But it has been a near thing, and honestly I'm *still* getting over being awfully sick. Whurgh.
This has done a good job of destroying the modest buffer I'd managed to build myself. Worse, the high fevers exacerbated my seizure disorder and kind of destroyed my consciousness for a while. If you follow me on The Twitter or The Tumbs you've probably seen a lot of notes and posts from me because out of context 140-character snips have been about all I could handle for the last month or so.
Aaaand now it's the holidays, with all the busy that goes into that. And I love the holidays, deeply! But it does eat up the time.
I really, REALLY hate to do it, but I think I'm taking December off the comic updates. I'm still arting, and trying to restore that minor buffer my fevers snatched away. I hope to come back in January with this chapter all wrapped up. Thanks for being patient! I'll try to keep posting some art here, and over at The Tumbs, so it's obvious I aten't dead.
Went to the Ren Faire last weekend. In true period style, I got me a good solid respiratory plague as a souvenir. Next time I will try for a little less authenticity; in the menatime, yes, page is delayed. Sorry for the patchy month, folks! But next month bodes well, assuming I don't actually cough up a lung.
Comics are up! And also the food was fantastic, but I knew it would be, because I made it. I am a very good cook, which is a mixed blessing when food-based holidays come around- on the one hand, I always know what I'm bringing to the family dinner! on the other hand, it's because I'm bringing everything.
Now is the part where I'm supposed to say I'm thankful for my dear readers, I guess, but that is woefully inadequate. Dear Readers: you are awesome, and you are the reason I bother posting this nigh-weekly goofery. I hear about the problems other artists have with their readership, and man, I realize I have lucked the heck out this far. You're all smart, patient, and funny, and your comments make me grin every time. THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU ALL. And that isn't just the fooddrunk talking.
Anyway, my precious window of working solitude appears to be closing-time to go spend time with my family of actual related fleshlings. I hope every one of you is well fed and in good company today, and if you're wallowing online like me, I hope ALL your favorite comics are updated.
...Because Hollywood's tossing us a movie version of the Les Miserable musical this Christmas. I am...interested. I've actually read the book, in its door-stopper entirety, because, well, I like books like that. I'm curious to see what the American movie process makes of Hugo's basic " wow rich people suck but God is on the side of the poor I guess" message.
Also, Hugh Jackman. So that's a plus.
I'm not going to pretend I don't like musicals; I love musicals. I have more soundtracks in my collection than any other kind of music. I have seen musicals about love, gods, and zombies, and I enjoyed them all. But that doesn't mean I love musical *movies*. Musicals, like Shakespeare, are something I almost always love in theaters and only sometimes like onscreen. There's a certain unreality created in live theater that makes the weirdness of sudden singing and dancing more acceptable, somehow. Movies seem to be pushing for an acceptance of story-as-reality that can make anything artificial or even unlikely perversely harder to accept.
I wish I had a term for this viewer-collaboration mindset. Ne-Kulturny that I am, I'm stuck with saying "That thing, like when you're reading a book you don't need to know what the protagonist looks like to live behind their eyes, but in a movie that would be forced, and so audience mindset sort of changes to allow for the limits of the medium but then that very mindset becomes a tool of the medium itself". It's a big mouthful and if anyone knows the proper terminology I would appreciate hearing it.
In related new, two pages today! I would have had one up last week but apparently internet post-election fallout clogged the pipes here on Wednesday morning?!? And I post Wednesdays, not Thursday or later. So here, have two pages, with way more detail added.
Ok I swear someday I'm gonna have a buffer.
(actually I did have a buffer but then I thought of a way to make the whole thing better and I threw out ten finished pages and so now I'm only almost done with the replacement but ANYWAY)
I don't right *now*, and for tonight, well, I am totally freaking out. I'm a USAn, and some of you astute folks may have noticed we've got a Thing happening in this coutnry tonight. And as someone who needs Medicare to get the medicine that keeps me alive and breathing day to day, elections, and their concurring budgetary decisions, are a big personal deal to me, not an abstract ideological issue. Until I find out who's determining my life and death for the next four years, I am going to be A LITTLE DISTRACTED.
