New Copper Road! 7/12/12

Ha, only when I uploaded this thumbnail did I realize I skipped the contrast step after scanning the comic in. Oh well. Anyway, new Copper Road time! Everyone celebrate by eating cookies!

Some days, writing seems like the hardest thing to do in the world. Some days, nutty marketers do half the job for you. When I found those cookies in a friend's house, I made sure to take pics of the labels and mock them later. The prophecy has now been fulfilled. Vote to see it!

State of the Chrispy Address

Here's an overview of what to expect from me and Precocious over the next few months, plus some reminders of other fun things.  Don't be lazy! Read this stuff!

First off: The book! As the release date nears, the order form will be closed down for a small stretch while the final shipping prep begins.  It looks like we may be able to get the books in (and thus ship them out) earlier, so that's a plus.  If you're not planning on buying one from me at a convention, grab a copy now while you can! Artist editions won't be shipping until around August 20, as those require me to draw in them and I won't have access to the books until the weekend of FA:U.

Next, if you've been following me on DeviantArt, FurAffinity or Twitter, you know I've been stressing about the future. That's because I'll be moving from Savannah back to Virginia next month. I knew it was coming, but I didn't really expect it to be so soon - and plans had to be rearranged. (I'll really miss Savannah. I love the people here, my apartment was in the best spot and it was so darn inviting and pretty!) The pressure of the move and the con in the same week will be taxing, but I'm hoping to be able to keep Precocious going without missing a beat.  (I may put out a call for guest strips later, just to be safe, so if you're a cartoonist or aspiring cartoonist, start thinking of ideas.)

Here's a rundown of my future conventions:

August 17-19: FA:United, Whippany, NJ
- This is a smaller con, and I'd love to have some of you guys around to keep me company. I'll have a lot of free time here, as I'm rotating at the table with the Code Name: Hunter team, so maybe a Precocious reader meeting and meal time can happen? If anyone's up for that, email me and let me know.

September 21-23: Intervention, Rockville, MD
- Unless a grand miracle happens, I won't have a table. I'll just be wandering around, totally lost because I have no idea how to handle a con as an attendee. Come be my guide! (If you want to find me, look for Mark, of Autumn Lake or Dave from Slightly Off-Topic. I'll be the one following them around and crying for attention.)

November 16-18: Midwest Furfest, Chicago, IL
- We'll be back to the big RCSI double table setup that looked so spiffy at Anthrocon here. It's a bigger con than the ones above, so I have big expectations for this sucker. This one should be a blast, so get your reservations in now!

Con-going readers, do you have any suggestions for my next year's con schedule?  As I'm moving 10 hours away, I'm on the fence about returning to FWA, potentially replacing it with the new Baltimore-based Fur the 'More. Since Massachusetts-based  RCSI Publishing won't always travel around to host me, I'll look into invitations from fellow cartoonists/artists who'd like to split hotel and table space at some of these. I don't care what type of con it is, as long as I can make back my investment without scarring my soul forever.

And now, for those who can't or won't brave the scariness to say hello at cons, you can still have Chrispy interaction!  I'm always happy to answer questions over on my Formspring account. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, putting on my grand neurotic show. You can also interact with other readers on the Facebook group. Come late August or early September, I also plan to venture into streaming.  You can come watch me draw a commission or a Copper Road or whatever and do some chatting with me and other readers! I love reader interaction! Your good will fuels me!

If you want to brighten my day, I obsessively check the Precocious TV Tropes page, so every time it's updated I cheer - especially if you also update the trope's main page with a Precocious mention as well!

Before anyone pesters me, I do know some parts of the site need updating. The cast page needs an overhaul, and the linking page needs maintenance - both of which involve creating new graphics.  That stuff takes a lot of time, and you see all that writing above this paragraph? That indicates I don't have much of it free. I'm not planning to start work on this stuff until at least September, and it'll take time to pull it all together.  Please bear with me until I can get to it.

If you read this far, you are a true hero.

SpiderForest Comic of the Week!

Updating this a bit early, because it's a special one and I have other SpiderForest news too!

First off, it's admissions season at SpiderForest.  If you have a webcomic and you'd like to be part of a great collective, take some time and fill out an application.  SpiderForest offers many good things to accepted entries. Members have the option of free hosting and tech help in upgrading their content management system. (Good for young comics just learning the ropes.)  It also has a helpful community that's there with help and advice!

And now the main event! This week's featured comic is The Cyantian Chronicles! Actually, it's more of a collection of comics, which are set in the same vast universe. The above link takes you to just one branch of the story, Darius. If you look around the site, you will find archive after archive that peek into the lives of different characters at different points of one big timeline. Cool, huh?

I've been following this series for a decade now. When I first stumbled upon it, I was amazed to see the entire universe at work. Many creators build worlds in their heads, but Tiff Ross actually managed to get hers out there so others could enjoy her grand creation. She's one of the hardest working cartoonists too, as she juggles multiple active comics at once, rotating between the stories now and then. Seeing someone who was able to pull off so much was inspiring to someone who was still only dreaming of one day launching his own comic, with it's own insane universe. Precocious' world isn't nearly as vast as the Cyantian one, but this was a huge inspiration for me to develop and follow the lives of so many characters.

Because there is so much, it can be a little intimidating for one who wants to start reading. Complicating that, the network is being overhauled at the moment, so navigation can be somewhat tricky. You can start with the recent Darius arc, or go back further and read Akaelae, which is a good introduction for the central group. If you want to go back to the earliest comics, check out Campus Safari.

(If you want to show Tiff some love, she's currently running a Kickstarter project featuring charms from Alien Dice.)

