after I was done and were just really impressed in general at how much effort people go to in telling their stories and convincing people to just give 'em money. Even managed to get one of 'em to walk me though signing up for a proper domain name, so if you haven't already, check out lastres0rt.com (yes, the 'o' in resort is a zero).

Most of the panel actually ended up being about a bunch of the comics I frequent and what I happen to think are examples of good stuff in the field. What actually ended up happening through was that I gave a brief overview of the Morning Coffee Firefox Extension and as a result, I showed off the comics that I had listed for Friday's lineup. My apologies if your comic isn't in this list, as it's just a review of the ones I showed off (and a brief overview of what I said about 'em, if anything special) since a couple of the guys asked me to post a list of the ones I talked about. There's other goodies, but hey, I ran out of time as it was.

• Exterminatus Now - A good class act, loved the big battle scene at the top. One of the better-rendered works.
• Ugly Hill - Can only say so much about a comic when it's currently in guest strip mode.
• Schlock Mercenary - Nothin' but good stuff about this one. Good writing, good color, even told 'em about the buffer and how having a few comics in reserve is useful. I'm sure the barely-dressed Elf helped, considering I was one of the few women at this thing.
• MegaTokyo - Eh... I basically admitted that if I hadn't gotten hooked on it previously, I probably wouldn't be reading it now. Because of the erratic schedule Fred keeps, it's almost better to wait for the books than to try and keep up online. To say the least, not a glowing review.
• PvP - Same Chapter, different verse. At least Megatokyo's late because Fred knocks himself out on quality; I'm relatively certain that if Kurtz wasn't an early adopter, he wouldn't have near the same following.
  
• xkcd - Gloriousness. Come on, it was practically a geek con, what WASN'T I going to say about this one?
• DMFA - I ended up showing off more about how Amber collects donations than the comic itself, since at least part of the panel was showing how people made money off their webcomics. Specifically the Wallpaper Wars — or as one guy put it, "Choose your Own Adventure, but with money!" In hindsight, I wish I'd shown off the Abel vs. Regina war instead. Much more dynamic and a little easier to read when you've got to work with a projector.
• StarSlip Crisis - Much love. Mostly talked about how distinct the characters in this strip are, even for a highly stylized form like Straub's.
  
• Evil Inc. - Another generally great comic. They loved the general storyline too. ^_^
• The Devil's Panties - Made for a nice segue into places like ComicGenesis and Smackjeeves. And hey, who doesn't love a local artist?
• ps238 - Showed off where Aaron has his books for sale on the site elsewhere as well.
  

All in all, a pretty decent collection of comics, with a lot of examples of how comics differ based on their quality, style, and update schedule, along with a smattering of 'A-Listers'. (and yes, I showed off my own stuff as well, but only after the others — after all, this was meant as an introduction to comics, talking about donations and other ways to make money off a brand, some comparisons with blogging, and so on).

Which just goes to show that even when you're at a place where people are doing nothing BUT talking about how to shape the internet, they're still not always getting the whole picture. ;)

Page 33 - Yes, this page gave me fits. It's pretty obvious to see why.

At least it makes a good color reference page for future pages.

The next few months of pages are going to be reasonably self-contained just by the sheer number of people we have to follow in this particular storyline. Fortunately, it also means that when we get around to the conventions soon, we'll have plenty of action and fun for them to see.

I keep bringing this up, but it's important: if you're going to be here for one of the two Atlanta conventions and you plan on saying hello, send an email. There's no official panel for either convention or even a table set up in Artist's Alley, so if you're looking for me you might have a hard time of it.

Page 31: Meet the Contestants

Finally, we get to see all that the galaxy's got to offer, and you can tell somebody put diversity on the menu. They've all got names, but whether or not they all live long enough to tell their stories is another matter.

Still having a little trouble getting back into the swing of things, which may be just as well since school'll be starting up again soon. I still want to try and finish things up so the first semester's worth of comics is done before I return.

As for Dragon*Con and Anime Weekend Atlanta, the button order's been sent off and the pamphlet was finished midday yesterday, which means everything's good to go for it. The pamphlet won't be posted until at least October, so if you want it sooner, a little donation to paypal for "shipping and handling" is appreciated. So for your money, you get not only the new Daisy Archanis wallpaper, you also get a never-before-seen pamphlet sent to you.

And hey, if you're heading to Atlanta for either convention and get to see me, so much the better!

Have your Say in the new Facebook group!

Yup: If you use Facebook, I'm asking in the Last Resort group about which characters people want to see more of in the convention swag. Since I'll be out, I won't be able to act on the results for a while until I return.

Worst case, I ignore everybody's opinion. But at least give me one to ignore if I must.

Page 27: Oh, the Irony in this Page.

The irony, of course, is in (temporarily) letting my Dad handle updates.

Okay, in fairness, as much as I represent myself through Jigsaw as a 'fursona' or avatar or whatever the hip new word is, Cypress is the one modeled off me more in terms of my personality. That said, I sorta see the relationship between Cypress and Vince as being two parts what I'm like with my Dad, and one part what the McMahons must feel like.

That sums up this current storyline, and next week I'll need to entrust my Dad with the next part... which we can only hope goes up without a hitch. No, he won't be updating the blog, but seeing how I'm having to dumb down the update process for him as is, that may be a minor blessing. Attempting to teach him went something like this:

"Okay, so we open these php files in notepad -- you'll need to tell the file viewer to show you 'all files', 'cause it treats php files weird for some reason -- and edit here, here, and here, and then you open winSCP, go to this directory-."

"... can you just put some premade files in a special directory so I can just go to that week and upload it instead?"

. . . I know my Dad's supersmart and everything, but really, when it comes to interfaces, you guys are spoiled rotten. Spoiled, I tell you.