So the page will be up Wednesday, but maybe a little late. Bear with me on this particular excuse; it won't happen again for four years, I promise.
Which means candy and parties and costumes and did I mention parties?
Which means another 1-page week. Alas! This is the page I wanted to end with last week, but I hope it's obvious why that didn't happen (the dialogue. It's the askdfkgslkjn' dialogue). I know this isn't a terribly action or drama-packed page, so have a bunch of sketches and goofiness over on The Tumbs:
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/sevenhands
And if I can pry the tablet away from my husband, next week should be more page prolific.
As for the party and costumes,*I* am going to be a bloodthirsty dryad out for vengeance. How about y'all?
And one of them is me updating regularly! Wow, if I manage to update NEXT Wednesday too that'll be a whole month with no skips! Or even late updates! I don't know if I've done that before! I-- I'm scared. The last time this happened my computer died. Twice. In a row.
But there are other things not about me happening! 24 Hour Comic Book Day, for one. If you make comics, and you'll have time away from household duties this Saturday, you should really check it out: [link]
But I will NOT be participating, because I will be at the local Japanese Society Matsuri (well, semi-local. Living in the sticks as I do, anything in a 2-hour radius is 'local'). I will be seeing exciting traditional dances (there are drums!) and watching plays and stuffing my face with an absurd amount of rice. If you're in Austin, I highly recommend going! It's buckets of fun.
Whether you're in Austin or not, I highly recommend picking up DC's new Amethyst Showcase volume. Anyone reading my comics has probably noticed that I have a fondness for non-traditional layouts, and this book- especially the first half, which is all Ernie Colon's artbaby-- is like a masterclass in the field. The first *page* is amazing and it doesn't let up from there.
We shall not speak here of the reboot.
Aaaand if you're a child of the 90s, you should probably check out Nickleodeon's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. It's fun. Honestly fun, not oh-I-can-stand-this-while-the-kids-watch fun. And I'm really impressed with the animation; most computer animation feels kind of cold to me, but the stuff on this show feels very warm and lively. I think the lighting may help? it's got a very animated-comic sort of direction, I'm enjoying it a lot. Watch it with a bowl of oversugared cereal at hand.
Then go out and do some Things. The world is full of them!
I've decided I want a Photoshop preview feature that lets me see my work in webby thumbnail mode. I swear browsing thumbnails shows me everything I need to change with my work...when iiiit's TOOOO LAAATE.
Ahem. Anyway. Move on from the mistakes, Cara. If you move on from the mistakes, you get to keep updating...
One of the things I've moved on with is my font. Heck yeah, actual pay font! I'm using Silver Age from Blambot now, baby. It has lowercase. I have been CRAVING lowercase, y'all. You don't understand. Unless you're font addicts too, then you probably do.
In non-comics-related news--because I never know what to say about the comics, seriously, y'all, I need a prompt sheet or something-- I'm gonna have a porch! I've wanted a porch for, oh, ever, but for some reason I'm only getting it now. I've been covering the wood for it with weatherproof treatment. And this is serious weatherproofing jazz- I can tell just touching the dry surface it's like laminating the wood, plus when it rained this whole last week (we got six inches of rain. In a week. We may not have much annual rainfall, but you should be here the day it arrives...) the water just sheeted off it. Which of course is what one wants in the surface one uses for an uncovered outdoor porch.
Less optimal: the weatherproofing stuff? Is Pepto-Bismol pink. I mean Pepto-Bismol EXACTLY. There is no way for an American of the 20th century to look at this shade and think anything but 'chalky mint-flavored medicine'. It is definitely not an eraser pink, or rose pink; it is indigestion-cure pink.
Which is somewhat soothing, actually. Plus, when I inevitably fall asleep on the deck during the summer, it means my skin will burn to a lovely shade of camouflage.