'Sup December ... You Still Here?

/

It's that awkward time of the year when I want to be on winter break and drawing nonstop, reading Calvin & Hobbes, and playing Donkey Kong on the N64. Alas, for me - it's back to work this week. But does that mean I have to stop eating cookies and listening to holiday music and generally pretending I'm still on some kind of vacation? I sure hope not. Well, since as I briefly mentioned last week, my computer ka-putzed, things have been a little hectic trying to get a new machine up and running that will allow me to limp along until I can buy a new one. Luckily my dad is the Frankenstein of computer hardware, so he and my boyfriend rigged up a nice little zombie to get me by.

Just a couple questions I had for YOU all in the meantime, though ...

As you know, I have two webcomics going - Gods & Undergrads and Bonnie N. Collide.  As things stand now, Bonnie is usually once-a-week updated and G&U maaaaybe once every two weeks. Now, I know that sporadic updating is the WORST trait a webcomic could possibly have. Alas, with the day job sometimes I find it a little tricky being consistent. So, my question to you guys out there is ... would you rather things update once on a semi-weekly schedule like they do now, orrrr update maybe twice a month with more than one strip/page at a time? I know everyone has a different opinion when it comes to their comics, but I wanted to give you guys a chance to chime in.

... Now I'm going to run off and pretend it's snowing outside or something. December!

'Sup December ... You Still Here?

/

It's that awkward time of the year when I want to be on winter break and drawing nonstop, reading Calvin & Hobbes, and playing Donkey Kong on the N64. Alas, for me - it's back to work this week. But does that mean I have to stop eating cookies and listening to holiday music and generally pretending I'm still on some kind of vacation? I sure hope not. Well, since as I briefly mentioned last week, my computer ka-putzed, things have been a little hectic trying to get a new machine up and running that will allow me to limp along until I can buy a new one. Luckily my dad is the Frankenstein of computer hardware, so he and my boyfriend rigged up a nice little zombie to get me by.

Just a couple questions I had for YOU all in the meantime, though ...

As you know, I have two webcomics going - Gods & Undergrads and Bonnie N. Collide.  As things stand now, Bonnie is usually once-a-week updated and G&U maaaaybe once every two weeks. Now, I know that sporadic updating is the WORST trait a webcomic could possibly have. Alas, with the day job sometimes I find it a little tricky being consistent. So, my question to you guys out there is ... would you rather things update once on a semi-weekly schedule like they do now, orrrr update maybe twice a month with more than one strip/page at a time? I know everyone has a different opinion when it comes to their comics, but I wanted to give you guys a chance to chime in.

... Now I'm going to run off and pretend it's snowing outside or something. December!

Bonnie N. Collide Update!

/

Finally, right? I've been a bit incommunicado recently because I was whisked away to the great north (i.e. Maine) for a couple days last week. What was my impression of Maine? Unfortunately, it wasn't the quaint town full of hot storybook characters bumping into one another, as Once Upon A Time has led me to believe. No, rather it was a vast, wintry landscape full of people in plaid and stores with names like "Dave's Adult Supermarket", where the sun set at 3:30pm. No joke, the moon was out at 5:00pm and I had no idea where the hell I was.

But anyway, I'm back and in a flurry to try to grab hold of Christmas spirit before it's actually Christmas and I've missed it. I've already baked cookies and watched Love Actually, so I'm off to a good start!

Ahem, anyway, here's your Bonnie!

 

Wrist Cuffs are Back!

/

 

My Which Greek God are You? wrist cuffs are back in my Etsy store! My mom foolishly let me borrow her sewing machine. Which has been a pretty crazy adventure (sewing), considering how many times I was convinced that I was going to remain stuck to the machine for life. FOR LIFE! Leggo me, crazy bobbin. But it's cool, we're friends now, and as long as I speak in quiet, melodic tones, the sewing machine respects the boundaries of my personal space.

More Spirit Guides

/

I'm chugging along with my next print project, so here's a peek at the next couple of Spirit Guides I've finished and have in the queue .... What's a spirit guide, you ask? Wellll, it's just my latest idea for a quirky way to celebrate some of my favorite characters, and package them in a portable medium that could be displayed anywhere! That way, people wouldn't have to deal with the age-old question floating around prints - to frame or not to frame? With these cute little hanging prints, they can dangle wherever suits your fancy!