New Copper Road - 7/6/12

Haha, three Copper Roads in six days! Don't get used to that. The next one isn't scheduled to show up for a week, and then we're back to the weekly/whenever I can think of a gag updating. But, hey, this was has been sitting around for two months, waiting for its time to shine! *snicker*

Vote to see it!

ANOTHER Copper Road + Tech issues

Why another Copper Road so soon? Read on...

(UPDATE: I guess it was just a glitch? The comment section finally appeared at midnight, when the next strip appeared. Ok, whatever. Now you guys can go back and share all those comments that would have been so good yesterday and are now useless today. Darn it.)

Obviously, something has gone wrong with the comments for today's comic. I don't know why it's not showing up, while all other comments pages are active. Tech guy doesn't know. IntenseDebate is being more helpful than usual in this regard by CLOSING THEIR HELP FORM. I won't even be able to submit a report for a few more hours, and once I do it'll probably be a while before I hear back from them. And, since it's tech support for a free service, I'm not holding my breath. Their utter incompetence with past issues is mind blowing. (I know I should be polite, and I have been with them, but after what I went through with the last help ticket...)

Man, why did this have to happen during a storyline where half the joke was the reaction in the comments section? I am so upset!

Anyway, I decided to test to see if another new comic would also have the missing comments issue, so I threw the new Copper Road into the archive. That page has a comments section, so maybe this was some stupid random glitch.

With that Copper Road archived, I had to quickly draw up a new one, so I did! Vote to see it! Why, yes, you can say it was inspired by events of the last 10 hours.

I don't know what's going to happen with comments yet. There's a chance I may be abandoning IntenseDebate after this, although it would require tech guy to figure out a code that lets the old comments stick around. There's a chance it was a random glitch and things will click back into working order at midnight. There's even a chance IntenseDebate support will come through for me! You know, once they allow me to contact them. I want to give them their say in this matter, but sheesh.

New Copper Road! 7/1/12

It's a new month, and the rankings have been reset! That means every vote is super important, so let's ring in July with a new Copper Road! Ever wonder what makes Swedish Fish so delicious? Wonder no longer. Vote to see the new comic!

Yeah, I cheated a bit on this one, but I think I earned that after drawing all those optional panels in the previous Copper Road update.

Oh, hey, notice that link there? I've uploaded all of last month's Copper Roads to the archive. You can now go catch up, re-read them and comment to your heart's delight!

My Copic'd Kids

My vacation is over! I am back in Savannah and preparing for some major summer undertakings! There's so much to do, and so much planning needed before I can start doing it. It's daunting, but also exciting. (I'll share more about the plans when everything starts to take form.)

While I had a wonderful time stomping around the country and kicking butt all through June, it is nice to be back to the grind. One perk: I HAVE ACCESS TO MY SCANNERS AGAIN! Well then, let's use 'em!

I present to you, the main four Precocious kids in Copic marker, for the first time ever.

The marker thing was a whim that has turned into a wallet-draining tornado. I loved working on grayscale, since it was nice and cost-effective, but the people wanted color and a timely coupon to Art Supply Warehouse resulted in an impulse buy of a color set. And some extra colors. And then some MORE singles to fill out my palette a bit...

Ok, so now I see the appeal. Copics are kinda swell. I have a long way to go before I become a master at them like Darc or Becca, but I really love the practice!

Without a swatch list of my own, I had to guess which colors would fit the Precocious cast best when ordering. Overall, I'm quite pleased with what I could do with my meager collection. (For the record, both Bud and Tiff's fur colors didn't scan well, so I tried to approximate them using Photoshop. They look better in person.)

If you're interested, and you don't feel like reading the info in the pic, here is what I came up with:

Bud:
Fur: Silk
Ears: Baked Clay
Hair: Light Suntan
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Pants: Light Grayish Cobalt

Tiffany:
Fur: Egg Shell
Ear: Baked Clay
Hair/Smiley: Cadmium Yellow
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Eyering: Yellowish Beige
Dress: Lime Green

Autumn:
Fur: Apricot
Hair: Vermilion
Inner ear: Baby Skin Pink
Dress light: Lime Green
Dress dark: Forest Green

Jacob:
Fur: Warm Grey 3
Shirt: Lipstick Red
Pants: Antwerp Blue

I can see a few colors that might be improved. I may want to play with the orange and yellow in Autumn and Tiff, and Jacob could probably work with Warm Grey 2, but I don't have that one.  Jacob's pants could probably be a lighter blue as well. I'm happy with all color choices for Bud.  Down the line, I may update the aforementioned colors, but for now I think it's all good.  (I can't afford another marker binge for a while.)

New Copper Road! 6/26/12

Haha, this was supposed to go up this morning, but I totally spaced on it. Anyway, It's here now and it comes with a bonus experience! For a different effect, try reading it and ignoring all but the first and last panels! Vote here to see it!

In other news, my lengthy vacation is nearly over. I will be heading back to Savannah later in the week and, after recovering, fun stuff will start littering the front page, the blog and my FA account again! (Heck, I may even take a peek at the DA page and upload something!) (Maybe.)

SpiderForest Comic of the Week!

This week's comic is SPINE! It's a gritty, stylistic action comic that's pretty cool. Click the link, look at the first few pages and you'll know right away if this comic's for you. It gets a bit slaughtery and languagy, so kiddos stay out!

New Copper Road! 6/19/12

I am master of buffering! Even though I've been on the road for a while, I still have Copper Roads to post! (There is gonna be so much panic when July hits and I suddenly have to start comicking again.)

Today, everyone's favorite plastic ball of evil is back, with a desperate plea. Do you dare let it down? Vote to see the new comic!