New Copper Road! 8/22/14

Oh yes... this one is autobiographical. Painfully so. Vote here to see my shameful recent history represented in comic form!

August is my busiest work month of the year, and I seem to be spending ALL of it laid up a back (and hip) injury. If you know how that stuff goes - first, I'm so very sorry you do - you'll understand that it makes everything far more difficult than it should. (An alternate, more depressing, script had Hi trying to pick up something he dropped on the floor.) I can move around if I want to, but it means spending the next day in bed trying to rest off the ache.

As you might guess, I am moving incredibly slow with work due to the whole not being able to sit (or stand) at the drawing table. I'm doing all the doctor things I should, but this is mostly a rest thing. It's not *that* bad, but it's at that last healing stage where I can either let it heal, or keep myself perpetually hobbled by aggravating it.  It is SO BORING staying in bed. I want to draw!

(On the plus side, I've put plenty of work into my Animal Crossing town, and that Simpsons Tapped Out game on my phone.)

Edit:  Oh yeah, I should put the last bonus comic here, since it probably won't show up later:

New bonus comic + more Curtailed invasion!

UPDATE: Oh, look, the Precocious invasion of Curtailed is continuing! (This has been a wonderful surprise for me every week! I love it!)

I promise a deleted scene on Sunday, and I am (sorta) a man of my word. As the week went on, I realized the comic I was going to use for a deleted scene had juuuuust enough plot relevance that I really should put it into the main story instead. (You'll see it Monday.)

So now I needed a new deleted scene - vote here to see what I came up with! In my scripting notes, I had a dumb joke about Cole that would happen around, oh, the comic for Sunday.  Sure, why not? The joke also had the opening for copy/paste art - and even though it helped the effect this time, I do get worried if I have to do that in an official comic.  This will probably go on the silly, not-making-the-book pile, along with my "Give a Canadian a gun" indulgence, but I hope you enjoy it!

New Copper Road! 8/11/14

(First, if you haven't been paying attention to other news posts, I suggest you go look at Curtailed!)

As for Copper Road, this may be well-worn territory, but it's topical! For me. I have come into possession of a blender. Since eating solid food causes me pain, it would be wise of me to turn my diet more to liquid/soft stuff... but I've never liked smoothies. So... anyone want to share a recipe that won't make me sad? (You can click the title of these news posts to visit the blog and post a comment if you wish, or find me through the contact page.)

This is, again, a small Hi/Shii Ann moment to be a cute bit before the next deleted scene from the camp story rolls in for Sunday's update. Since the previous deleted scene probably WON'T make it to a book, I'll put it in this post. (Thanks again to Mat for lending me the director's design, and I apologize for doing horrible, potentially friendship-ending, things to him!)

In OTHER injury news, I hurt myself recently in a random and entirely embarrassing accident. I'll heal up soon, but I'm spending most of the past and next week on bed rest. That makes it awfully hard to do all my work, but I'm grinding the best I can in small doses. I'm someone who is very bad at doing nothing, so this has been odd. I actually WATCHED a movie from bed - like, not drawing during it, so I could read the subtitles - and that was neat! Anyway, I may end up missing August deadlines by a week due to this - so I'm sorry if I do! Know it's all coming soon still!

The Curtailed Invasion Continues!

So my unsolicited Survival Sphere bombing last week tore a hole in comic reality. Oops! Apparently Mandy had a Precocious-influenced script sitting around, but is it responsible to merge a fictional comic with an autobio comic? *gets Jacob-bombed* I guess that issue's taken care of now, huh?  I abused her comic and I benefit! This is the best! Read the new Precocious cameo here, then pray they find a way to banish the demons back to the vortex from whence they came.

More background for all this is in the news post directly below!

Bonus comic + I drew a Curtailed!

First the links, then the backstory: Vote here to see a bonus Precocious scene, featuring everyone's favorite camp director. And click here to read a guest comic I drew for Curtailed!

It's a happy coincidence they both popped up at the same time, since they were born of the same idea.

One of the high-end tiers for the book 3 Kickstarter was to influence the design of a Precocious character. This tier was tied to the current camp story, and certain important character slots in the arc were kept open just in case. Once the campaign ended, I went forward with the characters *I* had ready to fill the roles - except for one.

The default story had the counselor (which became Cody) taking on most authority roles, with the camp director as a secondary, off-panel entity. BUT, I decided I'd go ahead and do the Kickstarter thing anyway, giving the character part of the reward to one of my comic buddies. And that's when I discovered my friends have a bunch of kid-hating, non-viable characters. Well, if it wasn't reasonable to bring THEM into MY story, what if I put MY characters into THEIR comic?

And that's why I drew a Curtailed - and why it has the theme it does!  Creating it was a comedy of errors - my favorite drawing pen isn't marker-safe, making Curtailed-style illustration a mess - but two 11x17" pages of mishaps later I ended up with a strip-sized comic!  Thanks to Mandy for tolerating my scribbles! (She was not aware of my plans until it arrived in her inbox, along with some manic, it-made-sense-at-3am rambling.)

The reason why the Kickstarter tier was so expensive is that, aside from the originals and extra art stuff, the character was far more than a cameo. The role was collaborative, and would become part of Precocious continuity, with a chance to recur. That's big for a control freak like me! With outright character-stealing off the table, I turned to stealing MY FRIENDS. I had just returned from Anthrocon, where Mat (of Badly Drawn Kitties fame) was, once again, my highly-excellent table assistant.  I asked him if it would be OK to work a Precocious version of him into the story, and he said yes.

The director's role was very open at this point, so we had a small discussion about it. I asked him how someone like Precocious Mat would end up as camp director, and he replied that something must have gone horribly wrong in his life. That was all the prompting I needed! Now, as the reward tier intended, Mat gets to play a solid role in the camp story, he's tied with Precocious history AND that also means the character lives in the area, so he may be called upon again! (If you like this reward, start saving now! There will be an opportunity to grab it next year!)

As for this specific bonus scene, I'm going ahead and calling NON-CANON on it. It's too over the top, but the idea of giving a polite Canadian a gun was too tempting to pass up! (That means that, unlike most deleted scenes, this one probably won't end up in a book.)

New Copper Road! 8/1/14

New month, new incentive! Depending on how I order the scripts for the summer camp story, I could have a deleted scene rotating in as an incentive early next week. That means this Copper Road may end up burning bright, and burning fast - soon to be pushed away until it shows up in the archive at the start of next month. (By the way, if I forget to upload the Copper Road archive with the new month again, let me know! June and July's comics are now in there, starting here.)

Today's entry is a little slice of Copper Road comfort, with our friends acting as you'd expect them to act. Vote here to see it now, in all it's simple, silly glory, while you have the chance!

By the way, this is a reminder that deleted scene comics used as incentives during the month don't go into the online archive. (Even I wanted to do it, the archive system I use doesn't let me shuffle comics like that.) They will pop up later as book bonuses, though!

And, if you're still reading, August is a big month for Kickstarter fulfillment, as artist editions are heading out! (All July orders should either be with you already, or on their way. International shipments take a few weeks, so don't panic yet!) If you're one of the few who haven't sent in your surveys yet, please do so! Of course, if you're not the type to check your Kickstarter emails, you're probably not the type to read this deep into a news post. I REMAIN OPTIMISTIC!