Trying out StumbleUpon

What it is: You sign up on their website, install a little browser plugin, and then trawl the internet. Rate sites up or down. If it's a site that's new to the system, you get to add a review in addition to this rating to help give people a better clue. If you get bored, Click 'Stumble' and rate whatever it is you just came across.

Why you care: 'cause it's another one of those "Web 2.0" gadgets and it's a good way to get attention for your work if other comics-minded people are checking you out.

My Attempts: Well, I'm not a fan of most 'Random Toolbar Gadgets', but I could see where this is useful. As a bonus, if you care about aesthetics, hitting Ctrl + F11 toggles the bar so you can shove it aside when you want.

There's not many comics in the system so far, so adding yours to the pot can't hurt you; as stated above, it takes a lot of people to affect a rating one way or the other, but once it's in the pot, it gets a pretty steady diet of hits.

After a few experimental clicks on Stumble ("Ooo! Jackson Pollack-style flash toy! Must Play!") It becomes clear the name of the game is to make a turing test out of the internet: You take a certain site, weigh the positive clicks against the negative, and come up with an individual profile for each user.

I've already added Last Resort into the system. Here's hoping it comes out all right.

Always Have Giveaway Material

I don't care if it's buttons, pamphlets, business cards, whatever. Have a sample of your work and make sure you have it on hand when you're out in public.

This goes right in hand with having your sketchbook nearby. Public events (you know what we mean, right? We're talking cookouts, parades, general occasions where you're expected to at least say 'hello') are great times to try and expand your stuff and reach out to people you might never have picked up otherwise.

I just came back from watching some fireworks, and fortunately had brought some of the Four-by-Four pamphlets from MomoCon: even managed to give a few out. They're as ideal as a sample gets, though I was a little embarrassed they only had my DeviantArt URL on 'em instead of the new site's URL.

Still, in a situation where you get to talk to the artist, this isn't a big problem. Consider it incentive to strike up more conversation.

Page 26: Cypress is one Crafty Croc.

Not that any of the characters really have room to be stupid when they're about to let a dozen criminals or so loose on their new holovision escapade, but Cypress doesn't look like she's about to let the apple fall too far from the tree; either Cypress is a better judge of Jigsaw's character than she has any business being, or she knows something about Jigsaw that even Damien and Nate could only dream of.

Those of you with good eyes will notice something a little off about Daisy as well; of course, those who've been clicking on her to donate won't be as shocked. Call it one of those little details that runs up there with Jigsaw's violin case.

Page 24: Yes, we have a pink... blonde... princess. Oh Dear.

As more and more of the pages go up one at a time (and I consequently get further ahead in the story), it becomes harder to love certain pages for one sort of experimentation done in them or another. This is one of those pages where I sorta feel I overdid the background shading, because it looks like we're watching a game of Super Paper Last Resort. I will admit I'm pretty damn proud of Nathan's fishnet gloves though. Those were a real feat to pull off.

Wanting to criticize my earlier comics is probably just an inevitable consequence of keeping the backlog, and while I know I'm saving myself work down the road, it's also difficult to keep holding the other work back and only leaking bits and pieces of it, through some of the ads I've been making for the site and otherwise.

Sooner or later I'll figure out an awesome use for them. For now, I art.

Standing Out by Blending In

This ties back to the Lazy Hacker approach: looking for a method of 'least resistance' in order to get exactly what you want. Fortunately, the Lazy Hacker approach also lends itself to a great trick when it comes to getting noticed; by only altering the cosmetic elements of what's involved, viewers get a whole new experience even if it's the exact same everything else under the hood.

To wit: This blog is being created thanks to Blogger, and as such I grabbed one of the first templates I could think of. Actually, I ended up grabbing 'Rounders' instead because it was more grok-able than the first one I picked up.

I shouldn't have to go too far in explaining why this simply wasn't good enough for my tastes. It's a perfectly fine layout, yes, and it has nice rounded edges, which looks better than sharp corners. But the colors are all wrong (despite the header being a nice red), and if I wanted to change any of the colors, I couldn't deviate far from the presets without the corner images themselves clashing. Furthermore . . . it looked obvious it was a Blogger page. Regardless of what my readers might 'think of me' for using it, leaving it in a default setting didn't make any sense at all when it was completely different from my comic site's layout. If nothing else, it had to look like the two pages went together.

To Fix: One of the few saving graces of the fact I'd picked up an otherwise unsuitable template was that (as I mentioned) the code was quite clean in comparison to some of the other templates, and I had a general idea that the main fixes I needed to do were mostly image-based; in other words, I needed to find the image URL references in the template given, and replace them with a few of my own. To keep the amount of necessary work to a minimum, I would often reference the template images given to make sure I was on the right track with sizes and general image/page anatomy involved.

The main issue with this approach was that the template was designed to work with the specific images it had, and so where mine deviated, I had to adjust the code to make them fit. Typically this involved altering the 'padding' of the given sections and constantly hitting the 'Preview' button on the template each time I made even minor changes to see what effect I had.
Obsessive, perhaps, but it worked.

Wherever something didn't fit in with the new scheme, it was "commented out" of the HTML coding, just in case I realized I wanted it for later (which is where that ugly text that was replaced by the new banner image went) . For the most part though, the actual layout of the page went untouched — the profile box barely looks different at all, although that's more by coincidence than anything else. The color DID change slightly to match the banner's edge, but that's about it.

The end goal was achieved in only a few hours' time though: We've broken free of the Blogger default, and made it look like it actually belongs to the domain. We even managed to use the favicon to replace the arrows in the bullets, adding to the design reinforcement. It's not a completed change-over, but it's sufficient enough that it's worth leaving it alone for now to see how well it actually works.