Ron Swanson is my Spirit Guide is finally up in my Etsy Shop!

Next up is Roger Sterling, who's progressed from this:

... to this! He's almost done and ready to go on the market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up is Joan Harris ....

 

I'm still not sure if I'm going to go ahead with the Sawyer and Anna Lucia and Herman Blume prints I talked about here. I love them as characters, but I'm not sure my drawings do them justice. I'm going to hold off on finishing them until I tackle some of these other characters that I've been dying to draw.

 

Printsy Prints

/

My first two Spirit Guides are done!

Margot
Ron Swanson

Since I want them to be portable and hangable, I glued the prints to thin sheets of wood, attached a piece of jute cord to the back ....

... and then I added just a few key qualities of the spirit guide to the back.

I'll post some photos of Ron once I've assembled him too, but for now Margot's up in my Etsy Store!

Spirit Guides

/

My latest idea for a fun project to work on, which capitalizes on my fondness for characters, is to create little mini Spirit Guides. I'm taking a bunch of my all-time favorite characters from movies and TV shows and re-imagining them as inhabiting certain qualities I wish I had, or just wish I had on a particular day. For example .... Here's Margot Tenenbaum.

She's someone I view not only as the mopey playwright created by Wes Anderson (whose style I drool over), but as someone who possesses certain qualities I wish I had. Sure, she's sneaky, purposefully vague, and not the most loyal. But she's also romantic, resourceful, and unabashedly enigmatic. She's found a way to control her misery in a way that remains appealing, as easily as she carves out spaces in her bathroom and a museum to be her private sanctuaries.

Each Spirit Guide I create will be colored, printed, and assembled similar to my Giles Print:

 

They'll be hangable, so they can be displayed wherever you need them. At work, at home, in the kitchen, in your gym locker, wherevs. I'll post the finished ones as I do them, but in the meantime here are some more characters I can't help but love ....

 

 

 

 

Webby Webby Bang Bang

/

So I'm working on revamping my website. Which is a pretty daunting task, considering how much time it normally takes me just to edit one page or (god forbid) revamp the entire concept I have for a series of pages. When you have 291 pages of one single webcomic, the thought of restructuring it usually doesn't go too far in my head before it hits a brick wall. I could spend 4 hours revamping a series of pages, or actually post a comic page. Or, y'know, go get something to eat.

Over the years I've gone through a few design phases, but mainly I've relied heavily on image maps.

Image maps always appealed to me because I could switch up the layout, images, and color palette without having to do to much coding around it. I loved the idea of big, bright images that people could click on, rather than having to navigate through tables and text links. But anytime I wanted to change a page, I did it individually, without considering the bigger picture. So my site has haphazardly grown over the years into a bunch of pages that may/may not match one another's overall theme:

As you can see, any sense of an overall design scheme is pretty much nonexistent. Recently, I've learned a lot more CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript, so I've been itching to redesign it. But if I worked in the way I normally work, it would remain pretty much the same. An updated piece here, an outdated piece there. I'm terrible at stepping back and painstakingly planning a process once I'm excited about something. I want to DO it, so let's do it! Instant gratification! Yay!

Luckily for me, I attended the HOW Interactive Design conference last week (as I may have over-mentioned already), and it helped me realize the value of putting on the brakes. Since this is such a HUGE change I'm looking to make, I'd like to make sure and do it right. (And by right, I mean the way that I define right, which could very well still include fake links and messed up pages. And probably will.) So, like  a proper grown-up, I've started with the first steps. Some sketches of the overall page structure/layout.

Next comes the wireframe, which is a black and white no-frills version of the navigation and what needs to happen.

(Okay, truth - I started the wireframe and then got excited/sidetracked by creating a mood board full of different things that I want to include):

Yep, off to a good start already. But I'll keep you guys updated on my process along the way, and I'd love to hear if any of you out there have gone through a similar site-wide redesign. Were you able to wait until the entire thing was planned? Or did you just start coding left and right, process be damned?