Comments
I'm enabling comments on (some of?) my posts from now on. In the past I decided against this because a) even much more popular sites than this one get very few comments, and b) I couldn't be bothered dealing with the spam.
I've decided to give it a go because Wordpress does offer a spamfilter that I've heard good things about and, well, it just seems a shame to not at least give some of you guys the option.
Time for a redesign
I'll be redesigning this site over the next few days. Why? Oh, a few reasons. One is because I want it to reflect my output more. The last design was created for a comic-based output. But me being me, I'd spend one period drawing loads of comics, then another period taking lots of photos, then another experimenting with new graphic programs, then another period writing something or other, and so on and so forth. Limiting this site to just the comics part meant that there were often long gaps between posts.
So, if you come here between now and, oh, say Monday, and the place looks weird, then don't worry. I like to play about with WordPress and I'll often publish Work in Progress live as I go.
Some Things Just Feel Nice - Nov 2009 Screenshot
Just what the hell do I think I’m doing?
So it appears this webcomic is transforming from an ink-scribbled semi-true blog type thing into... something else. What, I don't know. And I've realised I don't care. When I started Some Things... I thought it'd be best to keep to a single style, one that would hopefully improve over the months and years, but ultimately remain consistent.
Turns out that's no fun.
So now I'm just going to draw (or photoshop) things I feel like producing. Things that 'just feel nice' as it were. Sometimes they'll be meaningless, sometimes they'll be part of a series. Sometimes I might get bored with a series and return to it at a much later date. Think of it as flipping through random TV channels, only I'm holding the remote.
Outside of this site I'll continue to stumble between all the other projects I take on. Writing and drawing that graphic novel, taking photos, photoshopping, script-editing a Flash adventure game, and above all writing a novel (the one thing I'm sure I'll see through to completion, even if it involves failure).
It's a satisfying way of working and I like that this webcomic will reflect that.
The Cult of Done Manifesto
I'm liking this:
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
[via BoingBoing]
New Project
You'll have noticed that my last two comic posts have been a little different. This is because I've started writing and drawing a new comic titled Bifrost. A better-looking plot-driven graphic novelaffair. It'll be some time before the first story is up, as I'm writing and drawing it myself. In the meantime I'll be posting preliminary sketches and whatnot in the run up to launching Bifrost.
Hope you like it.
Christian Bale rant wallpapers
Enjoyed the Christian Bale rant recorded on the set of the new Terminator film?
Loved the dance remix?
Then get the wallpaper! Available in four rage-inducing colours.
Blogging on the go
I've just installed the Wordpress app on my iPhone so now I just have to see if it works.
If you're reading this then I guess it does. Will that mean I'll write more blog posts? Probably not, but it's nice to have the option. Also, there's no real practical way to post comics via the iPhone (well there kinda is, but they wouldn't be good quality).
On that note, I just finished the latest strip. It will go up at midnight. I'm going to aim for regular Monday and Thursday postings. Time will tell if I can keep that up.
New technique
So what I've been doing so far is scratching each panel of the comic into my small moleskine notebook (9 x 14cm) using a cheap fountain pen and a red biro. I'd then photograph the panels with my camera phone and edit them into the strip in Photoshop. I'd whiten the speech bubbles but leave the rest as it was. The yellow lighting of my room giving the strip its yellow texture.
I did that for speed and ease. It meant I could draw the comic while sitting on the tube home (sometimes very drunk - though with my style I'm not sure which panels are the intoxicated ones). Unfortunately it had its drawbacks. My cameraphone isn't that good (I personally have never come across one that is) and I didn't have much room to add details to the images.
So today I invested in an A4 size sketchbook and a scanner. I'm still using the cheap fountain pen, although sometimes I take the ink cartridge out and draw with that, but the colouring is done afterwards in Photoshop.
I'm already liking the extra freedom the space affords, even if the strips will now take longer to produce, and now I have full size versions of the panels in case I want to reproduce them in another format.
Not a bad start to the year.
So it begins…
This is Some Things Just Feel Nice. A webcomic that will be updated twice weekly, though on which days I don't know yet. Hopefully we'll get some kind of, y'know, routine going. This blog however will just be updated whenever I have something worth saying. Which isn't all that often.
To kick us off, here's the sketch that inspired this whole mess:
