I’d like to announce an OPEN CALL FOR GUEST COMICS. I’m doing this way in advance of August just so I can know by the time it arrives how screwed or not screwed I am. If all goes well, I should have the entirety of the next chapter done (last page should be posted Tuesday August 7th) and set to auto-post before guest comics ever start, and the guest comics will act as an interlude between part 2 and part 3 and give Cory and I some much needed time getting used to having a baby before part 3 starts.

To help you out, the theme of the open call is ‘Things I Miss from Earth’. Just pick your favourite human character from The End, and a thing you think they’d miss from Earth. You can take it in whatever direction you like–funny, serious, etc. (and excepting pornographic, not that I thought anyone would actually go there, but I figured I’d cover my bases just in case). All I ask is that you use the contact form in this post to send me a message letting me know you’re interested in doing one, as well as what character you intend to pick, and what they miss from Earth. I mostly want this info so I don’t get more than one guest comic about the same missed thing, even if the characters are not the same.

Alternatively, if you know what character you’d like to do but can’t for the life of you think of something they’d miss, just use the contact form to let me know you’re interested but that you’d like some help with something for whichever character you want, and I’ll send you a list of random things to help you get started.

Anyhow, if any cartoonists out there can give us a hand, we would be forever grateful! Finished comics can be any height, as long as they’re 980 pixels wide!

[contact-form]

Oh wow, I almost forgot that I’d need to upload a page for tomorrow–it’s Victoria Day, which is a Canadian holiday in where everything is closed and people generally spend the whole weekend drinking and hanging out at cottages and relaxing in the sun.

Cory and I took one for the team (and in this case, team equals a combination of the baby that will arrive in ten weeks and my friend Olga who will be arriving from California to crash at my house for Cory’s brother’s wedding two weeks from now) and stayed home the entire weekend, cleaning our asses off, moving things around and throwing out or replacing furniture.

As a result, the weekend flew by and it really has felt like Sunday today, instead of Monday, which brings me back to almost forgetting to post a page.

Anyhow, I am loving all the speculation that came with the last page. Two of you (Miri and swk3000!) were almost entirely correct, with a few small exceptions. Cory assures me that he’s going to take some time tomorrow to respond to a bunch of comments that were left, especially yours, when he is on lunch break/not struggling to stay awake.

Anyhow, enjoy these next few pages! They were definitely fun to make. I’ll be getting back to my usual schedule tomorrow, which will involve thumbnailing the next two or so chapters and prepping them to become actual pages. I probably won’t get another five pages done this week, but I can certainly try.

Hey all! Not a lot of news today, except that I’ve been going through the archives and remastering older pages for eventual print. So far, chapters one through three have been completely remastered.

What do I mean when I say remastered? Well:

All of the word balloons have been redone, the white borders/gutters have been replaces with transparent ones, the font is the same as in current pages, I’ve reduced and/or fixed all textures, adjusted colours and changed small pieces of dialogue–Cory officially started writing for The End in chapter 4, and back then I had less of an idea of how to include only what was needed, instead of having characters ramble aimlessly.

Because I currently act as Cory’s editor, I’ve got a much better handle on what’s relevant and what’s frivolous or distracting and unnecessary, so minor changes there (and a few big ones, actually).

I intend to get the rest of the comic up to scratch in the next couple of weeks, but I’ll be taking tomorrow off to get some much needed cleaning done.

Alrighty, my post will be short because Cory’s is ungodly long. We have a new layout! We got a few complaints about the old one being harder to read on certain monitors because it was rather low contrast, so hopefully that’s fixed for you!

I also updated the store to exclude all the originals we sold at the con and include things we brought back. Currently we have a limited number of all three poster designs up there, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to order more, so get them while you can!

As for OCC, my sentiments mirror Croy’s down below–it was amazing to see how many of you came out to see us, and I can’t stress enough how much your support means to us! We have the best readers ever.

Comiccon was great! I must have handed out hundreds of business cards. Despite how insanely crowded the place was, everyone was really friendly and we met tons of cool and interesting people. For example, a cheerful ex-military beekeeper who told us that our comic was half the reason he came to the con. Can you believe that? The Most Interesting Person basically came rolling up out of nowhere and told us our comic owned. So that was a rad feeling.

We were at our table for the entire con – neither Randi nor I attended a single panel or walked around for more than a couple of minutes at a time – but we still had a fantastic time (my face was sore from smiling so much by the time we packed up). It was kind of amazing to see how incredibly cool our fans are – you guys are the best.

Especially you, Astrid Fryzek; thanks so much for bringing like ten million people to our table and helping me hand out a ridiculous number of cards. I feel like you must be buds with a quarter of Ottawa or something because you just never ran out of friends to introduce to us. You were a big help in our effort to drum up more readership and are just a totally boss person in general.

And you, Dominic Barrieau, are also rad for bringing a bunch of dudes to see us and buying stuff from us, then coming back the next day and doing it again. It was great chatting with you about the comic and we are super grateful for the support. Thank you so much for taking an interest in our comic, and I hope those posters look great on your wall.

Because I am in a shouty mood, I am going to give a couple more shoutouts! These two go out to our immediate neighbours at the con, who were both totally cool and talented ladies that patiently put up with my eccentric bumbling and chatted with us whenever things slowed down a little. They were a lot of fun to be seated between and I hope the impressions I made on them can match the impressions they made on me.

S. M. Carrière is an author and has studied anthropology and archaeology with a focus on Celtic studies. When she told us that, I was all “oh my god that’s a thing?? That is the coolest thing” and then I bought her book, which is also the coolest thing because it contains ten short stories rooted in Celtic lore. Also she lives in Canada, has an Australian accent, and is a geek (One of us! One of us!), so yeah she is really just an exceptionally cool person and you should go read her blog and buy her books and/or pictures if they draw your interest. If they don’t draw your interest then you might be a Fomori or something but that’s okay because we are happy to accept fans of all species.

Maureen Hiebert is a freelance illustrator who wears really cool shirts. She was at the con to sell art and buttons, the latter of which she was just straight up making from scratch with a button press right there at the table whenever she wasn’t talking to someone, which I thought was a really cool punk-meets-practicality business model. In addition to being a good artist and a very hard worker she is apparently a freaking amazing photographer, because she posted some photos on her blog that are just so good god damn. Go look at her site, and also buy one of her adorable octobread stickers, because I am still kicking myself for forgetting to get one but I might be able to derive vicarious enjoyment from the knowledge that other people are enjoying them.

Okay, well, this author comment is already exceedingly long. I mostly just wanted to talk about how cool the con and the people attending it were, so I just have one more thing to say. To our fans, thank you guys so much for being cool as hell. Thank you to everyone who came up during the con to say, “I love your comic,” and thank you to everyone who didn’t but is still reading our comic. This wouldn’t be anywhere near as satisfying or rewarding without all the support you guys give us, and I can’t find the words to tell you how great it feels to know that you appreciate the work we’re putting into The End. We’re going to keep pouring our time and love into this comic and I can only hope that it’ll continue to be deserving of fans as awesome as you.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:
Hey all, I bet you’re wondering where the new page is! We’re having a small blip with the website right now that I’ve been working all day to fix, and after slaving away for about 12 hours on it, I need to get some sleep. Everything should be functioning fine now, but the page will have to wait until everything is running smoothly in the back end again. I’ll be slaving away tomorrow to fix it, and the new page should be up tomorrow night or early Wednesday morning at the latest. Apologies for the delay, I just wanted to keep you all updated!

I fixed everything, and while I was at it, I updated the archives/new readers page, got rid of news posts and implemented a new theme because I broke the old one so bad. Hopefully this design is easier on the eyes! The new page should be up later tonight after Cory gets home and I can go over some last minute changes with him, along with a nice big write-up Cory did about Ottawa Comicon this past weekend. See you later tonight!

It was really fun watching some of the guesses for who was behind him. Also, drawing this very short fight scene. Both were awesome.

These last few days have been crazy! I’ve been prepping for the convention super hard core. As a result, we actually have some pretty nice stock, as well as a bunch of new Artist Trading Cards (including a really unintentionally creepy one of Henri with what I can only assume is a sexy expression. I was torn between inking and colouring it and killing it with fire, but opted for the first). Here’s what some of it looks like!

Tomorrow is setup for Ottawa Comicon! I still have a bunch of last minute things to do, driving Cory in to work at 7pm including running out to my parents’ house and printing out some ‘we totally have these posters behind the table, but not enough room to actually put them on the table, this is what they look like’ pictures, packing stuff into boxes and buying con food/snacks so that we can avoid the outrageous food court prices. We’ll actually be doing setup after Cory gets off work.

Anyhow, this is where our half-table will be located! We’ll be there all day Saturday and all day Sunday, though there’s a chance that one or the other of us might be away from the table for panels a couple times over the course of the weekend–there are about three I’d like to go to, and a couple that Cory is interested in but not sure that he’ll go to. When I’m at the table, I’ll be giving out free simple sketches to anyone who asks. If you’re going to be there, come say hi! We’ll definitely be taking as many pictures as possible.

Ugh, this page should have gone up Friday. It was mostly waiting on Cory to revise some dialogue, which I would normally get from him over IM while he was at work if it was an emergency, but he unexpectedly went off to play paintball for his brother’s day-long bachelor party. Before he ran around on that foot all day, Zoe (our giant Great Pyrenees) managed to take him out at the ankles with a wire leash in the yard because she saw a squirrel. So when Cory came home and passed out, I was totally okay with posting this a day late.

