The Dawn Chapel

The weather outside is frightful

2011-12-21T20:42:33Z

You guys have probably picked up on this already but there isn’t going to be much happening as far as comic goes this week, and probably not next week either. Hella busy stressing out about holidays, sorry!

I’ll still have an open thread over the Christmas weekend so that you can yell at me if you wanna, though.

Open Thread 12/16/11: I am reconsidering commissions

2011-12-19T23:14:15Z

Do you remember how I disabled comments ages ago? Probably not, because I removed comments long before this comic had any kind of a readership. But now I want to try a thing; and that thing? Is comments.

Rather than have comments on individual comics, though, I am going to steal a page from some of the blogs I read and have an Open Thread party, wherein we can all talk about whatever, whether it’s the comic, or what your holiday plans are, or anything else.

I’ll tell you what I want to talk about, though, is commissions: I had a very interesting conversation with the Blotch duo the other day wherein they told me that if I wanted to make any kind of a decent living on my artwork, I need to stop taking them. And it makes sense: I spend so much time trying to get commissions done in order to make ends meet that I have no time at all to work on the comic, which is what is largely responsible for most of the interest in my work these days. So that’s something for me to think about.

I don’t think I’m ready to stop doing them completely, and certainly I am going to complete my existing queue, but I think that going forward, any commissioned work I take will have to be done with the understanding that I intend to sell prints of that work, and will be selected according to its viability for print sales. (And on the subject of print sales, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if I spent a bit more time preparing the ridiculous backlog of work I’ve completed over the last few months for printing so that I can make them available.)

I do have a bunch of ideas (like, a whole bunch) for themed collections and illustrated stories, and single pieces I’ve been wanting to do, which I just couldn’t budget the time for. The idea of stopping work on something that’s paid for up front to focus on stuff that might sell in the future is kind of scary to me, and honestly I expect I’m going to have to find a nine-to-five again until I figure out exactly how this is all going to work, but it’s been my experience that when I work from my own imagination and draw to my own tastes, that’s the stuff that always winds up resonating with other people. And for that reason, I am optimistic!

Anyway. That’s what’s going on with me. What’s going on with you? Do you guys want some possible worldbuildy spoilers about what’s going on with this boat? Because I am prepared to dish. Comments are open until Sunday night; I’ll try to be as active with the responses as possible!

I do enjoy giving orders

2011-12-14T23:51:04Z

Do you want to see something funny? And by funny, I mean terrible? Here’s a comparison study of what my scanner does to watercolors and what John’s does. I’m using the Brother MFC-6490cw and he’s using the Epson Expression 1640XL. Mine’s on the left, his is on the right.

Every time I scan one of my watercolors, it kills me a little to see what my scanner’s done with it. Most of the time I just sort of accept it, because I don’t want to bug John. But I just wanted you to know that I was not kidding when I said my scanner destroys my paintings.

I didn’t mention this on Thursday because I forgot, but if you are all up on every social network and art website everywhere, I’ve been a lot more active lately on Deviantart (where there is a Dawn Chapel group you might join) and on the Google Plus, which I’m quite fond of and have created a G+ page for The Dawn Chapel – should you be of a mind to plus-one that page, I’d certainly be grateful! And I will try to be in the habit of posting process sketches and worldbuilding notes to these places, if you’re the sort that likes the webcomic version of dvd extras.

I’ve been spending a bit of time every week livestreaming when I work on artwork, too. Most of the time it’s for working on commissioned pieces, but I’d like to get into the habit of livestreaming at a regular scheduled time for working on the comic, too. I am thinking Mondays and Tuesdays, 8am-12pm and then 1pm-4pm pacific time on those days. Possibly maybe. For the time being, twitter’s probably the best place to find out when I’m broadcasting.

So, those originals

2011-12-13T23:22:10Z

They’re in the store now. I also went through all the other originals I still had on hand and added them to the store, as well. So if you were holding out for any of the one-offs, there’s a big ol’ pile of them up for grabs!

Napping in the Hawser

2011-12-13T03:04:02Z

So, I’d make excuses but there really aren’t any this time! Well, there are a few, but excuses are tacky. And you know how much I hate to be tacky.

There’s been a lot going on. I went to two more cons since last we spoke, as I was a special guest at Rainfurrest in September, and then I was able to attend Midwest Furfest again this year thanks to the generosity of a friend. If you saw me in Seattle, you found me sharing a table with Ekwara‘s Tod Wills, and if you saw me in Chicago, then I was tabling with Rick Griffin of Housepets!. These dudes? These are the best dudes. This has been a good autumn for bro-ing out with my webcomics homeboys.

I have one more convention coming up and then I should be out of everyone’s hair until the summer, and that con is Further Confusion, which takes place right here in San Jose. I am once again on staff, heading up the Art Track events, because I didn’t learn my lesson hard enough last year. Worse, I’ve taken it upon myself to organize a public art exhibition, which I’ve got an open call out for submissions. So if you know anybody? And they can draw and paint stuff? Send them my way.