Unfortunately, power was out most of Saturday and it got to a point where I pretty much threw up my hands in frustration and said we’d get this up Tuesday instead. You’ll be happy to know that the next page has its dialog finalized and has already been formatted and queued up for posting on Friday, so this won’t happen again. :/

Anyhow, it is two and a half hours later than I usually fall asleep, so Imma go pass the hell out. I’ll be making a news post tomorrow about our seating arrangements at Ottawa Comicon this weekend, as well as of all the stuff we’re going to have to sell (posters arrived today and they look fantastic!) there. Night all! I’ll try and answer some questions and comments from last week’s update when I regain consciousness.

We’re a few hours late today–I had something awesome for you guys that I wanted to go up with today’s post, but due to some technical difficulties, it’s going to have to wait until Friday’s update.

Anyhow, got a busy day ahead of me. I drew six more pages yesterday and the plan is to have all of them inked by the end of the day (two down, four to go!). If I can do that and still have some time left, I’ll also be flatting them, and may stream the actual colouring process (if anyone is interested in that sort of thing) tomorrow or the day after. This buffer is really starting to shape up, which is really exciting for me.

Keep on speculating–it’s totally awesome. Also don’t feel bad if I don’t respond to your speculations–it’s because one war or another, responding to you might spoil things. D:

So I have some good news, and some good news! The first good news is that I’ve found a schedule/way of working that seems to be working for me right now. As a result, the next 4 pages after this one are completely done, giving me a very small (but coveted) 2 week buffer. Not only do Intend to keep it that way, but I plan to use this time (while I’m feeling okay) to maximize on this process. If I can get 5 pages done every week, I should have one hell of a buffer by the time this baby is born.

The second good news is that I finished these five pages by Wednesday, which gave me the opportunity to actually sit down and do the final poster I needed to have done for Ottawa Comicon next month. It is by far my favourite of the three, and you can see a preview of it here on my G+!

Also, as of yesterday evening, I’ve ordered a copy of each in actual poster form just to make sure the quality is there. If everything looks good, and you’re interested in owning one, signed or unsigned, we’ll be doing a pre-order as soon as they get here and we can find a suitable means of shipping them as well as discern local, US and international shipping costs.

And lastly:
1) For anyone interested, I’ve been pretty active on twitter lately if you wanna give me a follow!
2) Thank you Michael for your donation! Annual website bills are coming up in the next few weeks, so every little bit helps!

Just posting this up before I run off to bed. I think 10:28pm is the latest I’ve stayed up in a week, and that’s only because I had a very awesome and productive 12-hour work day today in where I drew roughs for the rest of this chapter, scanned and formatted five of them, did the good sketch for all five of them, and completely inked two and a half before I realized that I’d been working from 7:30am to 7:30pm.

Tomorrow should be more of the same. The plan is to get the rest of them inked, and then get them all flatted to make colouring less tedious–if I can get five pages done in a week, I will seriously explode with relief–it’ll leave me free to get all of the things I need to draw and order for OCC done and out of the way, as well as finish the donation sketch cards and mail them out. Then it’ll be a matter of rebuilding the buffer so I’m not crazy stressed the week of the convention and everything posts as per usual.

Aaanyhow, how about this page? Henri seems pretty great at messing up. I think that this is (sadly) probably how I’d react in this situation, but I’d like to think that Cory would be smarter about it in the same situation.

Some good news is that in the next bunch of pages, we’re going to be seeing a lot of the Ith crew, and learning about them. This means that they’re no longer super top secret, and by the end of the chapter, Cory should have a giant pile of Ith-related lore to add to the wiki all prepped and ready to go. We’ll keep you updated on what he ads, when he adds it.

And now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go and sleep like the dead if I can help it. Enjoy!

We’re up a day late–felt pretty crummy all Friday and decided to take a quick nap that ended up taking most of the day. I didn’t wake up until Cory got home from work and reminded me that I have a baby shower and a wedding shower to go to on Sunday, and had yet to pick up presents for either. As a result, instead of finalizing the dialog and sfx for this page, I spent all of yesterday evening driving around buying presents, and then passed the hell out when I got home.

The good news is that I wasn’t *just* working on this page by itself–Tuesday’s page is also finalized and ready to go! I also managed to do two posters, which you can see larger versions of if you click on them (link leads to G+) down at the bottom of this post, since otherwise the formatting gets all messed up.

I also did these as well as two spooky chibi style pics, one of Ethma and one of Raine, also on G+.

Lastly, thanks Aaron for the donation! And to all of you who have previously donated $20+, I’m almost done all of your sketch cards! And remember, if you’ve donated $25+ and I haven’t emailed you for your snail-mail address and to ask you which character you want on your sketch card, you can let me know via our contact form in the main menu.