And, one more bit of good news! There’s another page on the way. It’s already finished, you guys. It’s scheduled automatically to go live on Thursday. This is nuts, I know.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain this manic pace week after week, but against my spouse’s advice I’m going to start putting the originals for this story for sale in the store right away, since this story is supposed to be in the neighborhood of 140+ pages long. My SO is concerned that when it comes time to publish this story in book form, not having the originals on hand might be problematic, given how unkind my scanner is to colors. And this is a valid concern! But, one of my studiomates has a much, much nicer scanner than I do, and has been kind enough to scan the comic for me so that I have print-worthy files.

And, anyway, a more pressing concern for me is getting bills paid, and if I can sell two pages a week? That’ll make it a whole dang lot easier to post two pages a week.

All the cookies, all yours

2011-10-13T00:54:47Z

I know two blog posts in a day is a bit of a feast after the famine, but I felt that I should call your attention to the Firefox Has Crashed original, which is now up for sale.

Knocking out the cobwebs

2011-10-12T16:21:51Z

Looks like updating all of my comicpress/wordpress installations destroyed my layout again! Give me a little bit of time to fix it.

Also, I dropped a few of the comics (the tiny striped cat, The Season of Sharing, Someone Paid Me A Compliment, and Make A Go) from the continuity, either because I am shelving the story or because I am not particularly fond of them, and they’ll be moved to Extras in another week or two. And I updated the Twitter link to actually point to my twitter feed again.

Finally, I’ve been putting some of the illustration work that I’ve been doing during the hiatus up for sale as prints in the store, and will be continuing to add more prints and probably comic originals in the coming days and weeks. Buying stuff from the store is what makes the comic go, and more prints sold means less time I have to spend on commissioned artwork to make rent.

Wake up

2011-12-14T23:52:07Z

Hey, I am sorry I left you alone for so long.

I hope that we can be friends again.

Tiny little newspost

2011-07-09T04:35:53Z

I see the dwindling hits this comic is getting daily and I want to let you know before you all go away for good that I’m still working on the new story, which is called The Way Back and is going to be about a little opossum who is trying to take a nap. There’s going to be about 120+ pages of it, you had better believe that I can write that much about naps. I’ve studied naps extensively. I have hands-on experience.

However, I don’t know exactly when it will be written to the point where I’m ready to plow ahead with updates. Right now the biggest barrier to progress there is (as ever) financial: where I thought that my convention schedule would go a long way toward getting the rent paid, they wound up just sort of being speedbumps in the calendar (with the exception of Fanime which was wonderful, and I think some of you who are here now found me there; though all the money made at that con was lost on Califur expenses). Artwork is my only source of income, and I’ve been cranking through commissions to make sure rent gets paid.

So I haven’t been posting much because I’m honestly kind of ashamed and embarassed by how little I have to show for the last six weeks, and my inclination is to hide until I have something awesome to post. You guys might send me angry emails wondering where your comics and postcards are at*, but my landlady will send us eviction notices** and sallie mae will send me to collections, so the more terrifying potential consequences are being dealt with first.

*Though you haven’t (yet), and god bless you.

**She won’t, actually. Our landlady is very patient and is a sweetheart and we’re lucky to have her.

Some items, possibly of interest

2011-06-26T22:11:19Z

Hi guys! June has been kind of nutty for me and if you’re still hanging around waiting for the next update, I appreciate you. Also if you found your way here after the Firefox comic got reposted to Reddit for like the dozenth time this last weekend, I am currently in the process of appreciating you. If you found us at Califur or Fanime, I also appreciate you, and if you are going to be at Westercon this coming weekend, you can believe that I absolutely look forward to appreciating you at the appointed and perfectly appropriate time.

Here is some content for you that is not necessarily comic, but definitely comic-related:

My homeslice Morris Stegosaurus did a performance of his poetry not long ago, which included a projected visual component and he posted a video of said performance to the youtubes. It includes The Puppy who would be Pope at about 12:47, and there is also a piece that includes Tod Wills‘ artwork that I have yet to view because I am either: 1.) busy or 2.) inconsiderate, take your pick.

Also, last weekend I was a guest along with Bugbyte and Jillyfoo on The Webcomics ~~Beacon~~ Bacon podcast, wherein we discussed watercolor and its application in comics. If you are interested in hearing me say ‘uhm’ probably like a million times, or you would like some sort of conclusive evidence as to my gender, or you are actually possibly genuinely interested in hearing us discuss process, it is 90 minutes of nerdery for you to listen to.

Unrelated to anything, I spent half of last week in Portland to be in my highschool bff’s bridal party, so there is a possibility that there will be pictures of me somewhere on the Internet in a tie. It was a Star Trek themed wedding, and it was quite probably the classiest Trek-themed wedding I’ve ever been party to. Or partied at.

New comic is cooking. Postcards are pending. Things are moving a little bit slower than I’d like because monies didn’t rain down at the last two cons like I was hoping they would and had to recover lost ground in a commission marathon. Sit tight!